Book Image

Creating Cross-Platform C# Applications with Uno Platform

By : Matt Lacey, Marcel Alexander Wagner
Book Image

Creating Cross-Platform C# Applications with Uno Platform

By: Matt Lacey, Marcel Alexander Wagner

Overview of this book

Developers are increasingly being asked to build native applications that run on multiple operating systems and in the browser. In the past, this would have meant learning new technologies and making multiple copies of an application. But the Uno Platform allows you to use tools, languages, and APIs you already know from building Windows apps to develop apps that can also run on other platforms. This book will help you to create customer-facing as well as line-of-business apps that can be used on the device, browser, or operating system of your choice. This practical guide enables developers to put their C# and XAML knowledge to work by writing cross-platform apps using the Uno Platform. Packed with tips and practical examples, this book will help you to build applications for common scenarios. You'll begin by learning about the Uno Platform through step-by-step explanations of essential concepts, before moving on to creating cross-platform apps for different lines of business. Throughout this book, you'll work with examples that will teach you how to combine your existing knowledge to manage common development environments and implement frequently needed functionality. By the end of this Uno development book, you will have learned how to write your own cross-platform apps with the Uno Platform and use additional tools and libraries to speed up your app development process.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting to Know Uno Platform
4
Section 2: Writing and Developing Uno Platform Apps
9
Section 3: Test, Deploy, and Contribute

Introducing the app

The app we'll build in this chapter is called Dashboard. It's an application that displays the current activity within the business divided by department. This isn't something that would be available to all staff, but to allow us to focus on the features and areas of interest in this chapter, we'll not concern ourselves with how access is controlled. The real version of this app would have many features, but we're going to only implement three:

  • Displaying current financial information
  • Displaying live operational information
  • Showing where the trains currently are in the network

As this application will be used by staff members in their offices, it will be available on desktop (via UWP) and in a web browser (with a WASM version).

Creating the app

We'll start by creating the solution for the app:

  1. In Visual Studio, create a new project with the Multi-Platform App (Uno Platform) template.
  2. Give the...