Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition

Table of Contents

Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewer

www.PacktPub.com

Why subscribe?

Customer Feedback

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Xamarin Setup

Understanding Xamarin

Installing Xcode

Installing Xamarin on Mac OS X

Setting up the Android emulator

Installing Xamarin on Windows

Connecting Visual Studio to a Mac for iOS development

Enrolling in the iOS developer program

Registering as a Google Play developer

Summary

2. Hello, Platforms!

Building your first iOS application

Understanding Apple's MVC pattern

Using the iOS designer

Building your first Android application

Understanding Android activities

Xamarin's Android designer

Summary

3. Code Sharing Between iOS and Android

Learning the MVVM design pattern

Comparing project organization strategies

Setting up a shared project

Working with portable class libraries

Using preprocessor statements

Simplifying dependency injection

Implementing Inversion of Control

Summary

4. XamSnap - A Cross-Platform App

Starting our sample application concept

Developing our model layer

Writing a mock web service

Writing the ViewModel layer

Implementing our LoginViewModel class

Implementing our RegisterViewModel class

Implementing our FriendViewModel class

Implementing our MessageViewModel class

Writing unit tests

Setting up a new project for unit tests

Writing assertions

Summary

5. XamSnap for iOS

Understanding the basics of an iOS app

Xamarin.iOS Build Options

Using UINavigationController

Implementing the login screen

Using segues for navigation

Setting up UITableView

Adding a friends list screen

Adding a list of messages

Composing messages

Summary

6. XamSnap for Android

Introducing the Android Manifest

Setting up Material Design

Adding a login screen

Using ListView and BaseAdapter

Implementing the friends list

Composing messages

Summary

7. Deploying and Testing on Devices

iOS provisioning

Android device settings

Understanding the linker

Understanding AOT compilation

Avoiding common memory pitfalls

Summary

8. Contacts, Camera, and Location

Introducing Xamarin.Mobile

Accessing contacts

Retrieving contacts on Android

Looking up GPS location

Implementing GPS location on Android

Accessing the photo library and camera

Accessing photos on Android

Summary

9. Web Services with Push Notifications

Learning Windows Azure

Setting up your Azure account

Exploring Azure Functions

Creating and calling Azure Functions

Using HttpClient in C#

Adding more Azure Functions

Using the Apple Push Notification service

Setting up your provision profile

Setting up a certificate for push notifications

Making client-side changes for push notifications

Sending push notifications from the server-side

Implementing Google Cloud Messaging

Summary

10. Third-Party Libraries

The Xamarin Component Store

Porting existing C# libraries

Objective-C bindings

Java bindings

Using XPath in Java bindings

Summary

11. Xamarin.Forms

Creating Hello World in Xamarin.Forms

Understanding the architecture behind Xamarin.Forms

Using XAML in Xamarin.Forms

Using data-binding and MVVM

Summary

12. App Store Submission

Following the iOS App Store Review Guidelines

Submitting an app to the iOS App Store

Creating a distribution provisioning profile

Adding your app to iTunes Connect

Making an iOS binary for the App Store

Signing your Android applications

Submitting the app to Google Play

Google Play developer program policies

Tips for building a successful mobile app

Summary

Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition

Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development - Third Edition

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: February 2014

Second edition: February 2015

Third edition: December 2016

Production reference: 1201216

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-78646-541-2

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Credits

About the Author

Jonathan Peppers is a Xamarin MVP and lead developer on popular apps and games at Hitcents such as the Hanx Writer (for Tom Hanks) and the Draw a Stickman franchise. Jon has been working with C# for over 10 years working on a wide range of projects at Hitcents. Jon began his career working Self-Checkout software written in WinForms and later migrated to WPF. Over his career, he has worked with many .NET-centric technologies such as ASP.Net WebForms, MVC, Windows Azure, WinRT/UWP, F#, and Unity3D.

In recent years, Hitcents has been heavily investing in mobile development with Xamarin, and has development over 50 mobile applications across multiple platforms.

I would like to thank my wife, Amy Kate, and my son, Levi, for giving me the free time to write this book. You are both my inspiration and why I do what I do.

About the Reviewer

Esteban Solano Granados is a senior software engineer, Microsoft and Xamarin MVP from Cartago, Costa Rica and he enjoys learning, talk, and help others to learn about software development for the web and mobile by using his knowledge of JavaScript and C# with Xamarin, Asp.Net, NodeJS and other technologies.

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Preface

Xamarin has built great products for developing iOS and Android applications in C#: Xamarin Studio, an addin for Visual Studio, Xamarin.iOS, and Xamarin.Android. Xamarin gives you direct access to the native APIs on each platform and the flexibility of sharing C# code.  Using Xamarin and C#, you get better productivity when compared to Java or Objective-C, and still retain great performance compared to an HTML or JavaScript solution.

