Xamarin Blueprints

By : Michael Williams

Xamarin Blueprints

By: Michael Williams

Overview of this book

Do you want to create powerful, efficient, and independent apps from scratch that will leverage the Xamarin framework and code with C#? Well, look no further; you’ve come to the right place! This is a learn-as-you-build practical guide to building eight full-fledged applications using Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin Android, and Xamarin iOS. Each chapter includes a project, takes you through the process of building applications (such as a gallery Application, a text-to-speech service app, a GPS locator app, and a stock market app), and will show you how to deploy the application’s source code to a Google Cloud Source Repository. Other practical projects include a chat and a media-editing app, as well as other examples fit to adorn any developer’s utility belt. In the course of building applications, this book will teach you how to design and prototype professional-grade applications implementing performance and security considerations.

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Free Chapter

1. Building a Gallery Application

Create an iOS project

Creating a UIViewController and UITableView

Customizing a cell's appearance

Creating an Android project

Creating an XML interface and ListView

Shared projects

Custom row appearance

Bitmap functions

The ALAssetLibrary

Adding the iOS photo screen

Adding the Android photo screen

Summary

2. Building a SpeechTalk Application

Cross-platform development with Xamarin.Forms

Setting up platform projects

Setting up the SpeechTalk.iOS project

Setting up the SpeechTalk.Droid project

Xamarin.Forms, Windows Phone, and Visual Studio

Inversion of Control (IoC) with Xamarin.Forms

Autofac

iOS text-to-speech implementation

Bindings

Android text-to-speech implementation

Setting up IoC with Android

WinPhone text-to-speech implementation

IoC with Windows Phone

Platform independent styling

Summary

3. Building a GPS Locator Application

Core location and GPS

Handling location updates

Summary

4. Building an Audio Player Application

Solution setup

Inversion of control with MVVMCross

View-models with Xamarin native

Creating the bindings

NSLayoutContraints

MVVMCross setup inside the PCL

Setting up MVVMCross with iOS

Setting up MVVMCross with Android

The SoundHandler interface

Implementing the iOS SoundHandler using the AVAudioPlayer framework

The Mvx IoC container

The audio player

A cleaner code approach to NSLayout

Creating AudioPlayerPageViewModel

Implementing the Android SoundHandler using the MediaPlayer framework

XML and Mvx bindings

MvxActivities

Summary

5. Building a Stocklist Application

Understanding the backend

Creating an ASP.Net Web API 2 project

Building an API controller

Setting up the mobile projects

Building core mobile projects

Improving app performance

Creating a global App.xaml

Theming with ControlTemplates

Updating the MainPageViewModel

Creating the Stocklist web service controller

ListViews and ObservableCollections

Value converters

Adding a DataTemplate to the global resource dictionary

Styles

Further optimization with XAML

Creating StockItemDetailsPage

Custom renderers

Adding styles for custom elements

Creating StockItemDetailsPageViewModel

Setting up the native platform projects

Hosting the Web API project locally

Summary

6. Building a Chat Application

The Model-View-Presenter (MVP) pattern

Architecture

SignalR

Starting with Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN)

Setting up the AuthenticationRepository

Setting up mobile projects

Setting up the navigation service

Handling Hub proxy callbacks

Implementing the LoginPresenter

Creating the connection between Presenter and View

Building the LoginActivity

Implementing the ClientsListPresenter

Creating ClientListViewController

The TaskCompletionSource framework

Creating the ClientsListActivity

Overriding the OnBackPressed activity

Building the ListAdapter

Building the ChatPresenter

Building the iOS ChatView

Extending the UIColor framework

Android TableLayouts

Building the Android ChatActivity

Running the server and clients

Summary

7. Building a File Storage Application

Project structure setup

Building a data access layer using SQLite

Building the ISQLiteStorage interface

Adding additional threading techniques

Creating the AsyncSemaphore

Creating the AsyncLock

Implementing native setup requirements for SQLite

Implementing the IoC container and modules

Implementing cross-platform logging

Implementing the SQLiteStorage class

Introduction to C# 6.0 syntax

Handling alerts in view-models

Building the IMethods interface

Building the ExtendedContentPage

Building a CarouselView using custom layouts

Adding scroll control to the CarouselView

Building a CustomRenderer for native gestures

Building the user interface

Using a SynchronizationContext

Building the EditFilePage

Behaviours

Challenge

Building the Windows Phone version

Summary

8. Building a Camera Application

Solution setup

Building the MainPageViewModel class

Improving the INotifiedPropertyChanged implementation

Creating the custom UI objects

Building the FocusView

Xamarin.Forms animations

Xamarin.Forms compound animations

Building the CameraView

Building a control for the iOS camera

Building the iOS CameraRenderer

Integrating the Android Camera2 framework

Building the CameraViewRenderer in Android

Handling native touch events through the FocusView

Using RX to handle events

Building a VisualElementRenderer for iOS

Building the CustomImageRenderers

Building the UIImageEffects class

Building the CustomImageRenderer for Android

Triggers

Platform effects

Building the CameraPage

Adding native orientation events

Challenge

Summary

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Chapter 1. Building a Gallery Application

This chapter will walkthrough native development with Xamarin by building an iOS and Android application that will read from your local gallery files, and display them in a UITableView and ListView. The following topics will be covered in this chapter:

Expected knowledge:

Creating iOS provision certificates
iOS development
Objective-C
Creating keystores
Android development
Java

In this chapter you will learn the following:

Creating an iOS project
Creating a UIViewController and UITableView
Customizing a cell's appearance
Creating an Android project
Creating an XML interface and ListView
Shared projects
Custom row appearance
Bitmap functions
The ALAssetLibrary
Adding the iOS photo screen
Adding the Android photo screen

Xamarin Blueprints

By : Michael Williams

Xamarin Blueprints

By: Michael Williams

Overview of this book

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Chapter 1. Building a Gallery Application