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)

Comparing project organization strategies


You might be asking yourself at this point, how do I set up my solution in Xamarin Studio to handle shared code and also have platform-specific projects? Xamarin.iOS applications can only reference Xamarin.iOS class libraries; so, setting up a solution can be problematic. There are several strategies for setting up a cross-platform solution, each with its own advantages and disadvantages.

Options for cross-platform solutions are as follows:

  • File Linking: For this option, you would start with either a plain .NET 4.0 or .NET 4.5 class library containing all the shared code. You would then have a new project for each platform you want your app to run on. Each platform-specific project would have a subdirectory with all of the files linked in from the first class library. To set this up, add the existing files to the project, and select the Add a link to the file option. Any unit tests can run against the original class library. The advantages and disadvantages...