Making an activity's display name readonly in the Workflow 4 designer

To make an activity's display name readonly, it isn't enough to use the ReadOnlyAttribute on the DisplayName. In order to do this, create a custom PropertyValueEditor that displays a string in a text block, then declare an editor attribute on the "DisplayName" property of your activity. The following code demonstrates how to create a read-only custom PropertyValueEditor.

 public class ReadOnlyStringEditor : PropertyValueEditor

{

    public ReadOnlyStringEditor()

    {

        FrameworkElementFactory factory = new FrameworkElementFactory(typeof(TextBlock));

        factory.SetBinding(TextBlock.TextProperty, new Binding("Value"));

        this.InlineEditorTemplate = new DataTemplate();

        this.InlineEditorTemplate.VisualTree = factory;

    }

}

 

The following code demonstrates how to assign the custom property editor. This should be done in the constructor for the designer.\

 // Add attribute onto MyCustomActivity.DisplayName

AttributeTableBuilder builder = new AttributeTableBuilder();

builder.AddCustomAttributes(typeof(Activity), "DisplayName", new EditorAttribute(typeof(ReadOnlyStringEditor), typeof(PropertyValueEditor)));

MetadataStore.AddAttributeTable(builder.CreateTable());

Finally, assign the display name in the custom activity's constructor.



 this.DisplayName = "Custom Sequence Activity";

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 21, 2015
  I set the AttributeTable and added the customAttribute in my class that implements IRegisterMetadata           var builder = new AttributeTableBuilder();            builder.AddCustomAttributes(typeof(Activity),               "DisplayName", new EditorAttribute(typeof(ReadOnlyStringEditor), typeof(PropertyValueEditor)));

      MyDesigner.RegisterMetadata(builder);

             MetadataStore.AddAttributeTable(builder.CreateTable());I can still edit the Designer by clicking on the label and typing text.  I also never get hit in the ReadOnlyStringEditor.  I don't want the entire designer to be readonly only the displayname.  Any ideas?
• Anonymous
  May 19, 2015
  @Troy Just want to let you know if you are still looking for a solution. You can set it read-only in workflow designer by setting the read-only property of DisplayName (TextBox) to true in the template from the overridden OnApplyTemplate() in the custom activity as below code snippet shown.        public override void OnApplyTemplate()        {            // Use a decompiler tool to get the TextBox name of DisplayName from System.Activities.Presentation.dll ->            // Resource -> System.Activities.Presentation.g.resources -> "system/activities/presentation/workflowelementdesignerdefaulttemplate.baml"            TextBox displayName = this.GetTemplateChild("DisplayNameBox_570C5205_7195_4d4e_953A_8E4B57EF7E7F") as TextBox;            displayName.IsReadOnly = true;            base.OnApplyTemplate();        } Best Regards, Erik Cai Visual Studio WCF and Workflow Tools team