Why do we use itemsource actually?

Question

I am new to .net and i studied on msdn that it "represents a control that can be used to present a collection of items." By this line what i understand is suppose if i use it for TabControl then it provides a control which will enable several TabItems (collection) to render on the given conatiner.

<controls:TabControl Grid.Row="0" BorderThickness="0" Background="White" 
                     ItemsSource="{Binding TabList, Mode=TwoWay, Converter={StaticResource TabConverter}}"

Could someone please correct (if i am wrong) with an example easy to understand showing why do we use it. What happen if we dont use it?

Answer 1

The purpose of the ItemsSource it so create a dynamic number of tabs depending on some data stored in a class (You need to set the DataContext of the Window though.

If you don't use ItemsSource, you could use separate TabItems to create a static number of tabs.

So it is this (showing a tab for each name in the list):

<TabControl ItemsSource="{Binding ListOfNames}}" />

Opposing to:

<TabControl>
  <TabItem Header="John">
  </TabItem>
  <TabItem Header="Jane">
  </TabItem>
  <TabItem Header="Dave">
  </TabItem>
</TabControl>