Introduction to services

Services are very important in MVVM. They define a way to interact with the user without using fixed controls such as MessageBox or SaveFileDialog. The interfaces defined in Catel only define generic functionality of what to expect from a specific service. Using services is a great way to abstract away all specific functionality from a view model into a service that can be mocked during unit testing and can be used by other view models as well.

ServiceLocator

The key behind services is the ServiceLocator. The ServiceLocator is the IoC (Inversion of Control) container that Catel provides. This is a container that contains all registrations and service instances available throughout the application. Retrieving services from the default ServiceLocator in Catel is very simple:

var dependencyResolver = this.GetDependencyResolver();
var messageService = dependencyResolver.Resolve<IMessageService>();

It is also possible to get services injected into the constructor, which is the recommended approach

Dependency injection

A slightly better way to manage dependencies is to use dependency injection. The reason is that to instantiate a class, you always have to provide all the dependencies. This way, all dependencies are always known to the caller making it a bit complicated and encouraging high coupling. Using dependency injection however makes it a bit easier to control than having to know what services are being used by a component (such as a view model).

Catel fully supports dependency on view models. This means that a view model can have a constructor with several services. Catel will automatically inject the services via the constructor. An example is below:

public class PersonViewModel : ViewModelBase
{ 
    private readonly IMessageService _messageService;
    private readonly IPleaseWaitService _pleaseWaitService;

    public PersonViewModel(IMessageService messageService, IPleaseWaitService pleaseWaitService)
    {
        _messageService = messageService;
        _pleaseWaitService = pleaseWaitService;
    }
}

Overview of services

The services below are available in Catel:

Name

Description

IAccelerometerService

Allows a developer to access the accelerometer of a Windows Phone device.

ICameraService

Allows a developer to use the PhotoCamera class in an MVVM manner.

ICompassService

Allows a developer to access the compass of a Windows Phone device.

IGyroscopeService

Allows a developer to access the compass of a Windows Phone device.

ILocationService

Allows a developer to use GPS devices inside a view model.

IMessageService

Allows a developer to show message boxes from a view model.

INavigationService

Allows a developer to navigate to other pages inside an application using view models only.

IOpenFileService

Allows a developer to let the user choose a file from inside a view model.

IPleaseWaitService

Allows a developer to show a please wait message (a.k.a. busy indicator) from a view model.

IProcessService

Allows a developer to run processes from inside a view model.

ISaveFileService

Allows a developer to let the user choose a file from inside a view model.

IUIVisualizerService

Allows a developer to show (modal) windows or dialogs without actually referencing a specific view.

IVibrateService

Allows a developer to start and stop vibration of the device via a service.

Note that this section is not always fully up-to-date, Catel might provide more services than listed here


Contributions

We would like to thank the following contributors:

Want to contribute to the documentation? We have a guide for that!


Questions

Have a question about Catel? Use StackOverflow with the Catel tag!