FontIcons with glyph name instead of code

Hello, is there any option to write the name of the glyph instead of the code? e.g.

<ui:FontIcon Glyph="&#xE70F;" />

<ui:FontIcon Glyph="Edit" />

[ShankarBUS]

(I’m not sure) UWP has this same behaviour, see FontIcon.Glyph. (You may know) You’ll need to use SymbolIcon, it has a Symbol property which may suit your need (but it is limited)

[ShankarBUS]

Hey @daniel-rck, I’ve kinda found the solution. Basically you can Extend the FontIcon control to suit your need like this ⬇️

using ModernWpf.Controls;
using System;
using System.Reflection;
using System.Windows;
using System.Windows.Controls;

public class FontIconEx : FontIcon
{
    static FontIconEx()
    {
        GlyphProperty.OverrideMetadata(typeof(FontIconEx), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(string.Empty, OnGlyphChanged));
    }

    public FontIconEx()
    {
        Loaded += FontIconEx_Loaded;
    }

    private static void OnGlyphChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        var fontIconEx = (FontIconEx)d;
        if (fontIconEx._textBlock2 != null)
        {
            fontIconEx._textBlock2.Text = GetGlyph((string)e.NewValue);
        }
    }

    private TextBlock _textBlock2;

    private void FontIconEx_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
    {
        if (_textBlock2 == null)
        {
            _textBlock2 = (TextBlock)typeof(FontIcon).GetField("_textBlock", BindingFlags.NonPublic | BindingFlags.Instance).GetValue(this);
        }

        _textBlock2.Text = GetGlyph(Glyph);
    }

    private static string GetGlyph(string value)
    {
        if (Enum.TryParse(value, true, out Symbol symbol))
        {
            return ConvertToString(symbol);
        }
        else
        {
            return value;
        }
    }

    private static string ConvertToString(Symbol symbol)
    {
        return char.ConvertFromUtf32((int)symbol).ToString();
    }
}

This FontIconEx control will parse and display every Symbol like the SymbolIcon control and also display Glyph Codes like the FontIcon control.

Thus you can do both

(You may already know) Note: If you enter text which are neither Symbol names nor Glyph Codes those text will appear as boxes

<local:FontIconEx Glyph="&#xE70F;" />

<local:FontIconEx Glyph="Edit" />

---

If the existing Symbols are not enough for you, you can create a new enum called SymbolEx with additional glyphs having custom names. Like this ⬇️

public enum SymbolEx
{
    // Copy paste the member form Symbol enum here
    Airplane = 59145,
    Book = 59190,
    HardDrive = 60834,
    // And other custom glyphs goes down here
}

and change Symbol to SymbolEx in the GetGlyph and ConvertToString methods inside the FontIconEx class.

Edit : Wait a minute, this doesn’t work when used outside the ModernWpf project.

I created this code inside ModernWpf project and when I tried to do this in another project this code doesn’t work.

I can’t even create a custom IconElement derivative, it says 'IconElement.IconElement()' is inaccessible due to its protection level

Is this intentional @Kinnara? The code now works 👍