Here is a very good article regarding the Mutex solution. The approach described by the article is advantageous for two reasons.
First, it does not require a dependency on the Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly. If my project already had a dependency on that assembly, I would probably advocate using the approach shown in another answer. But as it is, I do not use the Microsoft.VisualBasic assembly, and I'd rather not add an unnecessary dependency to my project.
Second, the article shows how to bring the existing instance of the application to the foreground when the user tries to start another instance. That's a very nice touch that the other Mutex solutions described here do not address.
UPDATE
As of 8/1/2014, the article I linked to above is still active, but the blog hasn't been updated in a while. That makes me worry that eventually it might disappear, and with it, the advocated solution. I'm reproducing the content of the article here for posterity. The words belong solely to the blog owner at Sanity Free Coding.
Today I wanted to refactor some code that prohibited my application
from running multiple instances of itself.
Previously I had use System.Diagnostics.Process to search for an
instance of my myapp.exe in the process list. While this works, it
brings on a lot of overhead, and I wanted something cleaner.
Knowing that I could use a mutex for this (but never having done it
before) I set out to cut down my code and simplify my life.
In the class of my application main I created a static named Mutex:
static class Program
{
static Mutex mutex = new Mutex(true, "{8F6F0AC4-B9A1-45fd-A8CF-72F04E6BDE8F}");
[STAThread]
...
}
Having a named mutex allows us to stack synchronization across
multiple threads and processes which is just the magic I'm looking
for.
Mutex.WaitOne has an overload that specifies an amount of time for us
to wait. Since we're not actually wanting to synchronizing our code
(more just check if it is currently in use) we use the overload with
two parameters: Mutex.WaitOne(Timespan timeout, bool exitContext).
Wait one returns true if it is able to enter, and false if it wasn't.
In this case, we don't want to wait at all; If our mutex is being
used, skip it, and move on, so we pass in TimeSpan.Zero (wait 0
milliseconds), and set the exitContext to true so we can exit the
synchronization context before we try to aquire a lock on it. Using
this, we wrap our Application.Run code inside something like this:
static class Program
{
static Mutex mutex = new Mutex(true, "{8F6F0AC4-B9A1-45fd-A8CF-72F04E6BDE8F}");
[STAThread]
static void Main() {
if(mutex.WaitOne(TimeSpan.Zero, true)) {
Application.EnableVisualStyles();
Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
Application.Run(new Form1());
mutex.ReleaseMutex();
} else {
MessageBox.Show("only one instance at a time");
}
}
}
So, if our app is running, WaitOne will return false, and we'll get a
message box.
Instead of showing a message box, I opted to utilize a little Win32 to
notify my running instance that someone forgot that it was already
running (by bringing itself to the top of all the other windows). To
achieve this I used PostMessage to broadcast a custom message to every
window (the custom message was registered with RegisterWindowMessage
by my running application, which means only my application knows what
it is) then my second instance exits. The running application instance
would receive that notification and process it. In order to do that, I
overrode WndProc in my main form and listened for my custom
notification. When I received that notification I set the form's
TopMost property to true to bring it up on top.
