Blog Bloginski

In this post I built a control that allows manipulation of a Path control.  Unfortunately, it only works if you do not use the mini-language described here and include all the path segment elements in your XAML.  When the mini language is used silverlight does not expose all the PathSegment objects that are used to draw the vector graphics.  I’ve been using Blend on a project a lot lately (and even Illustrator a little) and anyone who has built up a lot of XAML vector assets knows that these tools all generate xaml that uses the Path mini language.  I still wanted to be able to use my PathGeometryEditor control with these more complex vector assets.  So, I used the documentation here and built a parser for the mini language.  It reads in the path mini language and builds up the required tree of elements.  The only thing I was working from was that documentation so, although it has been successful with every path I’ve given it, no guarantees it will work with every possible path data.

You can download the source here.

The path parser is implemented in the PathDataParser class in the PathUtils project.  In order to use it use the PathDataParser.PathData attached property instead of the Data property on a Path control.  You can see an example of this in PathUtilsTest\Page.xaml.  The parser code itself is pretty straight forward.  It reads through the path data and builds up all the required PathSegment objects.  I haven’t tested this extensively, so if anyone finds any bugs please send them my way. (I haven’t actually tried this with WPF, but I believe it should also work as-is with WPF.  I used Kaxaml to verify path rendering when I was testing).

You can see this sample running here.  Grab the blue circles and move the path points around.

BTW, I had always assumed that code released on blogs with no license was released into the public domain, but then I read this post (which is a great read for anyone using or releasing shared source).  Apparently, code released with no license is actually some of the most restricted.  I’m releasing this sample (and all foreseeable future samples) under the MIT License.  I’ll be going back into the previous samples I’ve posting and adding the license into that source as well when I have some extra time.