Why does the Application class (App) have both xaml and code behind files?

Question

In WPF applications all the views are inherited from System.Windows.Window and have an associated xaml and codebehind file. That seems logical.

However I'm confused that why does the App file, inherited from System.Windows.Application, have a xaml file? Although it is an application and not a view (It is not visible)? I know that this file is usually used to define application resources, etc, and xaml provides an efficient way of defining them. But that can also be done programatically. Then what benefit did the designers of wpf achieve by having both the xaml and code behind files for "App"? Wouldn't one of them have been enough?

Answer 1

However I'm confused that why does the App file, inherited from System.Windows.Application, have a xaml file? Although it is an application and not a view (It is not visible)?

Remember that XAML is not a UI language, but a general declarative language. While it's true that it's mostly used to represent UI for WPF or SilverLigth, it's also used to declare graph of objects in other non-UI technology.

The first example that comes into my mind is the Workflow (the XOML is a derivate of the XAML), SharePoint also use XAML in some hidden parts, and I've seen in a customer project with use XAML as a meta-language for generating web-apps (and yes, it actually outputs HTML).

Then, to answer to your question, the application have both files (and it is not actually a requirement) because you can :

• declare some objects (in the xaml)
• override the behavior of the application (by overriding appropriate methods)