Recently, we kicked off our Open Source Blog Series where we take a look at the great Magenic consultants and some of their open source projects. The first post focused on Jeff Ferguson’s great venture, Gepsio. This time, we’re checking in with Lead Consultant Brent Edwards and looking at his awesome project, MVVM Fabric.
After working as the UI architect for several WPF applications leveraging MVVM, Brent was continually finding himself reusing key elements in multiple projects. That’s where he came up with the idea for MVVM Fabric. He took those elements, extracted them, and generalized them into what is now MVVM Fabric. MVVM Fabric addresses common issues such as communication, navigation, and commanding in WPF-centric applications. It also provides core functionality and leverages dependency injection to provide extensibility.
After releasing MVVM Fabric, Brent also wrote in-depth blog posts describing the usage of its elements. Some of these posts include Using MessageBus, Testable Navigation with MVVM Fabric, and Using ActionCommand. The blog provides high-level detail and an explanation of MVVM Fabric and how it can help you.
MVVM Fabric is posted on github, along with a sample application that uses it. In fact, you can also take a look at Brent’s presentation, WPF with MVVM: From the Trenches, which shows the many similarities between the two. Both the sample application and the presentation were based on the same projects as MVVM Fabric. He even did an episode of dnrTV! covering the very topic.
If you find yourself repeatedly working on WPF applications that leverage MVVM, it would be well worth your time to check out MVVM Fabric. Brent’s experience and expertise could end up saving you much time and trouble going forward.