A super-simple MVVM-Light WP7 sample?

Question

I am looking for a sample that demonstrates in the lightest way possible the following:

A Model that invokes a SOAP based web service; regularly polling to get the l

Answer 1

Mick N's pointer helped, but what really got me over the hump was this post by Jeremy Likness: http://csharperimage.jeremylikness.com/2010/04/model-view-viewmodel-mvvm-explained.html

Here's the sample for the benefit of others (assuming I'm not doing anything really stupid):

First, I started using the Mvvm-Light Windows Phone 7 project.

I added a checkbox to my MainPage.xaml:

    <CheckBox Content="Switch 1" 
              IsChecked="{Binding Switch1.PowerState, Mode=TwoWay}"
              Height="72" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="24,233,0,0" 
              Name="checkBox1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="428" />

Notice the IsChecked is bound to Switch1.PowerState using the TwoWay mode so that the property flows both ways.

A key learning for me is how to enable communication from my timer callback (TimerCB) which will be running on a new thread to the Silverlight UI thread. I used the Mvvm-Light DispatcherHelper.CheckBeginInvokeOnUI helper which waits on the UI thread.

I then had to decide whether to implement INotifyPropertyChanged myself in my model, or use Mvvm-Light's ViewModelBase implementation. I actually tried it both ways and had it working but decided I liked using ViewModelBase better because it supports "broadcast" and I think in my actual project that will be handy because I will have multiple ViewModels. It seems a bit uncouth to be basing a "Model" on ViewModelBase class, but I don't think there's any harm in doing so. (???).

My model .cs is below.

public class OnOffSwitchClass : ViewModelBase // ignore that it's derived from ViewModelBase!
{
    private const Int32 TIMER_INTERVAL = 5000;  // 5 seconds
    private Timer _timer;

    // Upon creation create a timer that changes the value every 5 seconds
    public OnOffSwitchClass()
    {
        _timer = new System.Threading.Timer(TimerCB, this, TIMER_INTERVAL, TIMER_INTERVAL);
    }

    private static void TimerCB(object state)
    {
        // Alternate between on and off
        ((OnOffSwitchClass)state).PowerState = !((OnOffSwitchClass)state).PowerState;
    }

    public const string PowerStatePropertyName = "PowerState";

    private bool _myProperty = false;

    public bool PowerState
    {
        get
        {
            return _myProperty;
        }

        set
        {
            if (_myProperty == value)
            {
                return;
            }

            var oldValue = _myProperty;
            _myProperty = value;

            // Update bindings and broadcast change using GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Messenging
            GalaSoft.MvvmLight.Threading.DispatcherHelper.CheckBeginInvokeOnUI(() =>
                RaisePropertyChanged(PowerStatePropertyName, oldValue, value, true));
        }
    }
}

The MainViewModel.cs was modified to include the following

private OnOffSwitchClass _Switch1 = new OnOffSwitchClass();

public OnOffSwitchClass Switch1 
{
    get
    {
        return _Switch1;
    }
}

And I added a call to DispatcherHelper.Initialize(); in my App() constructor.

Does this look right?