Cross-Platform Mobile Development using Visual Studio and Xamarin
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Cross-platform mobile development using Visual Studio and Xamarin allows building native mobile apps for iOS and Android using C# and sharing significant code across platforms. Xamarin uses the Mono framework to bring .NET to mobile, allowing developers to write C# code that compiles to native iOS and Android apps. This approach improves productivity over building each app natively and allows sharing of up to 70% of code for things like business logic, data access, and web service calls, while still delivering native performance and user experiences. Visual Studio integration enables building Xamarin apps using a familiar IDE.
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Cross-Platform Mobile Development using Visual Studio and Xamarin
- 1. Cross-Platform Mobile Development using Visual Studio and Xamarin
- 2. Shravan Kumar Kasagoni Senior Developer - RealPage Microsoft MVP – VSDT Microsoft User Group Hyderabad @techieshravan
- 7. Approaches for device development Native Hybrid Tool maturity Device optimized experience Updatability Portability across devices
- 9. Black Box CSS | HTML JavaScript | TypeScript
- 10. Native mobile apps are better… - Performance - Richness of UI
- 12. Using the platform’s native tools (Siloed approaches are long term problems) Xcode ADT Visual Studio End user experience Better productivity and global developer experience ✗ Building native apps multiple times when targeting multiple platforms! …very expensive, not sustainable… + + -
- 13. C# and Xamarin to the rescue!
- 14. How?
- 15. Mono Framework
- 16. What is Mono? • Open source implementation of the .NET platform created by Ximian (ECMA 334/335) • 2001: Created to bring Windows applications to Linux • 2003: Acquired by Novell with Ximian • Matured at Novell in research mode; now a world-class runtime.
- 17. Bringing .NET to Linux Windows Linux Microsoft .NET .NET Apps Mono/.NET Core .NET Apps
- 18. .NET on Android, iOS Linux Mono iOS Mono Touch Android Mono for Android iOS Xamarin.iOS Android Xamarin.Andriod
- 19. Xamarin • Founded in May 2011 • Xamarin has a perpetual license to all Mono IP: Copyrights, patents and trademarks • Focused on mobile app development
- 20. Bringing .NET to Android Android Kernel Mono Runtime .NET APIs Apps Android Bindings Dalvik Runtime/ART android.* java.*MCW ACW
- 21. Bringing .NET to iOS iOS Mono Runtime NO RUNTIMES ALLOWED
- 22. Bringing .NET to iOS iOS App .NET APIS iOS Bindings Application Code
- 24. Microsoft supports your choice Desktop apps Universal Windows apps Browser-based applications
- 25. Xamarin and Visual Studio
- 26. Black Box C# in Xamarin + Visual Studio iPhone native (C# and XIB) Android native (C# and AXML) Windows Store (C# and XAML) Native apps and cross-platform UI (C# and Xamarin.Forms) Cross-platform with C#
- 27. C# + XIB C# + AXML C# + XAML iPhone Android Windows
- 28. Xamarin.iOS does full ahead-of-time (AOT) compilation to produce an ARM binary suitable for Apple’s App Store Xamarin.Android takes advantage of just-in-time (JIT) compilation on the Android device Native cross-platform apps with Xamarin Native compilation, native performance
- 29. C# unique approach powered by .NET and Xamarin The best of both worlds (UX & TCO) Great native apps delivered to the user’s choice of device Development agility, with Visual Studio to move at mobile speed
- 30. Xamarin designer for Android apps Xamarin designer for iOS apps
- 34. Maximizing code reuse across platforms Views How to display information View models What information to display Flow of interaction Models Data objects Business logic Etc. Model View Model View Device-specific Portable codeReferences Databinds Implemented in PCL or shared project
- 35. Demo Xamarin + C# + Visual Studio
- 36. Sharing code
- 37. Sharing code One of the main reasons to use Xamarin is the possibility of sharing a significant portion of your code across all your supported platforms
- 38. Sharable Code Xamarin applications are native and therefore will always include some platform-specific code 30% 70% iOS 14% 86% Android 15% 86% Windows Phone Platform Specific Cross Platform
- 39. Where can I use shared code? Anytime you are writing code which does not depend on a specific platform feature, it is potentially sharable, particularly if it: • Talks to a web service • Parses a data format • Uses a database • Performs processing or logic Create shared classes + methods and then use them from your platform- specific code to maximize the shareable surface area
