Simple Attached Dependency Properties Collection?

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C#

WPF

Hi All,

I'm struggling a bit. If I have classes as below:

public static class ClassName
{
    ...attached DP called 'ChildObjects', of type ChildCollection....
}

public class ChildCollection : ObservableCollection<child>
{
}
</child>

I can add an attached dependency property definition to ClassName, of type ChildCollection, allowing me to do the below:

<grid>
  <classname.childobjects>
    <childcollection>
      <child someproperty="{Binding Etc}" />
      <child someproperty="{Binding Etc}" />
    </childcollection>
  <classname.childobjects>
<grid></grid></classname.childobjects></classname.childobjects></grid>

This works great - Child objects are derived from FrameworkElement and therefore have a datacontext. The only problem is ChildCollection - it is not a framework element therefore it means that it's not in the logical tree, so bindings on the Child objects don't work - let alone using things like 'FindAncestor'.

Is there a standard way to deal with this? I've looked for 'FrameworkElementCollection' that would add the children to the logical tree but with no luck. Before I dive into creating one, I would like to know if I'm missing something obvious!

Thanks in advance,

Dave