Mastering Xamarin.Forms

Build rich, maintainable multi-platform native mobile apps with Xamarin.Forms

About This Book

• Build an effective mobile app architecture with the Xamarin.Forms toolkit


• Maximize the testability, flexibility, and overall quality of your Xamarin.Forms mobile app


• This step-by-step tutorial is packed with real-world scenarios and solutions to build professional grade mobile apps with Xamarin.Forms

Who This Book Is For

This book is intended for C# developers who are familiar with the Xamarin platform and the Xamarin.Forms toolkit. If you have already started working with Xamarin.Forms and want to take your app to the next level and make it more maintainable, testable, and flexible, then this book is for you.

Table of Contents

What You Will Learn

• Find out how, when, and why you should use architecture patterns and get best practices with Xamarin.Forms


• Implement the Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern and data-binding in Xamarin.Forms mobile apps


• Extend the Xamarin.Forms navigation API with a custom ViewModel-centric navigation service


• Leverage the inversion of control and dependency injection patterns in Xamarin.Forms mobile apps


• Work with online and offline data in Xamarin.Forms mobile apps


• Test both business logic and user interface code in Xamarin.Forms mobile apps


• Use platform-specific APIs to build rich custom user interfaces in Xamarin.Forms mobile apps


• Explore how to improve mobile app quality with analytics and crash reporting using Xamarin Insights

In Detail

Discover how to extend and build upon the components of the Xamarin.Forms toolkit to develop an effective, robust mobile app architecture. Starting with an app built with the basics of the Xamarin.Forms toolkit, we'll go step by step through several advanced topics to create a solution architecture rich with the benefits of good design patterns and best practices.

We'll start by introducing a core separation between the app's user interface and the app's business logic by applying the MVVM pattern and data binding.

Discover how to extend and build upon the components of the Xamarin.Forms toolkit to develop an effective, robust mobile app architecture. Starting with an app built with the basics of the Xamarin.Forms toolkit, we'll go step by step through several advanced topics to create a solution architecture rich with the benefits of good design patterns and best practices.

We'll start by introducing a core separation between the app's user interface and the app's business logic by applying the MVVM pattern and data binding.

Then we will focus on building out a layer of plugin-like services that handle platform-specific utilities such as navigation, geo-location, and the camera, as well as how to use these services with inversion of control and dependency injection. Next we'll connect the app to a live web-based API and set up offline synchronization. Then, we'll dive into testing the app-both the app logic through unit tests and the user interface using Xamarin's UITest framework. Finally, we'll integrate Xamarin Insights for monitoring usage and bugs to gain a proactive edge on app quality.

Ed Snider

Ed Snider is a senior software engineer, speaker, and Xamarin MVP based in the Washington DC/Northern Virginia area. He has a passion for mobile design and development and regularly speaks about Xamarin and Windows app development at local user groups and community events. Ed is also the founder and organizer of the DC and Northern Virginia Mobile .NET Developers Groups. Ed works at InfernoRed Technology, where his primary role is working with clients and partners to build awesome mobile solutions on the iOS, Android, and Windows platforms. He's been coding for over half of his life, starting out by working part time in high school updating the local newspaper's website and building web apps for small businesses in his hometown. For the first few years of his career as a software developer, Ed worked with Cold Fusion to build dynamic web applications and e-commerce solutions. He started working with the .NET framework when .NET 2.0 came out, building enterprise software with WinForms and ASP.NET, and eventually got into SharePoint solution architecture and development for large federal organizations. For the past several years, Ed has been focused on building mobile apps with .NET for Windows, iOS, and Android using Xamarin. Ed blogs at www.edsnider.net and can be found on Twitter at www.twitter.com/edsnider.