MVVM binding enum values : lots of proxy properties

Question

I'm writing a ViewModel library which works with my WPF Custom Controls. My problem is that my DomainModel has a large amount of Data Types: Cd,Pens,Gadgets,Books,ecc. All these Data Types are enumerated with an enum (I have more or less 1 hundred DataTypes), and each data Type corresponds to a DB table.

So the idea is to have a ViewModel library which exposes one property for each data type, thus my UI controls can directly bind the properties of my viewModel. The viewModel for each property return an ObservableCollection. For instance, if I'd like to have my combo box populated with the "Gadgets" data, in my XAML I 'll have something like :

<my:XCombo ItemsSource="{Binding Gadgets}" .... />

and in my ViewModel I'll have :

public ObservableCollection<Gadgets> Gadgets
{
    get 
    {
        //get gadgets data from my domain model
        return _model.GetData(DataEnum.Gadgets);
    }
}

Now, in order to do that, I need in my ViewModel one property for each enumeration value, but I'd like to avoid to put 1 hundred property accessors. I'm lazy and this can be very error prone. I know, in c#4 we have dynamic properties, so in this way I can avoid to write 100 property accessors, but I MUST use .net 3.5 which has no dynamic properties, i cannot use .net 4 ;(

Is there anyone who has already had this problem or any suggestion?

Thanks a lot in advance.

Answer 1

You could try to use an indexer property which returns the respective data

public IList this[DataEnum type]
{
     return _model.GetData(type);
}

Then bind it using that:

ItemsSource="{Binding [Gadgets]}"