Change background color for selected ListBox item

Question

This is my XAML so far.

<ScrollViewer Grid.Column="1" Grid.RowSpan="2">

    <ListBox   Background="Black" ItemsSource="{Binding Path=ActiveLog}" >
        <ListBox.ItemTemplate>
            <DataTemplate>
                <Grid Background="Black">
                    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
                        <ColumnDefinition Width="200"></ColumnDefinition>
                        <ColumnDefinition Width="*"></ColumnDefinition>
                    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>
                    <Grid.RowDefinitions>
                        <RowDefinition></RowDefinition>
                        <RowDefinition></RowDefinition>
                    </Grid.RowDefinitions>
                    <TextBlock Grid.Column="0" Grid.Row="0" Foreground="White">
                        <TextBlock >Date:</TextBlock>
                        <TextBlock  Text="{Binding Path=LogDate}"/>
                    </TextBlock>
                    <TextBlock Grid.Column="1" Grid.Row="0" Foreground="White">
                        <TextBlock >Severity:</TextBlock>
                        <TextBlock  Text="{Binding Path=Severity}"/>
                    </TextBlock>
                    <TextBlock Grid.Column="0" Grid.ColumnSpan="2" Grid.Row="1" Foreground="LightGray" Text="{Binding Path=Message}"></TextBlock>
                </Grid>
            </DataTemplate>
        </ListBox.ItemTemplate>
        <ListBox.Template>
            <ControlTemplate>
                <StackPanel Background="Black" IsItemsHost="True" >
                </StackPanel>
            </ControlTemplate>
        </ListBox.Template>

    </ListBox>
</ScrollViewer>

The only problem is that the selected item has a blue box to the right. I assume there is a way to change the selection color, but I can't find it.

Answer 1

You need to use ListBox.ItemContainerStyle.

ListBox.ItemTemplate specifies how the content of an item should be displayed. But WPF still wraps each item in a ListBoxItem control, which by default gets its Background set to the system highlight colour if it is selected. You can't stop WPF creating the ListBoxItem controls, but you can style them -- in your case, to set the Background to always be Transparent or Black or whatever -- and to do so, you use ItemContainerStyle.

juFo's answer shows one possible implementation, by "hijacking" the system background brush resource within the context of the item style; another, perhaps more idiomatic technique is to use a Setter for the Background property.