Book Image

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

By : Peppers
Book Image

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

By: 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.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Using XAML in Xamarin.Forms

In addition to defining Xamarin.Forms controls from C# code, Xamarin has provided the tooling for developing your UI in Extensible Application Markup Language (XAML). XAML is a declarative language that is basically a set of XML elements that map to a certain control in the Xamarin.Forms framework. Using XAML is comparable to using HTML to define the UI on a webpage, with the exception that XAML in Xamarin.Forms is creating C# objects that represent a native UI.

To understand how XAML works in Xamarin.Forms, let's create a new page with different types of Xamarin.Forms controls on it. Return to your HelloForms project from earlier, and open the HelloFormsPage.xaml file. Add the following XAML code between the <ContentPage> tags:

<StackLayout Orientation="Vertical" Padding="10,20,10,10"> 
    <Label Text="My Label" XAlign="Center" /> 
    <Button Text="My Button" /> 
    <Entry Text...