Styjun

I have a ListView in Xamarin forms which has a custom cell in it. The custom cell contains an Image control with a x:Name attribute. Now I tried to bind an activity indicator IsRunning Property to the Image IsLoading Property and Xamarin forms could not find the Image using the x:Name. I tried accessing from the backend too, same thing.

I added other elements in the Listview and their x:Name were not visible too.

NB: I can access x:Name of controls I put outside the ListView so it is looking like a listview issue.

<StackLayout>
 <ActivityIndicator x:Name="activity" Color="Purple" HeightRequest="50" WidthRequest="50" IsRunning="Binding Source=x:Reference Offerimg,Path=IsLoading"></ActivityIndicator>


 <ListView x:Name="OfferLV" HasUnevenRows="True" x:FieldModifier="Public" SeparatorVisibility="None" BackgroundColor="White">
 <ListView.ItemTemplate>
 <DataTemplate>
 <ViewCell >
 <StackLayout Padding="0,10,0,10">
 <Image x:Name="offerimg" HeightRequest="500" WidthRequest="100" Aspect="AspectFill"></Image>
 </StackLayout>
 </ViewCell>
 </DataTemplate>
 </ListView.ItemTemplate>
 </ListView>
</StackLayout>

There is a very nice library FFImageLoading that will help you do what you want, and has a built in IsLoading property to display an ActivityIndicator accordingly. You can also handles loading error and so ...

<ListView VerticalOptions="StartAndExpand" ItemsSource="Binding Items">
 <ListView.ItemTemplate>
 <DataTemplate>
 <ViewCell>
 <Grid>
 <ff:CachedImage x:Name="Image" Source="https://www.allibert-trekking.com/uploads/media/images/thumbnails/AMin3_10-photo-montagne-chine-lac.jpeg?v2" />
 <ActivityIndicator Color="OrangeRed" IsRunning="Binding IsLoading" IsVisible="Binding IsLoading" BindingContext="x:Reference Name=Image" />
 </Grid>
 </ViewCell>
 </DataTemplate>
 </ListView.ItemTemplate>
 </ListView>

I created a sample for this example here : https://github.com/vincentcastagna/ImageLoadingPlaceHolder

That's how things are expected to work in XAML technologies including Xamarin.Forms.

There is not just a single ViewCell, but there could be thousands of them and you can't access thousands different items with one name.

Recommended way is to use data binding. Frequently you can also access those items by casting the sender in events.