ToastContentBuilder AdaptiveText wrapped in curly braces

[clemvdm]

When running the below code in PowerShell:

# CONTENT BUILDER
$ContentBuilder = [Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.Notifications.ToastContentBuilder]::new()

# TEXT
$null = $ContentBuilder.AddText("This is my text")

# ADAPTIVE TEXT
$AdaptiveText = [Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.Notifications.AdaptiveText]::new()
$AdaptiveText.Text = "This is my Adaptive Text"
$AdaptiveText.HintStyle = "base"

# ADAPTIVE TEXT ADDED TO ADAPTIVE GROUP
$Adaptivegroup = [Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.Notifications.Adaptivegroup]::new()
$Adaptivegroup.Children.Add($AdaptiveText)

# ADAPTIVE GROUP ADDED TO CONTENT BUILDER
$null = $ContentBuilder.AddVisualChild($Adaptivegroup)

# SHOW TOAST
$ContentBuilder.Show()

The code results in the AdaptiveText being wrapped in curly braces. See below image:

Any help in displaying the AdaptiveText without the curly braces would be greatly appreciated :)

[michael-hawker]

FYI @vaheeshta to help with this question.

[vaheeshta]

Hi @clemvdm, thank you for your question. You are missing one step after creating your Adaptive Text. You should be adding your Adaptive Text to an Adaptive Subgroup. Once you've done that, you can add that Adaptive Subgroup to the Adaptive Group. Let me know if that helps!

[clemvdm]

Hi @vaheeshta ... I had over simplified my example, but adding the Adaptive Text to an Adaptive Sub Group results in the same issue. See below:

Add-Type -Path .\lib\Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.Notifications.dll

# CONTENT BUILDER
$ContentBuilder = [Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.Notifications.ToastContentBuilder]::new()

# TEXT
$null = $ContentBuilder.AddText("This is my text")

# ADAPTIVE TEXT
$AdaptiveText = [Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.Notifications.AdaptiveText]::new()
$AdaptiveText.Text = "This is my Adaptive Text"
$AdaptiveText.HintStyle = "base"

# ADAPTIVE TEXT ADDED TO ADAPTIVE SUB GROUP
$AdaptiveSubgroup = [Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.Notifications.AdaptiveSubgroup]::new()
$AdaptiveSubgroup.Children.Add($AdaptiveText)

# ADAPTIVE SUB GROUP ADDED TO ADAPTIVE GROUP
$Adaptivegroup = [Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.Notifications.Adaptivegroup]::new()
$Adaptivegroup.Children.Add($AdaptiveSubgroup)

 # ADAPTIVE GROUP ADDED TO CONTENT BUILDER
$null = $ContentBuilder.AddVisualChild($Adaptivegroup)

# SHOW TOAST
$ContentBuilder.Show()

The result:

[vaheeshta]

Your code flow is correct, I double checked in C# and there are no extra brackets. Powershell looks to be the suspect in adding the extra brackets here. @andrewleader, do you have any idea what may be wrong?

[andrewleader]

Ahh, I think I know more about why it's broken...

The AdaptiveText Text property is actually a BindableString property link to source. This is because top-level text elements can actually be data-bound and updated dynamically just like the ProgressBar can be updated dynamically.

The BindableString class has an implicit type converter so that devs can typically write adaptiveText.Text = "This is my text", and that'll be treated as a literal.

I think PowerShell incorrectly initializes a new BindableString using the constructor that takes a binding name (PowerShell tries to be smart and auto-create the object using the constructor that takes the string). PowerShell essentially seems to be doing $AdaptiveText.Text = [Microsoft.Toolkit.Uwp.Notifications.BindableString]::new("This is my text"), which will generate a bindable string wrapped in brackets, where your text is actually supposed to be the bindable key name.

I think in PowerShell you're going to have to somehow directly invoke the implicit operator method on the BindableString, this one: public static implicit operator BindableString(string d). That one then assigns the raw value (a string literal) and won't treat this as a binded string. @clemvdm I'm not a PowerShell expert, do you have any clue whether you can directly access an implicit operator on a C# class? So you can ensure the implicit operator that accepts a string is invoked on the BindableString rather than the public constructor?

[clemvdm]

Thanks for the feedback @andrewleader . Make sense what you are saying. Unfortunately I am not familiar with anyway to call on the implicit conversion from PowerShell.

I am not well versed in C# so please ignore the stupidity if this question does not make sense. Could the implicit operator not be overridden using operator overloading?

[andrewleader]

I don't know enough about C# implicit operators to know the answer (nor know enough about how they then work with PowerShell).

You could possibly ask a question on the PowerShell GitHub or PowerShell forums? I unfortunately won't be able to spend much more time helping here, I no longer work on the Windows Notification APIs (I work on Windows Subsystem for Android now), but I think we ultimately need a PowerShell expert to be looped in (and I don't know one myself, but hopefully they have a GitHub or somewhere else you can find). I wish I could be more of help! Thank you!

[clemvdm]

Totally understand thanks. I have reached out to the creator of the BurntToast PowerShell module. Maybe he has run into this issue and has an active work around / fix. Will keep this updated with my findings.