 In this book, we will develop a real-world sample application to demonstrate what you can do with Xamarin technologies, and build on core platform concepts for iOS and Android. We will also cover advanced topics such as push notifications, retrieving contacts, using the camera, and GPS location. With Xamarin 3, a new framework was introduced called Xamarin.Forms. We will cover the basics of Xamarin.Forms and how you can apply it to cross-platform development. Finally, we will walkthrough what it takes to submit your application to the Apple App Store and Google Play.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Xamarin Setup, is a guide for installing the appropriate Xamarin software and native SDKs for doing cross-platform development. Directs Windows users on how to connect to a Mac on their local network for doing iOS development in Visual Studio.

Chapter 2, Hello, Platforms!, is a walkthrough of creating a simple calculator application on iOS and Android, which also covers some basic concepts on each platform.

Chapter 3, Code Sharing  between iOS and Android, is an introduction of code sharing techniques and project setup strategies that can be used with Xamarin.

Chapter 4, XamSnap - A Cross-Platform App, is an introduction to a sample application we will be building throughout the book. In this chapter we will write all the shared code for the application complete with unit tests.

Chapter 5, XamSnap for iOS, shows us how to implement the iOS user interface for XamSnap and cover various iOS development concepts.

Chapter6, XamSnap for Android, shows us how to implement the Android version of XamSnap and introduce Android-specific development concepts.

Chapter 7, Deploying and Testing on Devices, is a walkthrough the painful process of deploying your first application to a device. We also cover why it is important to always test your application on real devices.

Chapter 8, Contacts, Camera, and Location, introduces the library, Xamarin.Mobile, as a cross-platform way to access users’ contacts, camera, and GPS location and add these features to our XamSnap application.

Chapter 9, Web Services with Push Notifications, shows us how to implement a real backend web service for XamSnap using Windows Azure leveraging Azure Functions and Azure Notification Hubs.

Chapter 10, Third-Party Libraries, covers the various options of using third party libraries with Xamarin and how you can even leverage native Java and Objective-C libraries.

Chapter 11, Xamarin.Forms, helps us discover Xamarin's latest framework, Xamarin.Forms, and how you can leverage it to build cross-platform applications.

Chapter 12, App Store Submission, will walk us through the process of submitting your app to the Apple App Store and Google Play.

What you need for this book

For this book you will need a Mac computer running at least OS X 10.10. Apple requires iOS applications to be compiled on a Mac, so Xamarin has the same requirement. You can either use Xamarin Studio (best for Mac) or Visual Studio (best for Windows) as an IDE. Developers on Windows can work on iOS applications in Visual Studio by connecting to a Mac on their local network. Visit https://xamarin.com/download or https://visualstudio.com/download to download the appropriate software.

Who this book is for

This book is for developers that are already familiar with C# and want to learn mobile development with Xamarin. If you have worked in ASP.NET, WPF, WinRT, Windows Phone, or UWP, then you will be right at home using this book to develop native iOS and Android applications.

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Console.WriteLine(Dropkick!);

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Chapter 1. Xamarin Setup

If you are reading this book, you probably already have a deep love for C#, .NET, and tools like Microsoft Visual Studio. Mobile development with the native SDKs seems daunting when you think about the work of learning a new platform, a new IDE, new application models, and perhaps a programming language or two. Xamarin aims to delight .NET developers with the tools for developing native iOS, Android, and Mac applications in C#.

There are many advantages of choosing Xamarin to develop mobile applications instead of Java on Android and Objective-C/Swift on iOS. You can share code between both of these platforms and you can be more productive by taking advantage of the advanced language features of C# and the .NET base class libraries. Alternatively, you would have to write an entire application, twice, for both Android and iOS.

In comparison with other techniques for developing cross-platform applications with JavaScript and HTML, Xamarin has some distinct advantages. C# is generally more performant than JavaScript, and Xamarin gives developers direct access to the native APIs on each platform. This allows Xamarin applications to have a native look and perform in a manner similar to their Java or Objective-C counterparts. Xamarin's tooling works by compiling your C# into a native ARM executable that can be packaged as an iOS or Android application. It bundles a stripped-down version of the Mono runtime with your application that only includes the features of the base class libraries your app uses.

In this chapter, we'll set up everything you need to get started on developing with Xamarin. By the end of this chapter, we'll have all the proper SDKs and tools installed, and all the developer accounts needed for app-store submission.

In this chapter, we will cover:

An introduction to Xamarin tools and technology

Installing Xcode, Apple's IDE

Setting up all Xamarin tools and software

Connecting Visual Studio to a Mac

Setting up