Xamarin Blueprints

Book description

Leverage the power of Xamarin to create stunning cross-platform and native apps

About This Book

  • Helps you get a clear practical understanding of creating professional-grade apps with Xamarin
  • Covers Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin Android, and Xamarin iOS
  • If you want to transform yourself from an amateur mobile developer into a professional app developer across multiple platforms, then this is the ideal book for you

Who This Book Is For

If you are a mobile developer looking to create interesting and fully featured apps for different platforms, then this book is the ideal solution for you. A basic knowledge of Xamarin and C# programming is assumed

What You Will Learn

  • Discover eight different ways to create your own Xamarin applications
  • Improve app performance by using SQLite for data-intensive applications
  • Set up a simple web service to feed JSON data into mobile applications
  • Store files locally with Xamarin.Forms using dependency services
  • Use Xamarin extension libraries to create effective applications with less coding

In Detail

Do you want to create powerful, efficient, and independent apps from scratch that will leverage the Xamarin framework and code with C#? Well, look no further; you've come to the right place!

This is a learn-as-you-build practical guide to building eight full-fledged applications using Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin Android, and Xamarin iOS.

Each chapter includes a project, takes you through the process of building applications (such as a gallery Application, a text-to-speech service app, a GPS locator app, and a stock market app), and will show you how to deploy the application's source code to a Google Cloud Source Repository. Other practical projects include a chat and a media-editing app, as well as other examples fit to adorn any developer's utility belt.

In the course of building applications, this book will teach you how to design and prototype professional-grade applications implementing performance and security considerations.

Style and approach

A project-based approach that will solve all your needs when it comes to creating native Android, iOS, and cross-platform apps efficiently and effectively.

