Getting custom data from ListPicker - windows-phone-7

Question

I have a ListPicker in my app which is defined like that:
<DataTemplate x:Name="PickerItemTemplate">
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal">
<TextBlock Text="{Binding code}" Margin="12 0 0 0" Visibility="Collapsed"/>
<TextBlock Text="{Binding name}" Margin="12 0 0 0"/>
</StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>
<DataTemplate x:Name="PickerFullModeItemTemplate">
<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal" Margin="16 21 0 20">
<TextBlock Text="{Binding name}" Margin="16 0 0 0"
FontSize="43" FontFamily="{StaticResource PhoneFontFamilyLight}"/>
</StackPanel>
</DataTemplate>
<toolkit:ListPicker x:Name="_1stLanguageListPicker"
ItemTemplate="{StaticResource PickerItemTemplate}"
FullModeItemTemplate="{StaticResource PickerFullModeItemTemplate}"
Header="1st Specie Name Language"
FullModeHeader="1st Specie Name Language"
CacheMode="BitmapCache"/>
As you can see I show to user only the full name, hidding the code. But as a programmer I would like to use code name.
How to get to this name?
I have tried like that
if (_1stLanguageListPicker.SelectedIndex == 0)
{
firstlang = "GB"
}
But not working (some bool to int problem, normal = doesn't work also) and this is a bad way for many items list as you have to put many many IF statements.

Answer 1

What I understand is, Your problem is to get the data of the code TextBlock in the code behind.
First give some name to your TextBlock
<TextBlock x:Name="codeTextBlock" Text="{Binding code}" />
And then use the following code to access the 'code'
if (listPicker.SelectedIndex > -1)
{
var item = listPicker.ItemContainerGenerator.ContainerFromIndex(listPicker.SelectedIndex);
SearchVisualTree(item);
}
Here, SearchVisualTree() is:
private void SearchVisualTree(DependencyObject targetElement)
{
var count = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(targetElement);
if (count == 0)
return;
for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
{
var child = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(targetElement, i);
if (child is TextBlock)
{
TextBlock targetItem = (TextBlock)child;
if (targetItem.Name == "codeTextBlock")
{
var code = targetItem.Text;
return;
}
}
else
{
SearchVisualTree(child);
}
}
}
One possible problem here is(which you faced), we cannot access the DataTemplate before ListPicker is Loaded. In other workds, before DataTemplate is generated for the ListPicker.
So the placement of the above code is very important.
Hope this helps