Xamarin 4 By Example

Book description

Design, develop, and publish your own mobile apps for iOS and Android using C# and Xamarin Studio

About This Book

  • Explore the exciting features of Xamarin Studio while learning to develop your own applications
  • Develop a complete application from conceptualization through to publishing it on the app store
  • The book walks you through the basics of cross-platform development with Xamarin using examples and best practices and tips for cross platform solutions.

Who This Book Is For

If you want to develop your own applications and want to explore the features of Xamarin Studio, then this is the book for you. It is expected that you have a basic understanding of technologies in mobile development, but prior knowledge of Xamarin is not required.

What You Will Learn

  • Understand the software development lifecycle for mobile applications
  • Use Xamarin Studio and its wide range of features to write your programs in C#
  • Use different options to create multi-platform applications using Xamarin and develop a cross-platform extension method
  • Work with Xamarin forms and various UI controls
  • Integrate synchronous and asynchronous communication module within your app
  • Render images to work with Android and iOS
  • Link a third-party application to your solution

In Detail

The mobile app market is increasing exponentially every year. Xamarin Studio with its modern and powerful IDEs makes creating applications a lot easier by simplifying the development process. Xamarin will allow you and your team to create native applications by taking advantage of one of the most evolved programming language in the world: C#.

This book will provide you with the basic skills you need to start developing mobile apps using C# and Xamarin. By working through the examples in each chapter, you will gain hands-on experience of creating a complete app that is fully functional by all means. Finally, you will learn to publish the app you created on the app market. Each project in this book will take you one step closer to becoming a professional app developer.

Style and approach

The step-by-guide will walk you through the process of creating an application of with the help of small projects that will teach you everything you need to know to build a complete application of your own.

Table of contents

  1. Xamarin 4 By Example
    1. Xamarin 4 By Example
    2. Credits
    3. About the Authors
    4. About the Reviewers
    5. www.PacktPub.com
      1. eBooks, discount offers, and more
        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. Getting Started with Xamarin
      1. Take off
        1. From Mono to Xamarin
        2. From Xamarin to native
        3. Xamarin cross-platform
        4. What do we need to start?
      2. Xamarin Studio
        1. The editor
          1. The global search
          2. The key bindings
          3. Policies
          4. Code template
          5. Source analysis
          6. Regions and comments
      3. Mobile Development Software Development Lifecycle
        1. Idea
        2. Design
          1. User experience design
          2. User Interface design
        3. Development
        4. Testing
        5. Deployment
          1. Distributing through Apple Connect
          2. Distributing through Google Play
          3. Distributing through Windows Store
        6. Feedback
      4. Summary
    8. 2. Sharing Code between Platforms
      1. Shared Project
        1. Example an extension method to translate text
          1. Idea
          2. Design
          3. Development
      2. Portable Class Library
        1. A multiplatform PCL connectivity plugin
          1. Idea
          2. Development
      3. MVVM pattern a quick overview of theory
      4. MVVM pattern example – split the bill
        1. Idea
        2. Design
        3. Development
          1. The core portable application
      5. Summary
    9. 3. Exploring the UI Controls
      1. The user's point of view
      2. Xamarin.Forms
      3. Rendering Model
      4. The Application class
        1. The Properties dictionary
        2. The MainPage property
      5. Pages
        1. ContentPage
        2. MasterDetailPage
          1. Menu page
          2. Menu item
          3. Content pages
          4. MenuListData
          5. Menu List View
          6. Root page
        3. NavigationPage
          1. Push and Pop
        4. TabbedPage
        5. CarouselPage
      6. Layouts
        1. StackLayout
          1. LayoutOptions
        2. AbsoluteLayout
        3. RelativeLayout
        4. Grid
        5. ContentView
        6. ScrollView
        7. Frame
      7. Views
        1. ActivityIndicator
        2. BoxView
        3. Button
        4. DatePicker
        5. Editor
        6. Entry
        7. Image
        8. Label
        9. ListView
        10. OpenGLView
        11. Picker
        12. ProgressBar
        13. SearchBar
        14. Slider
        15. Stepper
        16. Switch
        17. TableView
        18. TimePicker
        19. WebView
      8. Cells
        1. Pop-ups
        2. Gestures
        3. Fonts
        4. Colors
      9. Summary
    10. 4. Data – the Monkeys Catalog
      1. Mobile architectural pattern
        1. Presentation, business, and data layers
      2. Inside the layers
      3. The Monkeys catalog
        1. Base folders
          1. Base entities
          2. Base data layer
            1. Create
            2. Read
            3. Update
            4. Delete
          3. Base business layer
        2. Core folder
          1. Core entities
          2. Core data layer
          3. Core business layer
        3. Presentation
        4. Summary
    11. 5. Cloud and Async Communication
      1. Communication
        1. Data, format, and channel
        2. Sync and async communication
      2. Example project - Xamarin Fast Food
        1. Service layer
        2. Presentation Layer
      3. Services
        1. Web Service Description Language
        2. RESTful APIs
          1. How to request data
          2. Parameters needed in the data request
          3. Structure of data in response
          4. Error messages to display
      4. Example project Weather
        1. Data model
        2. Service layer
        3. Presentation layer
      5. Ideas
      6. Summary
    12. 6. Custom Renderers
      1. Rendering model
        1. Custom renderers
        2. Rounded image example
      2. App linking example
      3. Summary
    13. 7. Monkey Puzzle Game – Processing Images
      1. Monkey Puzzle Game
        1. Starting up – the first prototype
        2. Loading images from the Web
        3. Taking pictures and loading an image from the gallery
      2. Summary
    14. 8. The People Around Me Application
      1. What is People Around Me doing?
        1. Installing Windows 10
        2. Downloading Windows 10
        3. Installing Windows 10 via BootCamp
        4. Installing Visual Studio 2015
        5. Installing Xamarin
      2. Creating the project
        1. Checking the Android SDK installations
        2. Check Android virtual devices installation
      3. Summary
    15. 9. Testing – Spot the bugs
      1. Debugging a Xamarin project
        1. Creating a sample project
        2. Setting a breakpoint
        3. Starting a debug session
        4. Usage of log panels
          1. Application output window
          2. Android device log
      2. Xamarin Profiler
        1. Launching the Profiler
      3. The Xamarin.UITest framework
        1. Creating a sample UITest project
      4. Summary
    16. 10. Publishing to the Market
      1. What is store?
      2. Publishing to the Apple App Store
        1. Apple Developer Portal steps
        2. Visual Studio steps
      3. Publishing to the Google Play Store
        1. Preparing Project to Compile
        2. Creating a package
        3. Publishing an application on the Google Play Store
      4. Publishing to the Windows Store
      5. Summary

Product information

  • Title: Xamarin 4 By Example
  • Author(s): Matteo Bortolu, Engin Polat
  • Release date: August 2016
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781785282904