Chapter 1, Introduction to ArcGIS Runtime, introduces you to the world of native mapping apps, where you will learn about the ArcGIS Runtime SDK language options, the history of Esri's developer technologies, native versus web versus hybrid apps, types of mappings apps, ArcGIS Runtime architecture, system requirements, setting up your development environment, and finally, you'll build your first app using a code-behind file approach.

Chapter 2, The MVVM Pattern, takes the app you built in Chapter 1, Introduction to ArcGIS Runtime, and transforms it using a pattern called Model-View-ViewModel. With this pattern, you'll have an app that supports the notion of separation of concern, which makes your app more maintainable, blendable, and testable. The concepts you will learn in this chapter will be expanded on as you walk through the remaining chapters. At the same time, you will explore the ArcGIS Runtime SDK.

Chapter 3, Maps and Layers, introduces you to the MapView class and how to add all the different kinds of layers supported by ArcGIS Runtime. You will learn about projections, MapGrid, scale, overlays, location display for navigation, events, map interactions, map extent, the wide range of supported layers types (dynamic map service, tiled map service, feature services, and so on), the ArcGIS Runtime geodatabase, and so on.

Chapter 4, From 2D to 3D, will introduce you the exciting world of 3D by explaining the importance of 3D, how to navigate in 3D, how to add layers in 3D, adding vertical exaggeration using surface models, MVVM in 3D, and 3D content.

Chapter 5, Geometry and Symbology, will take you down to the fundamental constructs of layers by explaining all of the options you have to create geometry, and then how to symbolize the geometry in your layers. You will learn the difference between mutable and immutable geometry for the MapPoint, envelope, multipart, polyline, polygon, and multipoint geometry, and then explore the GeometryEngine class so that you can do vector operations, such as reprojecting and union. You'll also learn about converting units of measure and area. After geometry is covered, you will then learn about how to symbolize the geometry using simple symbols, renderers, and even military symbols.

Chapter 6, Displaying Information, teaches you how to handle mouse events with MVVM so that you can display information by interacting with the map. You will also learn how to make your maps even more useful by showing a legend, scale bar, label features, create overlays, and showing your current location using a GPS.

Chapter 7, Finding, Querying, and Identifying Features, will introduce you to tasks so that you can find objects in the map, conduct online and offline searching, and interactively discover information in a layer by just clicking on an object (identify).

Chapter 8, Geocoding and Routing, provides you with an understanding of geocoding, which is the process of turning a street address into coordinates. You will learn about online and offline geocoding, finding places using just their name, and then how to route between two or more locations.

Chapter 9, Editing Features, details the differences between online and offline editing, how to prepare data for either online or offline editing, and then how to add, update, and delete features. This chapter also discusses the concept of selection, and finally, committing and syncing edits.

Chapter 10, Spatial Analysis, will introduce you the spatial analysis using ArcGIS Runtime, and then discuss geoprocessing, which allows you to exploit the powerful tools from ArcGIS Desktop or Pro so that you can add powerful analytical capabilities to your app from either ArcGIS Server or locally using a geoprocessing package. You learn, by way of example, how to do line of sight analysis and generate drive-time polygons. Also, you'll learn about synchronous and asynchronous geoprocessing.

Chapter 11, Testing and Performance, will show you how to take the concepts you learned about in the previous chapters with regards to the API and MVVM by showing you how to unit test your app so that you know it works at the most fundamental level. You will also be shown the important of test-driven development using a sample app you developed in an earlier chapter. Lastly, you will take a deeper dive into optimizing your app from the server side if it uses on-premise data sources. You will then get a detailed explanation of how ArcGIS Runtime's high-performance rendering engine works.

Chapter 12, Configuring, Licensing, and Deploying, will finally explain what you will need to consider when configuring your app so that users can make the app look and behave how they need it to, and then discuss what steps you need to take to license your app properly, and finally, the steps required to deploy your app to your users.

To work through the sample apps in this book, you will need a reasonably good laptop or desktop computer that meets these minimum hardware/OS/.NET requirements:

This book is for you. It will take your through a journey of how to use the API and provide you with enough details so that you can apply these concepts to the other supported languages. However, this book will focus on the .NET version of the SDK because it offers all of the capabilities due to the fact that it runs on a Windows desktop or laptop computer. This book will focus on C# because it is quite popular with the .NET developers and because many long term Esri users have a great deal of experience with previous technologies, such as ArcGIS Desktop and Engine.

This doesn't mean you will only understand the material if you're familiar with Esri's technology. In fact, just the opposite is true. If you're new to Esri technology, you will be introduced to the concepts and then shown where to go to learn more about Esri's platform.

Most of the content was written for new to intermediate developers. However, there are a few cases where more advanced material is presented. This is especially the case if you're new to 3D in Chapter 4, From 2D to 3D, or unit testing and performance testing in Chapter 11, Testing and Performance. When it comes to .NET, you should have a basic understanding of C# and, in particular, of the task parallel library and asynchronous programming in general. You should also understand the basics of Windows Presentation Foundation, with a special emphasis on binding. All the other material will be explained so that you can build a complete native app.

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

A block of code is set as follows:

// create a graphics layer and give it an ID
var graphicsLayer = new Esri.ArcGISRuntime.Layers.GraphicsLayer();
graphicsLayer.ID = "MyGraphicsLayer";

// add the graphics layer to the map
MyMapView.Map.Layers.Add(graphicsLayer);

A block of XAML code will appear like this:

<esri:GroupLayer DisplayName="Basemap Group">
    <esri:ArcGISTiledMapServiceLayer 
        DisplayName="Imagery" IsVisible="False"
            ServiceUri="http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Imagery/MapServer" />
    <esri:ArcGISTiledMapServiceLayer DisplayName="Street"
        ServiceUri="http://services.arcgisonline.com/ArcGIS/rest/services/World_Street_Map/MapServer" />
</esri:GroupLayer>

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

USE MyDatabase;
GO
SELECT Name, ProductNumber, ListPrice AS Price
FROM Production.Product 
WHERE ProductLine = 'R' 
AND DaysToManufacture < 4
ORDER BY Name ASC;
GO

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Clicking the Next button moves you to the next screen."

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