WinUI 3 with C++ and XAML but without MIDL

[sotanakamura]

Hello everyone!

You can define WinUI 3 UIs with XAML. Classes reffered in XAML should be Windows runtime classes which you define with MIDL. Creating Windows Runtime classes is a little bit hard. I have written an article on how to define UIs with XAML but without MIDL.

• WinUI 3 with C++ and XAML but without MIDL

// MainPage.xaml
<Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation">
    <StackPanel HorizontalAlignment="Center" VerticalAlignment="Center">
        <TextBlock>Hello World!</TextBlock>
    </StackPanel>
</Window>

window = Window();
Application::LoadComponent(window, Uri(L"ms-appx:///MainPage.xaml"));

[driver1998]

If you really hate MIDL (or can't use it since you don't have VS or Windows SDK), you can make {Binding} work with an implementation of ICustomPropertyProvider.

This would seriously need some meta-programming or code-generation automation though, you won't want to write this by hand.

This is how I get binding working with MinGW (this is with XAML islands and System XAML though):

https://github.com/driver1998/XamlMinGW
https://github.com/driver1998/XamlMinGW/blob/26fab9825b77c0e1536fad0b050adce5a2f084f9/xaml-mingw/MainWindowViewModel.cpp#L57

[sotanakamura]

Nice! I will ckeck it!