Xamarin 4.x Cross-Platform Application Development

Key Features

Write native cross-platform applications with Xamarin
Design user interfaces that can be shared across Android, iOS, and Windows Phone using Xamarin.Forms
This step-by-step practical guide will teach you various strategies for cross-platform development

Book Description

Xamarin is a leading cross-platform application development tool used by top companies such as Coca-Cola, Honeywell, and Alaska Airlines to build apps. In version 4, there are significant updates to the platform including the release of Xamarin.Forms 2.0, and improvements have been made to the iOS and Android designers. With Xamarin being acquired by Microsoft, it is now a part of Visual Studio family.

This book takes a step-by-step approach, teaching you how to build applications for iOS, Android, and Windows. We will walk you through a popular application, complete with a back-end web service and native features such as GPS location, camera, push notifications, and other core features. Additionally, you'll learn how to use external libraries with Xamarin and Xamarin.Forms to create user interfaces. We also provide instructions for Visual Studio and Windows. This edition has been updated with new screenshots and detailed steps to provide you with a holistic overview of the new features incorporated in Xamarin 4.

What you will learn

Understand Apple's MVC design pattern
Get to grips with the Android activity lifecycle
Share C# code across platforms and call native Objective-C or Java libraries from C#
Create a real web service back end in Windows Azure using SQL Azure as database storage
Set up third-party libraries such as NuGet and Objective Sharpie in many different ways, and port a desktop .NET library to Xamarin
Use Xamarin.Mobile for camera, contacts, and location