What's a comprehensive list of parts of an ItemsControl? - xaml

Question

The UWP XAML ItemsControl is the basis for many complicated XAML classes, like ListView and GridView.
The documentation Item containers and templates describes 2 key parts of these controls:
Data template
Control template
These parts combine to create the final view:
Container controls (such as ListViewItem and GridViewItem) consist of two important parts that combine to create the final visuals shown for an item: the data template and the control template.
In practice, developers specify the data template by specifying a DataTemplate in ListView.ItemTemplate (or GridView.), and they can customize the control template by providing a Style (TargetType="ListViewItem") to ListView.ItemContainerStyle.
Developers can also customize the ListView.ItemsPanel (which is an ItemsStackPanel by default), and the default Template for the ListView.ItemContainerStyle contains a ListViewItemPresenter. The documentation for Item containers and templates mentions these, too.
That raises the question:
When I add a ListView (or GridView or any ItemsControl) to my code, what am I actually adding? What can I customize? How is my data displayed?
As far as I can determine, the ListView looks something like:
ListView
Renders its Template which somehow renders:
ItemsPanel
Renders its ItemsPanelTemplate which is:
ItemsStackPanel
Renders, for each item:
ListViewItem
Renders its Template, which is:
ListViewItemPresenter
Somehow renders:
ListView.ItemTemplate
But this is unclear to me.
Disclaimer: I work for Microsoft.

Answer 1

you can customize anything in xaml
under the hood, both ListView and GridView can be created by ItemsControl, but their default template have some customization built-in already.
if you want to understand when to use which, here is a page:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/design/controls-and-patterns/lists
your data will be set to the ItemsSource if using binding, for example
<ListView
ItemsSource="{Binding Source={StaticResource itemsViewSource}}"
>...
or you can set directly.
from your question, it sounds like you may not have understood the basis, so maybe reading this series will help you:
http://drwpf.com/blog/itemscontrol-a-to-z/
it's for wpf, but the fundamental is the same, you can apply it to UWP as well.