Is there a way to check if WPF is currently executing in design mode or not?

Edward_Tanguay_4639 0
Viewed 70186

Does anyone know of some global state variable that is available so that I can check if the code is currently executing in design mode (e.g. in Blend or Visual Studio) or not?

It would look something like this:

//pseudo code:
if (Application.Current.ExecutingStatus == ExecutingStatus.DesignMode) 
{
    ...
}

The reason I need this is: when my application is being shown in design mode in Expression Blend, I want the ViewModel to instead use a "Design Customer class" which has mock data in it that the designer can view in design mode.

However, when the application is actually executing, I of course want the ViewModel to use the real Customer class which returns real data.

Currently I solve this by having the designer, before he works on it, go into the ViewModel and change "ApplicationDevelopmentMode.Executing" to "ApplicationDevelopmentMode.Designing":

public CustomersViewModel()
{
    _currentApplicationDevelopmentMode = ApplicationDevelopmentMode.Designing;
}

public ObservableCollection<Customer> GetAll
{
    get
    {
        try
        {
            if (_currentApplicationDevelopmentMode == ApplicationDevelopmentMode.Developing)
            {
                return Customer.GetAll;
            }
            else
            {
                return CustomerDesign.GetAll;
            }
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            throw new Exception(ex.Message);
        }
    }
}
expression-blend wpf c#
9 Answers

I believe you are looking for GetIsInDesignMode, which takes a DependencyObject.

Ie.

// 'this' is your UI element
DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(this);

Edit: When using Silverlight / WP7, you should use IsInDesignTool since GetIsInDesignMode can sometimes return false while in Visual Studio:

DesignerProperties.IsInDesignTool

Edit: And finally, in the interest of completeness, the equivalent in WinRT / Metro / Windows Store applications is DesignModeEnabled:

Windows.ApplicationModel.DesignMode.DesignModeEnabled
user_36030

You can do something like this:

DesignerProperties.GetIsInDesignMode(new DependencyObject());
sacha_207610 
public static bool InDesignMode()
{
    return !(Application.Current is App);
}

Works from anywhere. I use it to stop databound videos from playing in the designer.

user_2788890

And if you extensively use Caliburn.Micro for your large WPF / Silverlight / WP8 / WinRT application you could use handy and universal caliburn's Execute.InDesignMode static property in your view-models as well (and it works in Blend as good as in Visual Studio):

using Caliburn.Micro;

// ...

/// <summary>
/// Default view-model's ctor without parameters.
/// </summary>
public SomeViewModel()
{
    if(Execute.InDesignMode)
    {
        //Add fake data for design-time only here:

        //SomeStringItems = new List<string>
        //{
        //  "Item 1",
        //  "Item 2",
        //  "Item 3"
        //};
    }
}
user_10322610

Accepted answer didn't work for me (VS2019).

After inspecting what was going on, I came up with this:

    public static bool IsRunningInVisualStudioDesigner
    {
        get
        {
            // Are we looking at this dialog in the Visual Studio Designer or Blend?
            string appname = System.Reflection.Assembly.GetEntryAssembly().FullName;
            return appname.Contains("XDesProc");
        }
    }
user_16359100
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