Xamarin Mobile Application Development: Cross-Platform C# and Xamarin.Forms Fundamentals

Xamarin Mobile Application Development is a hands-on Xamarin.Forms primer and a cross-platform reference for building native Android, iOS, and Windows Phone apps using C# and .NET. This book explains how to use Xamarin.Forms, Xamarin.Android, and Xamarin.iOS to build business apps for your customers and consumer apps for Google Play and the iTunes App Store.

Learn how to leverage Xamarin.Forms for cross-platform development using the most common UI pages, layouts, views, controls, and design patterns. Combine these with platform-specific UI to craft a visually stunning and highly interactive mobile user experience.

Use Xamarin.Forms to data bind your UI to both data models and to view models for a Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) implementation. Use this book to answer the important question: Is Xamarin.Forms right for my project?

Platform-specific UI is a key concept in cross-platform development, and Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS are the foundation of the Xamarin platform. Xamarin Mobile Application Development will cover how to build an Android app using Xamarin.Android and an iOS app using Xamarin.iOS while sharing a core code library.

SQLite is the database-of-choice for many Xamarin developers. This book will explain local data access techniques using SQLite.NET and ADO.NET. Build a mobile data access layer (DAL) using SQLite and weigh your options for web services and enterprise cloud data solutions.

This book will show how organize your Xamarin code into a professional-grade application architecture. Explore solution-building techniques from starter-to-enterprise to help you decouple your functional layers, manage your platform-specific code, and share your cross-platform classes for code reuse, testability, and maintainability.

Also included are 250+ screenshots on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone and 200+ C# code examples with downloadable C# and XAML versions available from Apress.com.

This comprehensive recipe and reference book addresses one of the most important and vexing problems in the software industry today: How do we effectively design and develop cross-platform mobile applications?

What you’ll learn

• How to build world-class mobile apps for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone using C#
• How to organize your Xamarin code into a professional-grade application architecture
• The latest Xamarin techniques for cross-platform UI using Xamarin.Forms
• When and how to use platform-specific UI
• Data binding, local data access, enterprise cloud data solutions, and building a data access layer for mobile apps
• Cross-platform architecture to maximize portability and code reuse

About the Author

Dan Hermes is a software consultant and founder of Lexicon Systems, an award-winning Xamarin and .NET consulting firm. His clients include dozens of software-building organizations, such as Fidelity Investments, EDS, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, and Computerworld magazine. He speaks at conferences and teaches Xamarin, C#, and mobile development at developer user groups, colleges, and corporate training facilities. He and his company build .NET, iOS, and Android applications in sectors sfuch as biotech, finance, healthcare, retail, transportation, advertising, and sports; for blue chips and startups; and especially for software companies. Dan conducts Xamarin code reviews, delivers Xamarin workshops, and he and his team build acclaimed Xamarin apps.

Dan is a contemporary Renaissance Man who is also active in the arts. His music compositions have aired on National Public Radio (NPR). He has taught his music curriculum at the Boston Conservatory. His digital fine art exhibits internationally, resides in cataloged private collections, and has been cited by Forbes and Reuters. He has written art reviews published by Media-N and MIT Press and he served as a founding director of Art Technology New England (ATNE).