Table of Contents

Dock Architecture Overview

This document provides a high-level look at the major components that make up Dock. It explains how they cooperate so you can understand the design before reading the deep dive.

Major components

  • DockControl – Avalonia control that hosts the layout and forwards pointer input to the docking pipeline.
  • DockManager – Implements the algorithms that move, swap or split dockables during drag operations. It exposes a PreventSizeConflicts property that stops docking tools together when their fixed sizes clash. It also enforces docking group restrictions to control which dockables can be docked together.
  • DockService – Performs the actual move/split/swap operations on docks and dockables and calls into the factory to update view models.
  • DockControlState – Tracks pointer interactions and validates potential drop targets using DockManager.
  • Factories – Build and initialize dock view models. They expose commands for runtime operations such as adding or closing documents.
  • DockState – Captures document/tool content and templates that are not serialized with the layout so they can be restored after loading.
  • IDockSerializer – Loads and saves layouts to disk so user changes can be persisted across sessions.

Interaction overview

flowchart TD
    UI[DockControl]
    State[DockControlState]
    Manager[DockManager]
    Service[DockService]
    Factory[IFactory / FactoryBase]
    VM[Dock view models]
    Serializer[IDockSerializer]
    StateStore[DockState]

    UI --> State
    State --> Manager
    Manager --> Service
    Service --> Factory
    Factory --> VM
    UI --> VM
    Serializer <--> VM
    StateStore <--> VM
  1. DockControl displays the layout created by the factory.
  2. Pointer events are processed by DockControlState which consults DockManager to validate docking actions.
  3. DockManager delegates to DockService, which calls factory methods to update the view models.
  4. IDockSerializer loads or saves the layout model, while DockState captures non-serialized content and templates so they can be restored after loading.

Customising any of these pieces lets you extend Dock with application specific behavior. For an in-depth walkthrough see the deep dive.

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