Mannari Yuvraj - Xamarin cross-platform application development : develop production-ready applications for iOS and android using xamarin

Xamarin Cross-platform Application Development Develop production-ready applications for iOS and Android using Xamarin Jonathan Peppers BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI Xamarin Cross-platform Application Development Copyright 2014 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.

However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: February 2014 Production Reference: 2110214 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-84969-846-7 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by Yuvraj Mannari (yuvrajm@packtpub.com) Credits AuthorProject Coordinator Jonathan Peppers Kranti Berde ReviewersProofreaders Pierce Boggan Simran Bhogal Betim Drenica Ameesha Green Tom Opgenorth William Thomas Indexers Hemangini Bari Acquisition Editors Tejal Soni Sam Birch Richard Harvey Graphics Ronak Dhruv Content Development Editor Abhinash Sahu Neeshma Ramakrishnan Production CoordinatorTechnical Editors Nilesh Bambardekar Tanuj Gulati Adrian Raposo Cover Work Nilesh Bambardekar Copy Editors Dipti Kapadia Kirti Pai About the Author Jonathan Peppers is a Xamarin MVP and the lead developer of the popular cross-platform game, Draw a Stickman: EPIC. Jon works for Hitcents, a software development company based in Bowling Green, Kentucky. He has been working with the C# programming language for over 7 years.

He has also been working with technologies such as WinForms, WPF, ASP.NET WebForms, and ASP.NET MVC. In recent years, Hitcents has been heavily investing in mobile development with Xamarin and has developed nearly 40 mobile applications across multiple platforms. About the Reviewers Pierce Boggan is a student of Software Engineering at the Auburn University. He has a passion for software, entrepreneurship, and theology. In the past, Pierce has worked for Xamarin as a Customer Support Engineering Intern. He also hosts a bi-monthly podcast with Chris Hardy in which all things related to Xamarin and mobile development are discussed.

You can find him blogging about software, specifically mobile development, at www.pierceboggan.com. I would like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, as well as my close friends and family who have supported me along the way. Betim Drenica is a professional developer with over a decade's experience and has specialized in many technologies from database to client technologies to mobiles. He considers himself as a software architect oriented in Service Oriented Applications (RESTing for a long time) paying more attention to mobile apps for all major platforms (Windows Phone, Android, and iOS) using Xamarin. Being a very community-driven person, he is the founder and leader of two user groups, Albanian SQL Server UG and Albanian .NET UG. He is a Microsoft Certified Trainer and a regular speaker at many tech conferences.

He's a blogger and you can find him at www.betimdrenica. wordpress.com and usually tweets from time to time on his Twitter account @betimdrenica. He also spends a good amount of his time on LinkedIn at http://www.linkedin.com/in/betim. Tom Opgenorth is an IT professional from Alberta, Canada. His interest in computing started in 1983 when he taught himself Applesoft Basic and steadily progressed from there on. For the past 20 years, he has taken on many roles in IT, such as developer/engineer, QA, team lead, and architect.

Tom settled on the .NET platform in 2002 with an interest in C#, and became a fan of Mono in 2003. He was awarded the Microsoft MVP award for C# in 2008, 2009, and 2010. In early 2008, he purchased his first smartphone, the Android Developer Phone 1, and has been hooked on mobile technologies with a focus on Android ever since. Tom is currently working for Xamarin. He spends his days with the awesome documentation team fusing C# and Android into Xamarin documentation with the goal of helping developers create cross-platform mobile applications. William Thomas grew up in Claremont, CA, and developed an interest in computers from a young age. William Thomas grew up in Claremont, CA, and developed an interest in computers from a young age.

He started out with Flash development, became interested in web design, and then moved on to web development. After attending Cal Poly Pomona to study Computer Science, he began working in 2011, at Flavorus; the Los Angeles-based ticketing company. Since his graduation, at Cal Poly, William continues to work full time at Flavorus, developing applications for web and mobile devices. He has most recently developed the Flavorus Box Office app for iPhone and iPad using the Xamarin .NET framework. I'd like to acknowledge my friends and colleagues from Cal Poly Pomona and Flavorus. www.PacktPub.com Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book. www.PacktPub.com Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book.

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Simply use your login credentials for immediate access. Table of Contents Table of Contents[ ii ]Table of ContentsChapter 1[ iii ] Preface Xamarin has built three core products for developing iOS and Android applications in C#: Xamarin Studio, Xamarin.iOS, and Xamarin.Android. Xamarin gives you direct access to the native APIs on each platform and the flexibility to share C# code among platforms. Using Xamarin and C#, the productivity you get is better than that of Java or Objective-C while maintaining a greater performance output compared to a HTML or JavaScript solution. In this book, we will develop a real-world sample application to demonstrate what you can do with Xamarin technologies, and build on core platform concepts for iOS and Android. We will also cover advanced topics such as push notifications, retrieving contacts, using a camera, and GPS location.