How to Bind WPF combo box with xml file with image and text

This article demonstrates you how to bind WPF combo box with xml file data or with XmlDataProvider.

Use this post if you want to bind a wpf combo box with a xml file

Use this post if you want to bind and display some images in combo box

Use this post if you want to learn how you can customize the display of combo box

Create a Xml file, in my case it is static one but you can create one from the database programmatically.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”utf-8″ ?>

<companies>

<company name=”Microsoft” icon=”image1.png”/>

<company name=”Yahoo” icon=”image2.png”/>

<company name=”Atticmedia” icon=”image3.png”/>

</companies>

You can add more attributes as per your requirements.

Now goto you app.xaml and add below code in it

<Application.Resources>

<XmlDataProvider x:Key=”Companies” XPath=”/companies” Source=”/DataSource/CompanyData.xml”/>

</Application.Resources>

Declare a combo box on your page as shown below

<ComboBox x:Name=”SelectBox” ItemsSource=”{Binding Source={StaticResource Companies}, XPath=company, Mode=OneTime}” >

<ComboBox.ItemTemplate>
<DataTemplate>
<StackPanel Orientation=”Horizontal”>
<TextBlock Text=”{Binding XPath=@name}” Margin=”4,0″/>
 <Image Source=”{Binding XPath=@icon}” />
</StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>
</ComboBox.ItemTemplate>
</ComboBox>