- 40. Where can I use shared code? Data Access (Database) • SQLite support available for iOS, Android and Windows • Can also store in the cloud – Azure Mobile Services, Amazon, Dropbox, etc. Web Services • Use HttpClient for REST services Xamarin.* Libraries • Xamarin.Social • Xamarin.Auth • Xamarin.Mobile Open-Source, Cross-Platform APIs available from Github.com/Xamarin
- 41. When is code not sharable? If the code you are writing depends on device or platform-specific APIs, or APIs not available in your project, then you will need to isolate it's use or provide some kind of abstraction to use it from your shared code • Access system information • Use files and folders on the device • Access personal information • Use external devices
- 42. Xamarin Component Store Can also get reusable components from the Xamarin Component Store which is accessible through the Components folder in each project
- 43. Available project types There are two project styles available for sharing code – which one you select has an impact on how and what kind of code is shared Shared Project Portable Class Library
- 46. Thank You
Editor's Notes
- Device optimized experience: access to any API, performance, full customization per device, use of native controls, etc.
- This preview adds new project templates and tools for you to target the Apache Cordova project within Visual Studio. It is built on top of the existing great HTML, CSS, and JavaScript tooling in Visual Studio, but it integrates it with Apache Cordova. So you have things like Intellisense support for the Cordova API, the ability to build for any targeted platform such as Android and directly from Visual Studio, and the ability to run and debug the app on a device emulator or a remote device. The cool thing about these tools is that you will naturally know how to use it if you are familiar with web development. It supports TypeScript, which is very handy for these applications that can get very complex. It also supports the most popular JavaScript frameworks that you are probably using already for your mobile web applications such as Angular, JQuery Mobile or Backbone. Now you have the option to choose the multi-device strategy that is better for you: Native development with .NET Hybrid development with HTML and CSS
- First is the silo approach. This is very common, where you see a company or developer creating an app multiple times in different languages with different tools. Expensive, multiple teams, takes more time. Biggest issue -> future maintenance in different platforms.
- Fully native apps written in C# Share on average 75% source code across platforms Even higher with xamarin.forms C# + .NET Runtime Native UI Native Performance
- AOT = http://www.mono-project.com/AOT
- If you are a Windows developer you will be used to these name spaces. These are the core .NET base libraries that we know and love. If you mix in Windows Phone and Windows Store development, you get new namespaces. Windows. And Microsoft. With platform specific APIs.
- Xamarin gives you the best of both worlds with full support for the .NET Framework (your System. Libraries). Then they create C# bindings for every API in iOS and Android. As you can see here there are a few, CoreGraphics, CoreMotion, etc. These are your platform-specific bits to take advantage of everything in iOS.
- Then they do the same thing for Android so here you get the Android specifics. Renderscript, NFC to do cool phone tapping of data transfer. And text to speech APIs to make your app shine.
- Xamarin 3 introduces two great new code sharing techniques for cross-platform apps: Shared Projects Shared Projects provide a simple, clean approach to code sharing for cross-platform application developers. Xamarin developers can now use Shared Projects to share code across iOS, Android, and Windows in either Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio. Portable Class Libraries Portable Class Libraries are libraries that are consumable across a diverse range of .NET platforms. Xamarin 3 can both produce and consume PCLs from both Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio. In our demo app we’re using a PCL to share code across all the different platforms, including Windows apps, iOS, and Android. Shared Projects between many different platforms/projects (more than two) might be a bit confusing because you need to have many different #if precompiler conditions, since the Shared Projects is nothing more than a link to a whole project.