Outputting values to UI controls

One of the simplest ways of working out what values our data bound properties have is to just data bind them to other UI controls that have a textual output. For example, if we have a collection of items and we want to do something with the selected item, but whatever that is isn't working, we need to verify that our binding to that selected item is correct.

To visualize the result of the binding, we can simply copy and paste the binding path to the Text property of a TextBox and run the application. If our binding path is correct, we'll see something output in the TextBox and if not, we'll know that the problem that we're having is, in fact, down to the binding path. We can, therefore, use this method to verify that objects that don't normally have a textual output are at least correctly data bound or not.

This simple technique can help in any situation where the faulty data binding is not already rendered in a text-based UI control. For example, we might need to debug a data bound value because a particular visual effect that is created with a DataTrigger instance is not working and we need to determine whether the problem is related to the UI control or the data binding path.