Book Image

Mobile Development with .NET - Second Edition

By : Can Bilgin
Book Image

Mobile Development with .NET - Second Edition

By: Can Bilgin

Overview of this book

Are you a .NET developer who wishes to develop mobile solutions without delving into the complexities of a mobile development platform? If so, this book is a perfect solution to help you build professional mobile apps without leaving the .NET ecosystem. Mobile Development with .NET will show you how to design, architect, and develop robust mobile applications for multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, and UWP using Xamarin, .NET Core, and Azure. With the help of real-world scenarios, you'll explore different phases of application development using Xamarin, from environment setup, design, and architecture to publishing. Throughout the book, you'll learn how to develop mobile apps using Xamarin and .NET Standard. You'll even be able to implement a web-based backend composed of microservices with .NET Core using various Azure services including, but not limited to, Azure Active Directory, Azure Functions. As you advance, you'll create data stores using popular database technologies such as Cosmos DB and data models such as the relational model and NoSQL. By the end of this mobile application development book, you'll be able to create cross-platform mobile applications that can be deployed as cloud-based PaaS and SaaS.

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Mobile Development with .NET - Second Edition
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Apr, 2021 | 572 pages
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Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Download the example code files
Conventions used
Get in touch
Reviews
1
Section 1: Understanding .NET
Section 1: Understanding .NET
Free Chapter
2
Chapter 1: Getting Started with .NET 5.0
Chapter 1: Getting Started with .NET 5.0
Technical Requirements
Exploring cross-platform development
Understanding .NET Core
Developing with .NET 5.0
Summary
3
Chapter 2: Defining Xamarin, Mono, and .NET Standard
Chapter 2: Defining Xamarin, Mono, and .NET Standard
Understanding Xamarin
Setting up Your Development Environment
Creating your First Xamarin Application
Using .NET with Xamarin
Xamarin.Forms
Extending the reach
Summary
4
Chapter 3: Developing with Universal Windows Platform
Chapter 3: Developing with Universal Windows Platform
Introducing Universal Windows Platform
Creating UWP applications
Understanding XAML Differences
Using .NET Standard and .NET Native with UWP
Working with Platform extensions
Summary
5
Section 2: Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms
Section 2: Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms
6
Chapter 4: Developing Mobile Applications with Xamarin
Chapter 4: Developing Mobile Applications with Xamarin
Technical Requirements
Choosing between Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms
Organizing Xamarin.Forms application projects
Selecting the presentation architecture
Useful architectural patterns
Summary
7
Chapter 5: UI Development with Xamarin
Chapter 5: UI Development with Xamarin
Technical Requirements
Application layout
Implementing navigation structure
Implementing Shell Navigation
Using Xamarin.Forms and native controls
Creating data-driven views
Collection Views
Summary
8
Chapter 6: Customizing Xamarin.Forms
Chapter 6: Customizing Xamarin.Forms
Technical Requirements
Xamarin.Forms development domains
Xamarin.Forms shared domains
Customizing native domains
Creating Custom Controls
Summary
9
Section 3: Azure Cloud Services
Section 3: Azure Cloud Services
10
Chapter 7: Azure Services for Mobile Applications
Chapter 7: Azure Services for Mobile Applications
An overview of Azure services
Data stores
Azure Serverless
Development services
Summary
11
Chapter 8: Creating a Datastore with Cosmos DB
Chapter 8: Creating a Datastore with Cosmos DB
Technical Requirements
The basics of Cosmos DB
Data access models
Modeling data
Cosmos DB in depth
Summary
12
Chapter 9: Creating Microservices Azure App Services
Chapter 9: Creating Microservices Azure App Services
Technical requirements
Choosing the right app model
Creating our first microservice
Integrating with Redis cache
Hosting the services
Securing the application
Summary
13
Chapter 10: Using .NET Core for Azure Serverless
Chapter 10: Using .NET Core for Azure Serverless
Understanding Azure Serverless
Developing Azure Functions
Developing a Logic App
Integration with Azure services
Summary
14
Section 4: Advanced Mobile Development
Section 4: Advanced Mobile Development
15
Chapter 11: Fluid Applications with Asynchronous Patterns
Chapter 11: Fluid Applications with Asynchronous Patterns
Utilizing tasks and awaitables
Asynchronous execution patterns
Native asynchronous execution
Summary
16
Chapter 12: Managing Application Data
Chapter 12: Managing Application Data
Improving HTTP performance with transient caching
Persistent relational data cache
Data access patterns
Summary
17
Chapter 13: Engaging Users with Notifications and the Graph API
Chapter 13: Engaging Users with Notifications and the Graph API
Understanding Native Notification Services
Azure Notification Hubs
Creating a notification service
The Graph API and Project Rome
Summary
18
Section 5: Application Life Cycle Management
Section 5: Application Life Cycle Management
19
Chapter 14: Azure DevOps and Visual Studio App Center
Chapter 14: Azure DevOps and Visual Studio App Center
Using Azure DevOps and Git
Creating Xamarin application packages
App Center for Xamarin
Distributing with App Center
App Center telemetry and diagnostics
Summary
20
Chapter 15: Application Telemetry with Application Insights
Chapter 15: Application Telemetry with Application Insights
Collecting insights for Xamarin applications
Collecting telemetry data for Azure Service
Analyzing data
Summary
21
Chapter 16: Automated Testing
Chapter 16: Automated Testing
Maintaining application integrity with tests
Maintaining cross-module integrity with integration tests
Automated UI tests
Summary
22
Chapter 17: Deploying Azure Modules
Chapter 17: Deploying Azure Modules
Creating an ARM template
ARM template concepts
Using Azure DevOps for ARM templates
Deploying .NET Core applications
Summary
23
Chapter 18: CI/CD with Azure DevOps
Chapter 18: CI/CD with Azure DevOps
Introducing CI/CD
CI/CD with GitFlow
The QA process
Creating and using release templates
Summary
Why subscribe?
24
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Understanding XAML Differences

Both Xamarin.Forms and UWP can utilize declarative UI pages with the EXtensible Application Markup Language (XAML). It was initially introduced as part of Windows Presentation Foundation and has been extensively used in .NET applications, starting with .NET 3.0.

While both development platforms offer similar UI elements, they use a slightly different set of controls and layouts, which might cause UI inconsistencies while you are creating cross-platform applications that target iOS/Android (with Xamarin.Forms) and UWP.

Let's take a look at the layout structures:

Figure 3.5 – UWP and Xamarin.Forms layouts

Similar to layouts, controls also exhibit slight variations. By looking at the controls that are used on these platforms, you can easily spot the subtle differences:

Figure 3.6 – UWP and Xamarin.Forms Controls

The differences between the two XAML implementations stem from the fact...

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