Xamarin 4.x cross-platform application development develop powerful cross-platform applications with Xamarin

282 Pages·2016·11.034 MB·English

by  Peppers, Jonathan

Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform
Application Development
Third Edition

Develop powerful cross-platform applications with Xamarin

Jonathan Peppers

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

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

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First published: February 2014
Second edition: February 2015
Third edition: December 2016
Production reference: 1221216

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ISBN 978-1-78646-541-2
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Credits
Author Copy Editor

Jonathan Peppers Safis Editing
Reviewer Project Coordinator

Esteban Solano Granados Devanshi Doshi
Commissioning Editor Proofreader

Ashwin Nair Safis Editing
Acquisition Editor Indexer

Reshma Raman Tejal Daruwale Soni
Content Development Editor Graphics

Narendrakumar Tripathi Jason Monteiro
Technical Editor Production Coordinator

Anushree Arun Tendulkar Aparna Bhagat
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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Table of Contents
Preface
1
Chapter 1: Xamarin Setup
7
Understanding Xamarin 8
Installing Xcode 10
Installing Xamarin on Mac OS X 11
Setting up the Android emulator 12
Installing Xamarin on Windows 14
Connecting Visual Studio to a Mac for iOS development 16
Enrolling in the iOS developer program 17
Registering as a Google Play developer 19
Summary 22
Chapter 2: Hello, Platforms!
23
Building your first iOS application 24
Understanding Apple's MVC pattern 28
Using the iOS designer 29
Building your first Android application 35
Understanding Android activities 38
Xamarin's Android designer 42
Summary 46
Chapter 3: Code Sharing Between iOS and Android
47
Learning the MVVM design pattern 48
Comparing project organization strategies 51
Setting up a shared project 53
Working with portable class libraries 55
Using preprocessor statements 56
Simplifying dependency injection 58
Implementing Inversion of Control 60
Summary 63
Chapter 4: XamSnap - A Cross-Platform App
64
Starting our sample application concept 64
Developing our model layer 65
Writing a mock web service 67
Writing the ViewModel layer 73
Implementing our LoginViewModel class 74
Implementing our RegisterViewModel class 75
Implementing our FriendViewModel class 76
Implementing our MessageViewModel class 78
Writing unit tests 81
Setting up a new project for unit tests 81
Writing assertions 82
Summary 87
Chapter 5: XamSnap for iOS
88
Understanding the basics of an iOS app 88
Xamarin.iOS Build Options 91
Using UINavigationController 93
Implementing the login screen 94
Using segues for navigation 100
Setting up UITableView 102
Adding a friends list screen 105
Adding a list of messages 109
Composing messages 113
Summary 116
Chapter 6: XamSnap for Android
117
Introducing the Android Manifest 117
Setting up Material Design 121
Adding a login screen 124
Using ListView and BaseAdapter 128
Implementing the friends list 132
Composing messages 137
Summary 145
Chapter 7: Deploying and Testing on Devices
146
iOS provisioning 147
Android device settings 152
Understanding the linker 154
Understanding AOT compilation 156
Avoiding common memory pitfalls 158
Summary 162
Chapter 8: Contacts, Camera, and Location
163
Introducing Xamarin.Mobile 163
Accessing contacts 165
[ ii ]