Dock

Dock Events Guide

Dock exposes a large set of runtime events through FactoryBase so that applications can react to changes in the layout. The other guides only briefly mention these hooks. This document lists the most commonly used events and shows how to subscribe to them.

Each event uses a dedicated arguments type that exposes the affected dockable or window along with optional cancelation tokens. This makes it possible to intercept an operation before it completes.

Common events

FactoryBase publishes events via the IFactory interface. Each event passes an arguments object containing the affected dockable or window.

Event	Description
`ActiveDockableChanged`	Fired when the active dockable within a dock changes.
`FocusedDockableChanged`	Triggered when focus moves to another dockable.
`DockableAdded`	Raised after a dockable is inserted into a dock.
`DockableRemoved`	Raised after a dockable has been removed.
`DockableClosed`	Occurs when a dockable is closed via command or UI.
`DockableMoved`	Indicates a dockable was rearranged within its parent.
`DockablePinned` / `DockableUnpinned`	Signalled when a tool is pinned or unpinned.
`WindowOpened` / `WindowClosed`	Fired when a floating window is created or closed.

Other specialized events like WindowMoveDragBegin, WindowMoveDrag and WindowMoveDragEnd allow intercepting drag operations.

Subscribing to events

Create a factory instance and attach handlers before initializing the layout:

var factory = new DockFactory();

factory.ActiveDockableChanged += (_, args) =>
    Console.WriteLine($"Active dockable: {args.Dockable?.Title}");
factory.DockableAdded += (_, args) =>
    Console.WriteLine($"Added: {args.Dockable?.Title}");
factory.WindowOpened += (_, args) =>
    Console.WriteLine($"Window opened: {args.Window?.Title}");

var layout = factory.CreateLayout();
factory.InitLayout(layout);

Some events allow the operation to be cancelled by setting the Cancel property on the event args instance.

When to use events

Events are useful for:

Tracking which document or tool currently has focus.
Persisting window placement after the user moves a floating window.
Implementing custom logic when new documents are created at runtime.

Consult the samples for practical examples where events are wired to view models and commands.

For an overview of all guides see the documentation index.

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