Book Image

Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition

By : Jonathan Peppers
Book Image

Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition

By: Jonathan Peppers

Overview of this book

Xamarin is a leading cross-platform application development tool used by top companies such as Coca-Cola, Honeywell, and Alaska Airlines to build apps. Version 4 features significant updates to the platform including the release of Xamarin.Forms 2.0 and improvements have been made to the iOS and Android designers. Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft so it is now a part of the Visual Studio family. This book will show you how to build applications for iOS, Android, and Windows. You will be walked through the process of creating an application that comes complete with a back-end web service and native features such as GPS location, camera, push notifications, and other core features. Additionally, you’ll learn how to use external libraries with Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms to create user interfaces. This book also provides instructions for Visual Studio and Windows. This edition has been updated with new screenshots and detailed steps to provide you with a holistic overview of the new features in Xamarin 4.

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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition
Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition
Credits
Credits
About the Author
About the Author
About the Reviewer
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Customer Feedback
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Xamarin Setup
Xamarin Setup
Understanding Xamarin
Installing Xcode
Installing Xamarin on Mac OS X
Setting up the Android emulator
Installing Xamarin on Windows
Connecting Visual Studio to a Mac for iOS development
Enrolling in the iOS developer program
Registering as a Google Play developer
Summary
2
Hello, Platforms!
Hello, Platforms!
Building your first iOS application
Understanding Apple's MVC pattern
Using the iOS designer
Building your first Android application
Understanding Android activities
Xamarin's Android designer
Summary
3
Code Sharing Between iOS and Android
Code Sharing Between iOS and Android
Learning the MVVM design pattern
Comparing project organization strategies
Setting up a shared project
Working with portable class libraries
Using preprocessor statements
Simplifying dependency injection
Implementing Inversion of Control
Summary
4
XamSnap - A Cross-Platform App
XamSnap - A Cross-Platform App
Starting our sample application concept
Developing our model layer
Writing a mock web service
Writing the ViewModel layer
Writing unit tests
Summary
5
XamSnap for iOS
XamSnap for iOS
Understanding the basics of an iOS app
Xamarin.iOS Build Options
Using UINavigationController
Implementing the login screen
Using segues for navigation
Setting up UITableView
Adding a friends list screen
Adding a list of messages
Composing messages
Summary
6
XamSnap for Android
XamSnap for Android
Introducing the Android Manifest
Setting up Material Design
Adding a login screen
Using ListView and BaseAdapter
Implementing the friends list
Composing messages
Summary
7
Deploying and Testing on Devices
Deploying and Testing on Devices
iOS provisioning
Android device settings
Understanding the linker
Understanding AOT compilation
Avoiding common memory pitfalls
Summary
8
Contacts, Camera, and Location
Contacts, Camera, and Location
Introducing Xamarin.Mobile
Accessing contacts
Looking up GPS location
Accessing the photo library and camera
Summary
9
Web Services with Push Notifications
Web Services with Push Notifications
Learning Windows Azure
Exploring Azure Functions
Using the Apple Push Notification service
Implementing Google Cloud Messaging
Summary
10
Third-Party Libraries
Third-Party Libraries
The Xamarin Component Store
Porting existing C# libraries
Objective-C bindings
Java bindings
Using XPath in Java bindings
Summary
11
Xamarin.Forms
Xamarin.Forms
Creating Hello World in Xamarin.Forms
Understanding the architecture behind Xamarin.Forms
Using XAML in Xamarin.Forms
Using data-binding and MVVM
Summary
12
App Store Submission
App Store Submission
Following the iOS App Store Review Guidelines
Submitting an app to the iOS App Store
Signing your Android applications
Submitting the app to Google Play
Tips for building a successful mobile app
Summary

Learning the MVVM design pattern

The Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) design pattern was originally invented for WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) applications using XAML for separating the UI from business logic and taking full advantage of data binding. Applications architected in this way have a distinct ViewModel layer that has no dependencies on its user interface. This architecture in itself is optimized for unit testing as well as cross-platform development. Since an application's ViewModel classes have no dependencies on the UI layer, you can easily swap an iOS user interface for an Android one and write tests against the ViewModel layer. The MVVM design pattern is also very similar to the MVC design pattern discussed in the previous chapters.

The MVVM design pattern includes the following:

  • Model: The model layer is the backend business logic driving the application and any business objects to go along with it. This can be anything from making web requests to a server to using a backend...

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