Binding a XAML control visibility to a ViewModel variable in WPF

Some instructions on how to bind the visibility of a XAML button control to a boolean value in a ViewModel class.

1. Create a new WPF application

2. Add the View Model class

Right click your project folder and select Add > New Item > Class.

Name your class MainWindowViewModel.cs:

In your ViewModel class include the property to get the visibility setting.

For reasons of simplicity this simply returns a value of true for now, but in your own implementations, feel free to make the getters and setters do what you like.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;

namespace Visibility
{
    public class MainWindowViewModel
    {
        public bool ButtonVisibility
        {
            get { return true; }
        }
    }
}

3. Update your MainWindow.xaml code to do the following:

– add a button
– set the DataContext property
– declare and use a BooleanToVisibilityConverter

<Window x:Class="Visibility.MainWindow"
        xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"
        xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"   
        xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"
        xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
        mc:Ignorable="d"
        xmlns:local="clr-namespace:Visibility"
        Title="MainWindow"       
        Height="150" Width="225">

    <Window.DataContext>
        <local:MainWindowViewModel />
    </Window.DataContext>

    <Window.Resources>
        <BooleanToVisibilityConverter x:Key="BooleanToVisibilityConverter" />
    </Window.Resources>

    <Grid>
        <Button 
            Content="Button" 
            Visibility="{Binding Path=ButtonVisibility, Converter={StaticResource BooleanToVisibilityConverter} }"
		    HorizontalAlignment="Center"
            VerticalAlignment="Center"
		    Margin="10,10,0,0"
		    Width="75">
        </Button>
    </Grid>

</Window>

4. Run the example.

With the ButtonVisibility property set to return true the XAML button control is made visible when running the program as follows:

And when the ButtonVisibility property is set to false:

public class MainWindowViewModel
{
    public bool ButtonVisibility
    {
        get { return false; }
    }
}

.. the button becomes hidden as shown: