MVVM in Windows Phone 7

Question

Any good sample WP7 application using MVVM model in the optimal way?

I'm creating my first WP7 app, and I'm using MVVM as far as I can tell, but I'm not sure I'm doing it the right way. I have one view model per page, instead of one main view model that branches to each page, I'm not sure which is the correct way to do, so I'm hoping there's a sample app out there that I can check out.

Thanks!

Edit: I'm also having another problem on saving the ViewModels in the application state, because I think they have to be serializable (haven't worked much into this), the thing is that when I start a task and come back to the app, the latter has already been deactivated by calling the former, so I have to serialize its state when deactivated and [re]serialize it when [re]activated. This is how I save the state when deactivated:

object[] viewModels = new object[3];

viewModels[0] = App.ViewModelPage1;
viewModels[1] = App.ViewModelPage2;
viewModels[2] = App.ViewModePage3;

PhoneApplicationService.Current.State.Add("LastState", viewModels);

Again, this is probably not efficient way to do it, so I'm hoping I can see a sample app that handles this well too.

Thanks!

Answer 1

Have you looked at using the MVVM Light toolkit?

Serialization best practices will vary based on the volume of data in the model, the number of models being used and whether it's necessary to always load all of the models.

Answer 2

You might want to check out Caliburn Micro. It is used to implement a number of user experience patterns but it supports WP7 and has sample code.

Answer 3

Here's some MVVM samples and guidance you can check out.

C#er : IMage: Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) Explained

.NET by Example: Using MVVM Light to drive a Windows Phone 7 / Silverlight 4 map viewer

The simplest way to do design-time ViewModels with MVVM and Blend.

Also an overview here of MVVM frameworks you may find worth a look.

JAPF » Blog Archive » Discover and compare existing MVVM frameworks

Light weight seems to be good and MVVM Light is popular. Laurent demos MVVM in the Mix 10 video EX14 if you want to check that out too.

Answer 4

This months MSDN magazine has an article on creating a WP7 Sudoko app using MVVM.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg490347.aspx

HTH

Answer 5

Here is my article which describes the approach to build WP7 applications using advantages of separation of concerns: a framework for building of WP7 application