Overview

My latest post about Xamarin Visual Studio Templates beat the record of visits. That’s why, I have decided to explore Xamarin development. I have chosen to go with Xamarin Forms and Visual Studio.

The most important part is that this is FOR FREE!!!

If you haven’t been here before, I’m working on most ridiculous technology stack by using Microservices with ASP.NET Core on Ubuntu. In the meantime I have set up  a basic front-end build pipeline with gulp and tried Docker with CoreClr on Ubuntu.

Xamarin Forms

Xamarin Forms evolved and are trying to share as much code as possible. Until now Xamarin was offering writing one C# Cross Mobile backend code and adding native applications with C# code. Forms are offering an option to share UI code but using native controls.

From my perspective it’s much better. I’d rather write native application in Android/iOS then use C# for something that it wasn’t designed.

But sharing almost all code in my app… that’s a thing…

Code

You can find the code of this app on my GitHub Xamarin branch, but if it’s not there take a look on master.

Xamarin Forms and Visual Studio

Installation

That’s boring and takes a long time, but pretty straightforward if you have a good link: Setup And Install.

Project Template

I have decided to go with Portable Forms. If you are not aware about the difference between Portable and Shared, take a look on this post. This means that you should choose Cross Platform -> Blank App (Xamarin.Forms Shared).

In a result you will have:

• one shared project for all platforms
• one project per each platform with device specific files

Shared Code

As you can see, the key text is defined in Shared Library.

	public class App : Application
	{
		public App ()
		{
			// The root page of your application
			MainPage = new ContentPage {
				Content = new StackLayout {
					VerticalOptions = LayoutOptions.Center,
					Children = {
						new Label {
							XAlign = TextAlignment.Center,
							Text = "Welcome to Xamarin Forms!"
						}
					}
				}
			};
		}
	}

Summary of Xamarin and Visual Studio

Running this code is possible from Visual Studio directly. Unfortunately Apple is Apple and due to license restrictions, you are not able to run iPhone app without a Mac. However this may change according to latest announcements from Microsoft.