Table of contents

  1. Xamarin Blueprints
    1. Xamarin Blueprints
    2. Credits
    3. About the Author
    4. About the Reviewer
    5. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Why subscribe?
    6. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Downloading the example code
        2. Errata
        3. Piracy
        4. Questions
    7. 1. Building a Gallery Application
      1. Create an iOS project
      2. Creating a UIViewController and UITableView
      3. Customizing a cell's appearance
      4. Creating an Android project
      5. Creating an XML interface and ListView
      6. Shared projects
      7. Custom row appearance
      8. Bitmap functions
      9. The ALAssetLibrary
      10. Adding the iOS photo screen
      11. Adding the Android photo screen
      12. Summary
    8. 2. Building a SpeechTalk Application
      1. Cross-platform development with Xamarin.Forms
        1. So how would this look in Xamarin.Forms?
      2. Setting up platform projects
        1. So what is happening here?
      3. Setting up the SpeechTalk.iOS project
      4. Setting up the SpeechTalk.Droid project
      5. Xamarin.Forms, Windows Phone, and Visual Studio
        1. What can we see here?
      6. Inversion of Control (IoC) with Xamarin.Forms
        1. So why should we use it?
        2. So how do we benefit from this?
      7. Autofac
      8. iOS text-to-speech implementation
      9. Bindings
      10. Android text-to-speech implementation
      11. Setting up IoC with Android
      12. WinPhone text-to-speech implementation
      13. IoC with Windows Phone
      14. Platform independent styling
      15. Summary
    9. 3. Building a GPS Locator Application
      1. Core location and GPS
        1. Project setup
        2. Navigation with Xamarin.Forms
        3. Why would we do this?
        4. Building the navigation control
        5. View model navigation
        6. Integrating Google Maps using Xamarin.Forms.Maps
        7. Reactive Extensions
        8. Core location with iOS and the CLLocationManager library
      2. Handling location updates
        1. Android and the LocationManager
        2. Creating an exit point
        3. Creating an API key for Android
        4. Creating our Windows project
        5. Core Location Services with Windows Phone
        6. The Application class
        7. Web services and data contracts
        8. What about data contracts?
        9. Creating another API key for geocoding
        10. Creating GeocodingWebServiceController
        11. Newtonsoft.Json and Microsoft HTTP client libraries
        12. ModernHttpClient and client message handlers
        13. Feeding JSON data into the IObservable framework
        14. More Reactive Extensions
        15. Resource (RESX) files
        16. Using GeocodingWebServiceController
        17. OnNavigatedTo and OnShow
        18. Pythagoras equirectangular projection
        19. How are we going to calculate the closest position?
      3. Summary
    10. 4. Building an Audio Player Application
      1. Solution setup
      2. Inversion of control with MVVMCross
      3. View-models with Xamarin native
      4. Creating the bindings
      5. NSLayoutContraints
      6. MVVMCross setup inside the PCL
      7. Setting up MVVMCross with iOS
      8. Setting up MVVMCross with Android
      9. The SoundHandler interface
      10. Implementing the iOS SoundHandler using the AVAudioPlayer framework
      11. The Mvx IoC container
      12. The audio player
      13. A cleaner code approach to NSLayout
      14. Creating AudioPlayerPageViewModel
      15. Implementing the Android SoundHandler using the MediaPlayer framework
      16. XML and Mvx bindings
      17. MvxActivities
      18. Summary
    11. 5. Building a Stocklist Application
      1. Understanding the backend
      2. Creating an ASP.Net Web API 2 project
      3. Building an API controller
      4. Setting up the mobile projects
      5. Building core mobile projects
      6. Improving app performance
      7. Creating a global App.xaml
      8. Theming with ControlTemplates
      9. Updating the MainPageViewModel
      10. Creating the Stocklist web service controller
      11. ListViews and ObservableCollections
      12. Value converters
      13. Adding a DataTemplate to the global resource dictionary
      14. Styles
      15. Further optimization with XAML
      16. Creating StockItemDetailsPage
      17. Custom renderers
      18. Adding styles for custom elements
      19. Creating StockItemDetailsPageViewModel
      20. Setting up the native platform projects
      21. Hosting the Web API project locally
      22. Summary
    12. 6. Building a Chat Application
      1. The Model-View-Presenter (MVP) pattern
        1. So why bother with this approach?
      2. Architecture
        1. How do we determine which layers our project needs?
      3. SignalR
      4. Starting with Open Web Interface for .NET (OWIN)
        1. Creating an authorization server using OWIN OAuth 2.0
        2. OAuthAuthorizationServerProvider
        3. Use OAuthBearerAuthentication
      5. Setting up the AuthenticationRepository
        1. Configuring the Web API
        2. Building the AccountController
        3. Configuring OAuth Authentication with our Web API
        4. Building the SignalR Hub
      6. Setting up mobile projects
        1. Creating the SignalRClient
        2. Building the WebApiAccess layer
        3. Application state
      7. Setting up the navigation service
        1. Building the iOS navigation service
        2. Building the Android navigation service
        3. Building the iOS interface
      8. Handling Hub proxy callbacks
      9. Implementing the LoginPresenter
      10. Creating the connection between Presenter and View
      11. Building the LoginActivity
      12. Implementing the ClientsListPresenter
      13. Creating ClientListViewController
      14. The TaskCompletionSource framework
      15. Creating the ClientsListActivity
      16. Overriding the OnBackPressed activity
      17. Building the ListAdapter
      18. Building the ChatPresenter
      19. Building the iOS ChatView
      20. Extending the UIColor framework
      21. Android TableLayouts
      22. Building the Android ChatActivity
      23. Running the server and clients
      24. Summary
    13. 7. Building a File Storage Application
      1. Project structure setup
      2. Building a data access layer using SQLite
      3. Building the ISQLiteStorage interface
      4. Adding additional threading techniques
        1. How do we solve this problem?
      5. Creating the AsyncSemaphore
      6. Creating the AsyncLock
      7. Implementing native setup requirements for SQLite
      8. Implementing the IoC container and modules
      9. Implementing cross-platform logging
      10. Implementing the SQLiteStorage class
      11. Introduction to C# 6.0 syntax
      12. Handling alerts in view-models
      13. Building the IMethods interface
      14. Building the ExtendedContentPage
        1. Why are we implementing two different techniques for showing alerts?
      15. Building a CarouselView using custom layouts
      16. Adding scroll control to the CarouselView
      17. Building a CustomRenderer for native gestures
      18. Building the user interface
      19. Using a SynchronizationContext
        1. How do we know this context is from the main UI thread?
      20. Building the EditFilePage
      21. Behaviours
      22. Challenge
      23. Building the Windows Phone version
      24. Summary
    14. 8. Building a Camera Application
      1. Solution setup
      2. Building the MainPageViewModel class
      3. Improving the INotifiedPropertyChanged implementation
      4. Creating the custom UI objects
      5. Building the FocusView
      6. Xamarin.Forms animations
      7. Xamarin.Forms compound animations
      8. Building the CameraView
      9. Building a control for the iOS camera
      10. Building the iOS CameraRenderer
      11. Integrating the Android Camera2 framework
      12. Building the CameraViewRenderer in Android
      13. Handling native touch events through the FocusView
      14. Using RX to handle events
      15. Building a VisualElementRenderer for iOS
      16. Building the CustomImageRenderers
      17. Building the UIImageEffects class
      18. Building the CustomImageRenderer for Android
      19. Triggers
        1. Easing.SinIn
        2. Easing.SinOut
      20. Platform effects
      21. Building the CameraPage
      22. Adding native orientation events
      23. Challenge
      24. Summary

Product information

  • Title: Xamarin Blueprints
  • Author(s): Michael Williams
  • Release date: September 2016
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781785887444