Here is what I ended up with:
static class Program
{
static Mutex mutex = new Mutex(true, "{8F6F0AC4-B9A1-45fd-A8CF-72F04E6BDE8F}");
[STAThread]
static void Main() {
if(mutex.WaitOne(TimeSpan.Zero, true)) {
Application.EnableVisualStyles();
Application.SetCompatibleTextRenderingDefault(false);
Application.Run(new Form1());
mutex.ReleaseMutex();
} else {
// send our Win32 message to make the currently running instance
// jump on top of all the other windows
NativeMethods.PostMessage(
(IntPtr)NativeMethods.HWND_BROADCAST,
NativeMethods.WM_SHOWME,
IntPtr.Zero,
IntPtr.Zero);
}
}
}
// this class just wraps some Win32 stuff that we're going to use
internal class NativeMethods
{
public const int HWND_BROADCAST = 0xffff;
public static readonly int WM_SHOWME = RegisterWindowMessage("WM_SHOWME");
[DllImport("user32")]
public static extern bool PostMessage(IntPtr hwnd, int msg, IntPtr wparam, IntPtr lparam);
[DllImport("user32")]
public static extern int RegisterWindowMessage(string message);
}
- Form1.cs (front side partial)
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
}
protected override void WndProc(ref Message m)
{
if(m.Msg == NativeMethods.WM_SHOWME) {
ShowMe();
}
base.WndProc(ref m);
}
private void ShowMe()
{
if(WindowState == FormWindowState.Minimized) {
WindowState = FormWindowState.Normal;
}
// get our current "TopMost" value (ours will always be false though)
bool top = TopMost;
// make our form jump to the top of everything
TopMost = true;
// set it back to whatever it was
TopMost = top;
}
}
You set the DisplayMemberPath and the SelectedValuePath to "Name", so I assume that you have a class PhoneBookEntry with a public property Name.
Have you set the DataContext to your ConnectionViewModel object?
I copied you code and made some minor modifications, and it seems to work fine.
I can set the viewmodels PhoneBookEnty property and the selected item in the combobox changes, and I can change the selected item in the combobox and the view models PhoneBookEntry property is set correctly.
Here is my XAML content:
<Window x:Class="WpfApplication6.Window1"
xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"
Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300">
<Grid>
<StackPanel>
<Button Click="Button_Click">asdf</Button>
<ComboBox ItemsSource="{Binding Path=PhonebookEntries}"
DisplayMemberPath="Name"
SelectedValuePath="Name"
SelectedValue="{Binding Path=PhonebookEntry}" />
</StackPanel>
</Grid>
</Window>
And here is my code-behind:
namespace WpfApplication6
{
/// <summary>
/// Interaction logic for Window1.xaml
/// </summary>
public partial class Window1 : Window
{
public Window1()
{
InitializeComponent();
ConnectionViewModel vm = new ConnectionViewModel();
DataContext = vm;
}
private void Button_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
((ConnectionViewModel)DataContext).PhonebookEntry = "test";
}
}
public class PhoneBookEntry
{
public string Name { get; set; }
public PhoneBookEntry(string name)
{
Name = name;
}
public override string ToString()
{
return Name;
}
}
public class ConnectionViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
public ConnectionViewModel()
{
IList<PhoneBookEntry> list = new List<PhoneBookEntry>();
list.Add(new PhoneBookEntry("test"));
list.Add(new PhoneBookEntry("test2"));
_phonebookEntries = new CollectionView(list);
}
private readonly CollectionView _phonebookEntries;
private string _phonebookEntry;
public CollectionView PhonebookEntries
{
get { return _phonebookEntries; }
}
public string PhonebookEntry
{
get { return _phonebookEntry; }
set
{
if (_phonebookEntry == value) return;
_phonebookEntry = value;
OnPropertyChanged("PhonebookEntry");
}
}
private void OnPropertyChanged(string propertyName)
{
if (PropertyChanged != null)
PropertyChanged(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
}
public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
}
}
Edit: Geoffs second example does not seem to work, which seems a bit odd to me. If I change the PhonebookEntries property on the ConnectionViewModel to be of type ReadOnlyCollection, the TwoWay binding of the SelectedValue property on the combobox works fine.
Maybe there is an issue with the CollectionView? I noticed a warning in the output console:
System.Windows.Data Warning: 50 : Using CollectionView directly is not fully supported. The basic features work, although with some inefficiencies, but advanced features may encounter known bugs. Consider using a derived class to avoid these problems.
Edit2 (.NET 4.5): The content of the DropDownList can be based on ToString() and not of DisplayMemberPath, while DisplayMemberPath specifies the member for the selected and displayed item only.
Best Solution
As the given link to the answer is nowadays only available on webarchive I duplicated the answer that was given there:
Example: