I love writing apps for Windows and Windows Phone. But the rest of the world doesn’t share that love with me. You can write the coolest mobile app in the world, but unless it runs on iOS and Android, few people will care. Since 2011, has offered a compelling solution to developers who write mobile apps but lack the time or wherewithal to port them to all the popular mobile operating systems. With a heritage rooted in Mono, MonoTouch, and Mono for Android, Xamarin allows developers to write mobile apps in C# and compile them into native apps for iOS, Android, Windows Phone, and other popular platforms. Xamarin apps utilize APIs that derive from Microsoft.NET APIs, but also enjoy the ability to invoke native platform APIs when the need arises. A typical Xamarin app consists of per-platform UIs backed by a shared code base written in C# and compiled into a Portable Class Library (PCL).
In Visual Studio for Mac it's set via preferences in Source Code > Code Formatting > C# source code and disabling the checkbox for Convert tabs to spaces. Lines should be limited to a max of 120 characters (or as close as possible within reason). Right now, Xamarin.Forms template doesn’t have a Cocoa App initially. So, what you would do is to start Visual Studio for Mac or Xamarin Studio and open your existing Xamarin.Forms solution. Then, add a project into the solution by right-clicking the solution and selecting Add > Add New Existing Project.
Developers who are familiar with Microsoft.NET find themselves immediately at home in Xamarin because they’re largely insulated from the underlying operating system’s native APIs. Much of the learning curve comes in learning how to build UIs using idioms specific to each platform. In 2014, Xamarin introduced (hereafter referred to as “Xamarin Forms”), which allow UIs to be shared across platforms, too. Developers who have written for WPF, Silverlight, Windows, or Windows Phone have a leg up on the competition because Xamarin Forms rely on XAML. In Xamarin Forms, you can use XAML to define a UI, and that UI will work on iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. That XAML can be declarative – angle brackets and element declarations – or it can be imperative, with elements instantiated programmatically and wired together to form visual trees. Under the hood, the XAML elements you instantiate or declare render native UI widgets.
It may be an element in XAML, but it’s a native UITextView in iOS, an EditText control in Android, and a TextBox control in Windows Phone. This is the first in a series of posts I have planned to introduce developers – especially developers versed in Microsoft XAML – to Xamarin Forms. The sample code presented here uses Xamarin Forms 1.3 and was built using preview versions of Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2015. In order to build it and run it yourself, you’ll need to download and install.
And in order to build for iOS and test in an iOS simulator, you’ll need a Mac or MacBook with the Xamarin.iOS tools installed. You’ll also need to configure it to act as a build server for Visual Studio.
For more information on compiling and running iOS apps from Visual Studio, refer to on the Xamarin Web site. Xamarin Forms RPN Calculator When I set out to learn a new platform, I often begin by writing a Reverse Polish Notation (RPN) calculator – which, coincidentally, is the only kind of calculator I can use. (IMHO, a calculator with an equals button isn’t really a calculator; it’s a poor imitation of one. But I digress.) Here’s my Xamarin Forms RPN calculator on Windows Phone, Android, and iOS, in that order: Note that there isn’t a single line of platform-specific code or XAML in this app.
(I did use Xamarin Forms’ awesome OnPlatform feature to tweak the UI for individual platforms, but more about that in a moment.) One XAML file – CalculatorPage.xaml, plus the code-behind file CalculatorPage.xaml.cs – serves all three platforms. The app uses the popular Model-View-ViewModel (MVVM) pattern, so CalculatorPage.xaml contains little more than the XAML definition of the app’s one and only view. The logic that drives the view resides in a view-model class named CalculatorViewModel, which in turn relies on a series of helper classes, one of which models an RPN calculator and is named Calculator. The Calculator class, the CalculatorViewModel class, and all the other classes that serve the app are written in C# and compiled into a PCL that serves the iOS, Android, and Windows Phone versions of the app. If you’d like to peruse the source code for yourself, or build the app and see it run, you can containing the solution and open it in Visual Studio. Xamarin Forms Quick Start In case this is your first experience with Xamarin Forms, here’s my 3-minute synopsis of what you need to know to get started. Once Xamarin for Visual Studio is installed, you can create a new Xamarin Forms solution using Visual Studio’s File-New-Project command.
Select “Mobile Apps” on the left and “Blank App (Xamarin.Forms.Portable)” on the right, as pictured below. The resulting solution contains four projects.
One builds into a Portable Class Library containing shared code and resources. The others produce native packages for iOS, Android, and Windows Phone: The Portable project contains a file named App.cs that implements a class named App, which is derived from Xamarin.Forms.Application. Visual Studio provides the following default constructor.
Introduction Visual Studio 2017 for Mac was launched at MS Build 2017 with many fresh and exciting features for Visual Studio developers using Mac machines. Mac OS users can build apps for mobile, web, and cloud with Xamarin and.NET Core, and games with Unity using Visual Studio. In this article, I will share how to create new Xamarin.Forms application using Visual Studio for Mac.
System Requirement Visual Studio 2017 for Mac can be installed and run on the following operating systems. MacOS Sierra 10.12 or Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11. Xcode 8.3 or above requires macOS Sierra 10.12,. Android requires the 64-bit Java Development Kit (JDK). 8 GHz or faster processor with min 4GB RAM. Installing Visual Studio for Mac Download Visual Studio 2017 for mac from If you are downloading before May 17, you will get free 60-day access to Xamarin University. Create New Xamarin.Forms Application Step 1 - Launch VS from Mac Launch Visual Studio for Mac from Launchpad.
Step 2 - Create New Solution Create 'New Solution' (File New Solution) or VS homescreen Click on New Project. Step 3 - Choose a Template Visual Studio for Mac supports the development of apps for Android, macOS, iOS, tvOS, watchOS, web, and cloud. Here, I will select Xamarin.Forms template under Multiplatform. Step 4 - Multiplatform Xamarin.Forms Application The Multiplatform Xamarin.Forms App and the Native App project templates now provide you a quick way to create a multiplatform mobile app with cloud back-end. This template will include Xamarin.iOS, Xamairn.Android, and share code with the cloud service. Provide App name.identifier, platform and mobile back-end detail at the following screen.
Step 5 - Configure your application Provide the project name, solution name, local location, and version control details on the following screen. Step 6 - Solution successfully created You can drag and drop UI design for iOS and Android with Live Preview, and building, deployment, debugging the application is very easy. Step 7 - Run the application Debug and run the Xamarin application.
Summary In this article, you learned VS for Mac system requirements, how to install Visual Studio from Mac, and how to create new Xamarin applications using Visual Studio for Mac. If you have any questions/ feedback/ issues, please write in the comment box.
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