WPF Simple Data Converter Example

Introduction

In this tip, I would like to share the code that I have written for converting numeric value to its words format. It is a very simple prototype and can be extended to be used as a full fledged application or user control.

In this example, I have a list of numbers which is to be populated in combo box. At the time of displaying numbers in combo box, they should be shown in words. For example, 1 -> one, 2 -> two …..

For this purpose, I have created a Data Converter inherited from IValueConveter interface provided by the WPF library.

public class DataConverter : IValueConverter 

Whenever any class is implementing IValueConverter, it needs to implement two methods provided by interface:

public object Convert(object value, Type targetType, 
object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) 

public object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, 
object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture) 

In Convert method, I have written the logic to convert numeric value into words and return the string.

Coming to the UI side, the window contains just a combo box to be populated with list using data context (binding). The list contains all the numbers, hence we need to put converter to convert numeric values to words.

<ComboBox
 ItemsSource="{Binding list,  
 Converter={StaticResource DataConverter}}">

Finally the application looks like: