Monotouch-Dialog ReloadData does not reloads data?

Question

I want to use monotouch dialog as not editable data display for some numeric values. But calling DialogViewController.ReloadData does not updates data from binded object.

class AccountFormModel
{
        [Section("Account data", "")]

        [Caption("Balance")]
        public string balance;
}
...
private void InitComponents()
{
            accountFormModel = new AccountFormModel();
            accountFormModel.balance = "TestTestTest";
            bc = new BindingContext(this, accountFormModel, "AccountData");
            dialogViewController = new DialogViewController(bc.Root);
            dialogViewController.Autorotate = true;
}

private void RefreshData()
{
            string b = SomeDatasource.Account.Balance.ToString("N4");
            accountFormModel.balance = "$" + b;
            dialogViewController.ReloadData();
}

Debugging shows that accountFormModel.balance in refreshData method is set to right value, but nothing changes on form in simulator (stays TestTestTest). What i'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

DialogViewController when using reflection does the binding once initially, and only when you FetchData() is the data transferred back to your class.

What happens is that the BindingContext will basically create the model from your data (balance in this case) effectively making a copy of your data at this point. When you call ReloadData() this is reloading the data from the copy, and that is why you do not see a change. Although this could be changed to have some method on the BindingContex to repopulate the data, this is not currently the case.

The Reflection API for MonoTouch.Dialog is very limited, I strongly advise you that for anything non-trivial, you use the Elements API. Most of the samples in MonoTouch.Dialog use that API, as it gives you full control of the dialog.