Trouble Passing Data with CommunityToolkit.Maui Popup v2 Without Shell (Using Prism)

[dharamhbtik]

We’ve recently migrated to CommunityToolkit.Maui Popup v2, and while we appreciate the improvements, we’ve hit a roadblock that we’re hoping to get some guidance on.

In our app, we don’t use Shell at all—we’re fully relying on Prism for navigation. With v1 of the popup toolkit, we were able to:

Pass data to the popup’s ViewModel when opening it.
Receive data back when the popup was closed.
This worked seamlessly and was a key part of our workflow.

However, with v2, it seems like the new navigation model is tightly coupled with Shell. From what we understand, to pass and receive data now, we’d need to adopt Shell-based navigation, which isn’t feasible for us due to our architecture and reliance on Prism.

Is there any recommended approach or workaround for handling data passing in and out of popups in v2 without using Shell?
Or is there any plan to support non-Shell navigation scenarios more explicitly?

We’d really appreciate any insights or suggestions. Thanks in advance for your help!

[rokmeglic71]

Did you look for an alternative too, like Syncfusion Maui toolkit - popup?

[rokmeglic71]

@dharamhbtik why don't you use Shell + Toolkit popup and still use Prism navigation. It should work normally. Take a look at CoPilot AI example.

This + my above comment, you can use popups + you can create Popup and pass data to constructor, so you can pass the arguments to the PopUp also without using Shell, I've coded this for my client.

[dharamhbtik]

@rokmeglic71 I tried to have AppShell along with PRISM it is distorting the UI. I don't know how this AppShell will work with PRISM as prism team already have no appshell support . Can't find the CoPilot AI example as you have mentioned in your comment. It is not navigating to the place you intended to

[rokmeglic71]

@dharamhbtik link fixed. Happy to hear your feedback on this.

[dharamhbtik]

Thanks for your effort but the solution provided by the Copilot is of no use at all. Its like a newbie who is creating object everywhere. What If I am using purely viewmodels? my viewmodels are in separate project which referenced by the UI project? I can't go and reference my views everywhere . What is the use if IPopupservice with viewmodel? Its totally violating the separation of concern principle. I tried with different AI to get answer but looks like this V2 update of Toolkit popup is going to make it worse. I am checking with the navigation service of PRISM, if it will work, will update here.

[dkumar2208]

Finally, I have created my custom popup library referencing the Mopup and removed the dependencies of the toolkit popup.

Thanks all for the nice discussion.