Building Your First Mobile App with C# NET and Xamarin

Update the using statements on any class that references the Pages. Currently, this should only be in the App class in App.xaml.cs, where MainPage is instantiated. Add a new folder named Views to the root of the TripLog project. Add a new folder named ViewModels to the root of the TripLog project.

Now that we have created a base ViewModel, we can start adding the actual ViewModels that will serve as the data context for each of our Pages. We will start by creating a ViewModel for MainPage. On the solution, open Resources → layout → Main.axml file. Switch from Design View and go to the Source file and type the following lines of code to build your app. If you liked this tutorial, read our book, Mastering Xamaring.Forms, to create an architecture rich mobile application with good design patterns and best practices using Xamarin.Forms. To summarize, we updated the app that we had created in this article; Create a basic travel app using Xamarin.Forms.

This is a nice and simple app that is ideal to use to get started. One of the projects in your solution will be called .Android. Nearly everyone these days has a mobile phone, and most of these are smartphones. Everyone downloads apps, from social media to games to fitness. Fill in the rest of the fields and click the OK button.

Xamarin Tutorial

” As you may guess from the name, a stack layout arranges UI components vertically. To learn more about different layout types in Xamarin.Forms, visit Layouts in Xamarin.Forms on docs.microsoft.com. The great thing with Xamarin.Forms is that you write the UI once and it is compiled to the native language for whatever platform you are deploying to, just like Xamarin.Native.

After our textview that we created, we will add a button as shown below. In the above code, we have created a new Android textview. Next, open the folder values and double-click Strings.xml to open it. Here, we are going to store information and values about the button created above.

Programming

In this tutorial, we will explain how you can use Xamarin to deliver native iOS, Android, and Windows Apps. The attributes on the components, which customize the appearance such as text color and font size, have also been removed. The first step of introducing MVVM into an app is to set up the structure by adding folders that will represent the core tenants of the pattern, such as Models, ViewModels, and Views. Traditionally, the Models and ViewModels live in a core library (usually, a portable class library or .NET standard library), whereas the Views live in a platform-specific library. Thanks to the power of the Xamarin.Forms toolkit and its abstraction of platform-specific UI APIs, the Views in a Xamarin.Forms app can also live in the core library. If you ever have written any native Android code in Kotlin or Java, this project will look very familiar.

• Depending on the platforms you are targeting, you will have up to 4 projects in your solution.
• All the programs in this tutorial have been developed using Visual C#.
• On the solution, open Resources → layout → Main.axml file.
• Xamarin is a software company based in San Francisco.
• If you do not have an Android Emulator, then follow the steps given in the next section to create one.
• It provides commercial software development tools that allow a user to develop applications for Android, iOS and Windows using C# language and the .NET framework.
• Open MainActivity.cs file and replace the existing code with the following lines of code.

In our case, we name it “helloWorld” and save it in the default location provided. Next, click the OK button for the new “helloXamarin” project to load. In MVVM, the term View is used to describe a screen. Xamarin.Forms uses the term View to describe controls, such as buttons or labels, and uses the term Page to describe a screen. It is important to note, however, that not everything that can be done regarding appearance using XAML tag properties can be done using CSS. To learn more about the different ways to use CSS and what can be customized, visit the docs.microsoft.com page on Styling Xamarin.Forms apps using CSS.

It is a thin wrapper around the native APIs and tooling, so anything you can do in Java/Kotlin for Android, or Objective-C/Swift for iOS, you can do in Xamarin using the C# goodness we know and love. As developers, a lot of you probably think about making an app for your phones. Whether it’s just for a laugh, or to solve an actual problem, our curious minds get us thinking. This tutorial has been developed for beginners to help them understand the basics of creating native Apps using Xamarin. If you do not have an Android Emulator, then follow the steps given in the next section to create one.

Additional Resources

As mentioned previously, it will look identical to the non-Xamarin native apps, so you will not know how it was made, and will have the time-saving benefits of a cross-platform UI. In this post you will get an introduction to how you can create mobile apps using C# and Visual Studio, taking advantage of the awesome Xamarin mobile tooling built into Visual Studio. Select a Location to store the project on your hard drive. Ensure that the platforms you want to target are selected and Shared Code is set to “Use .NET Standard” then click Next. On the left-hand side of the New Project window, under the Multiplatform category, click App, select Blank Forms App, ensuring that the drop-down box next to it is set to C#. In the Configure your new project window, enter «Counter» in the Project name box, select a directory in which to save the project in the Location box, and accept the proposed value in the Solution box.

Therefore, you should have a good understanding of code written in C# programming language. Build and then run it to display the created app in an Android Emulator. In most cases, Views and ViewModels have a one-to-one relationship. However, it is possible for a View to contain multiple ViewModels or for a ViewModel to be used by multiple Views .

However, Xamarin.Forms also supports using CSS to style your app. The UWP Project will also look as expected from native development, this post will only focus on Android and iOS. These steps assume you have followed the relevant installation guide above and have all the tools required to get started.

Customizing the appearance of your app

That is a huge advantage over other HTML-based mobile technologies as they often require time for someone to develop the component that compiles to the native equivalent. If you would like to see a full integration of Twilio APIs in a .NET mobile course Core application then checkout this free 5-part video series. It’s separate from this blog post tutorial but will give you a full run down of many APIs at once. All the programs in this tutorial have been developed using Visual C#.

Leave Place solution and project in the same directory unchecked. Where the two types of project differ is in the UI and how it is created. Either option still compiles down into the native components, but how you write it is different. There is even day 1 support so, as a new OS release or feature comes out, Xamarin will have a release available to support it.

In this section you will learn what the same code would look like if you used CSS instead of in-line properties on the tags themselves. You will want a way of displaying the current count and a button that makes the count increase. Rider will require either a subscription to the whole toolbox, if you use other JetBrains products such as intelliJ, or just a subscription to the one product. A few years ago the recommendation from Xamarin, at the time an independent company, was that if you wanted to do something graphics-intensive, for example, you were better off going with Xamarin.Native. However, with the evolution of products such as SkiaSharp, these limitations are shrinking every year—maybe even every month—and Xamarin.Forms becomes a viable option for more and more project ideas.

Unlike in a Xamarin.Native project, the layout folder doesn’t contain your UI and all your MainActivity.cs class does is call into the shared code App.xaml.cs class to find what code to execute when the application loads. Both share a common code base, either in C# or F#, which means business logic can be shared across platforms. The Main.xaml.cs class is where you will code your app, including the method called from Clicked attribute on the Button element in the layout.

The AppDelegate.cs file initializes the Xamarin.Forms library and calls into the Counter shared project to find the application to run, including the UI. If you selected iOS as a target operating system, you will also have a .iOS project in your solution. It follows the same structure as a native iOS project written in Objective-C or Swift. In this section, we will modify our project and create a button which will display text upon click.

Depending on the platforms you are targeting, you will have up to 4 projects in your solution. You will learn more about the important files in that folder when you start writing code later https://wizardsdev.com/ in this tutorial. The main difference is that Xamarin.Forms is both shared UI and shared business logic, so not everything you can do natively is possible here—or it requires more work.