WPF: How to attach mouse events to a viewmodel?

Question

I am trying to use the MVVM pattern for the first time. So I have an ItemsControl filled with my viewmodel objects, displayed using DataTemplate\'s; th

Answer 1

I figured out the answer to the second question. I needed an ItemsControl that supported scrolling, and I needed to have the items on a Grid rather than the default StackPanel. To fulfill both requirements, I used a ControlTemplate:

    
        ...
            
        ...
    

In order to get mouse events with meaningful mouse coordinates (i.e. coordinates in scrollable space), it was necessary to obtain a reference to the grid using a strange incantation:

Grid grid = (Grid)_itemsControl.Template.FindName("Panel", _itemsControl);

Then you attach event handlers to the grid, and inside the mouse event handlers, get the mouse coordinates w.r.t. the grid using

Point p = e.GetPosition((IInputElement)sender);

In order to get mouse events on the entire surface, the control (actually the grid) must have a background, so I set Background="LightYellow" above, which propagates to the grid via a binding in the ControlTemplate.