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)

Summary

In this chapter, we discovered the Xamarin.Mobile library and how it can accelerate common tasks in a cross-platform way. We retrieved contacts from the address book and set up GPS location updates over time. Lastly, we loaded photos from the camera and photo library.

After completing this chapter, you should have a complete grasp of the Xamarin.Mobile library and the common functionality it provides for cross-platform development. It gives clean, modern APIs that offer async/await functionality that can be accessed across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. Accessing contacts, GPS, and photos across platforms is very straightforward with Xamarin.Mobile.

In the next chapter, we'll create a real web service using Windows Azure to drive our XamSnap application. We will use a feature called Azure Functions and implement push notifications on iOS and Android.