Book Image

Mastering Cross-Platform Development with Xamarin

Book Image

Mastering Cross-Platform Development with Xamarin

Overview of this book

The main goal of this book is to equip you with the required know-how to successfully analyze, develop, and manage Xamarin cross-platform projects using the most efficient, robust, and scalable implementation patterns. This book starts with general topics such as memory management, asynchronous programming, local storage, and networking, and later moves onto platform-specific features. During this transition, you will learn about key tools to leverage the patterns described, as well as advanced implementation strategies and features. The book also presents User Interface design and implementation concepts on Android and iOS platforms from a Xamarin and cross-platform perspective, with the goal to create a consistent but native UI experience. Finally, we show you the toolset for application lifecycle management to help you prepare the development pipeline to manage and see cross-platform projects through to public or private release.

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Table of Contents (19 chapters)
Mastering Cross-Platform Development with Xamarin
Mastering Cross-Platform Development with Xamarin
Credits
Credits
About the Authors
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Developing with Xamarin
Developing with Xamarin
Cross-platform projects with Xamarin
Target platforms
Setting up the development environment
Emulator options
A typical Xamarin solution structure
Quality in cross-development
Summary
2
Memory Management
Memory Management
Application Component lifecycle
Garbage collection
Platform-specific concepts
Troubleshooting and diagnosis
Patterns and best practices
Summary
3
Asynchronous Programming
Asynchronous Programming
Multithreading on Xamarin
Asynchronous methods
Parallel execution
Patterns and best practices
Background tasks
Summary
4
Local Data Management
Local Data Management
Data in mobile applications
Application data
Local filesystem
SQLite
Patterns and best practices
Backup/Roaming
Summary
5
Networking
Networking
Connected apps
Web services
SignalR
Patterns and best practices
Platform-specific concepts
Cloud integration
Summary
6
Platform Extras
Platform Extras
Content sharing
Peripherals
Location data
Native libraries
Summary
7
View Elements
View Elements
Design philosophy
Design elements
User interaction
Summary
8
Xamarin.Forms
Xamarin.Forms
Under the hood
Components
Extending forms
Patterns and best practices
Summary
9
Reusable UI Patterns
Reusable UI Patterns
Visual assets
Localization
Architectural patterns
Summary
10
ALM – Developers and QA
ALM – Developers and QA
Development pipeline
Troubleshooting and diagnostics
Unit testing
UI testing
Summary
11
ALM – Project and Release Management
ALM – Project and Release Management
Source control
Continuous integration
Automated testing
Beta deployment
Live telemetry
Summary
12
ALM – App Stores and Publishing
ALM – App Stores and Publishing
Release packages
Distribution options
Line of Business apps
Summary
Index
Index

Summary

This chapter provided an overview of various network channels that can be used in Xamarin applications to create connected applications.

Web services are definitely on the essentials list for modern mobile applications because of the interoperability of the protocols in place for web services (both SOAP/XML and REST/JSON). Unfortunately, XML services are a little harder to integrate with Windows Phone 8.1 runtime (even though they are still supported by Windows Phone Silverlight runtime) because the Windows Communication Foundation client infrastructure is not included in Windows Phone runtime. However, the same RESTful service proxies can be used by applications on each Xamarin target platform and Windows Phone.

Cloud integration options such as mobile services and Azure Active Directory were discussed with demonstration samples. Each of these technologies provides additional connectivity and integration opportunities for Xamarin mobile apps. SignalR is another web technology that...

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