windows phone loading data from MainViewModel - windows-phone-7

Question

Noob question probably.
I am developing a mvm wp7 app where the map shows pushpins of salons. The database is retrieved from a link.
The problem i am struggling with is that the observable collection data is not being loaded from the App._ViewModel (where the json serializer parses the database and works fine). On debugging the app shows a plain map and thats all. On returning a string attribute from the database causes a break on that code. i tried messagebox as well to show the string, still crashes.
Heres the code:
mainviewmodel.cs
public class MainViewModel
{
public bool IsDataLoaded { get; private set; }
public ObservableCollection<SalonViewModel> SalonCollection { get; private set; }
public MainViewModel()
{
IsDataLoaded = false;
}
public ObservableCollection<SalonViewModel> LoadData()
{
SalonCollection = new ObservableCollection<SalonViewModel>();
var wednesday = new Uri("http://blehbleh.txt");
WebClient wc = new WebClient();
wc.OpenReadCompleted += new OpenReadCompletedEventHandler(wc_OpenReadCompleted);
wc.OpenReadAsync(wednesday);
return SalonCollection;
}
public void wc_OpenReadCompleted(object sender, OpenReadCompletedEventArgs e)
{
try
{
DataContractJsonSerializer serializer = new DataContractJsonSerializer(typeof(ObservableCollection<SalonViewModel>));
ObservableCollection<SalonViewModel> list = serializer.ReadObject(e.Result) as ObservableCollection<SalonViewModel>;
foreach (SalonViewModel b in list)
{
SalonCollection.Add(new SalonViewModel { sid=b.sid,sname=b.sname,sgeo_lat=b.sgeo_lat,sgeo_lon=b.sgeo_lon,
}
this.IsDataLoaded = true;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
//throw ex;
MessageBox.Show(ex.Message);
}
}
The App.cs
public partial class App : Application
{
private static MainViewModel viewModel;
public static MainViewModel _viewModel
{
get
{
if (viewModel == null)
{
viewModel = new MainViewModel();
}
return viewModel;
}
}
void LoadData()
{
if (!_viewModel.IsDataLoaded)
{
_viewModel.LoadData();
}
}
etc
Heres the mappage.cs
private void salon_map_Loaded (object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
foreach (SalonViewModel Salon in App._viewModel.LoadData)
{
MessageBox.Show(Salon.sname);
Pushpin p = new Pushpin();
p.Content = Salon.sname + System.Environment.NewLine + "Rate: ";
Layer.AddChild(p, new GeoCoordinate(Salon.sgeo_lon, Salon.sgeo_lat));
}
Map1.Children.Add(Layer);
}

Answer 1

In your MainViewModel LoadData function, OpenReadAsync() is an asynchronous function, and thus returning SalonCollection on the next line will return an empty ObservableCollection, since the callback function wc_OpenReadCompleted has not run yet.
Also, the reason the MessageBox.Show crashes is because you are attempting to call a UI function on a non-UI thread (solution to that here: Dispatcher.Invoke() on Windows Phone 7?)
Instead of returning the ObservableCollection and manually adding children to the map from that, try binding a MapItemsControl layer of the Map to the ObservableCollection of your view model. There's a decent example of doing that here: Binding Pushpins to Bing Maps in Windows Phone