.NET Information center: Get a visual parent of an element in Silverlight

Sunday, May 01, 2011

Get a visual parent of an element in Silverlight

Remember that you don’t have a parent in your control’s constructor -- it hasn’t been added anywhere yet. Use the Loaded event when you look. From there, you can use the VisualTreeHelper.GetParent() method. Sometimes you are looking for a parent of a given name or type. To help out, here’s a quick method I threw together to help you find a parent of a given type:

T GetParentOfType<T>() where T : DependencyObject

{

DependencyObject p = this;

while( p != null && !(p is T))

{

p = VisualTreeHelper.GetParent(p);

}