MEF’ing in VB and SilverLight 4, with a little MVVM thrown in for flavor, from Glenn Block

Glenn Block - Hello MEF in Silverlight 4 and VB! (with an MVVM Light cameo)

“For a while we’ve been getting a number of requests to have some MEF samples in VB. Let me first apologize as it’s been something I’ve been meaning to do for a very long time. To partially redeem myself, I’ve gone ahead and ported my Hello MEF sample which I demonstrated at PDC and had a small blog series on. BTW, I won’t blame you if you are not ready to forgive me for not showing VB love earlier. ;-)

The “app” (If you squint you might think it’s a real app :-) ) is an illustration of building a pluggable dashboard with MEF. The sample illustrates a ton of concepts around MEF, but the app itself is quite simple to grock.

How to declare exports and imports

How to import collections

How to lazily instantiate parts

How to create custom MEF export attributes

How to use MEF metadata for self-describing your MEF components and how you access it.

How to use MEF from within XAML (i.e. imports satisfied on parts that are created by the xaml partser).

How to apply the View Model (my shorthand for MVVM) pattern with MEF

How to partition you MEF applications across multiple XAPs

How to override the default MEF configuration.

How to use MVVM Light’s RelayCommand for simple commanding.

And much much more:

I warn though that I am going to be moving pretty fast, so hold on tight!

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