WPF Docking Library - Persistence Support

From http://sourceforge.net/projects/wpfdockinglib/ you can download version 0.1.8 of WPF Docking Library. Major feature added is persistence support. I hope to have time to update article on codeproject, anyway persistence it's very easy to use.

To get layout state in xml format use DockManager.GetLayoutAsXml() and to restore a saved state you can use DockManager.RestoreLayoutFromXml().

The latter method need a handler to library client code because DockManager need to know how to associate dockable contents type strings with client instances during deserialization. This mechanism is almost identical to those you can found in DockPanel Suite.

Here a few lines of code:

if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Properties.Settings.Default.DockingLayoutState))
DockManager.RestoreLayoutFromXml(Properties.Settings.Default.DockingLayoutState,
new DockingLibrary.GetContentFromTypeString(this.GetContentFromTypeString));
else
{
//Show PropertyWindow docked to the top border
propertyWindow.DockManager = dockManager;
propertyWindow.Show(Dock.Left);
//Show ExplorerWindow docked to the right border as default
explorerWindow.DockManager = dockManager;
explorerWindow.Show();
//Show ListWindow in documents pane
listWindow.DockManager = dockManager;
listWindow.Show();
}


private DockingLibrary.DockableContent GetContentFromTypeString(string type)
{
if (type == typeof(PropertyWindow).ToString())
return propertyWindow;
else if (type == typeof(ExplorerWindow).ToString())
return explorerWindow;
else if (type == typeof(ListWindow).ToString())
return listWindow;
return null;
}

I suppose you can find same bugs in this version so if you need a more stable release you can wait for version 0.2.