Binding to Controls

As well as binding to a control's DataContext you can also bind to other controls.

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Note that when you do this, the binding source is to the control itself not the control's DataContext. If you want to bind to the control's DataContext then you'll need to specify that in the binding path.

Binding to a named control

If you want to bind to a property on another named control, you can use the control name prefixed by a # character.

<TextBox Name="other">

<!-- Binds to the Text property of the "other" control -->
<TextBlock Text="{Binding #other.Text}"/>

This is the equivalent to the long-form binding that will be familiar to WPF and UWP users:

<TextBox Name="other">
<TextBlock Text="{Binding Text, ElementName=other}"/>

Avalonia supports both syntaxes but the short-form # syntax is less verbose.

Binding to an Ancestor

You can bind to the logical parent of the target using the $parent symbol:

<Border Tag="Hello World!">
  <TextBlock Text="{Binding $parent.Tag}"/>
</Border>

Or to an ancestor by adding an indexer to the $parent symbol:

<Border Tag="Hello World!">
  <Border>
    <TextBlock Text="{Binding $parent[1].Tag}"/>
  </Border>
</Border>

The indexer is 0-based so $parent[0] is equivalent to $parent.

You can also bind to an ancestor by type:

<Border Tag="Hello World!">
  <Decorator>
    <TextBlock Text="{Binding $parent[Border].Tag}"/>
  </Decorator>
</Border>

Finally, you can combine the indexer and the type:

<Border Tag="Hello World!">
  <Border>
    <Decorator>
    <TextBlock Text="{Binding $parent[Border;1].Tag}"/>
    </Decorator>
  </Border>
</Border>

If you need to include a XAML namespace in the ancestor type, you can do that using the : character as normal:

<local:MyControl Tag="Hello World!">
  <Decorator>
    <TextBlock Text="{Binding $parent[local:MyControl].Tag}"/>
  </Decorator>
</local:MyControl>

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Avalonia also supports WPF/UWP's RelativeSource syntax which does something similar, but is not the same. RelativeSource works on the visual tree whereas the syntax given here works on the logical tree.