1. CROSS PLATFORM MOBILE
DEV WITH C# AND
XAMARIN
Ed Snider
May 27 2014
CapArea.NET User Group

2. CONTENT
Introduction
The Problem with Native Mobile App Dev
The Benefits of Multi-Platform Mobile Dev with C#
What is Xamarin?
What does this mean for how we build mobile apps?
How?
Share Code
Leverage the MVVM Pattern
Code!
Wrap up

3. INTRODUCTION
Ed Snider - @edsnider
Developer at InfernoRed Technology
Co-Organizer of NoVA Mobile C# Developers’ Group
www.infernored.com
@infernoredtech
www.novamobiledev.org
@novamobiledev

4. THE PROBLEM WITH
TRADITIONAL NATIVE MOBILE APP
DEV…
Native mobile apps are great but here’s the problem:
 Several Platforms: Windows, iOS, Android
 Several Languages: C#, Objective-C, Java
 Maintenance nightmares
 Customers and end-users suffer

5. THE BENEFITS OF MULTI-
PLATFORM
NATIVE MOBILE APP DEV WITH C#
Develop for all platforms with a single language – C# - using Xamarin
 Harness the power of the .NET framework
 Single solution with shared code
 Unified and consistent maintenance/testing
 Feature parity across platforms = happy end users
+ C#

6. WHAT IS XAMARIN?
Xamarin is built on Mono
Allows native app compilation on Android and iOS using C#
100% API Coverage – All iOS and Android APIs
are exposed as C# class libraries
Up-to-date with API releases
from Apple and Google

7. XAMARIN DEVELOPMENT TOOLS
Xamarin for Visual Studio Xamarin Studio for Windows and Mac

8. HOW?

9. LEVERAGE THE MVVM PATTERN
View (UI)
ViewModel
Model
Data Binding
Commands
Service
Interfaces
Connectivity
Location
Camera
Etc…
Platform Specific
Service Implementations

10. SHARE CODE!
Portable Class Library (PCL)
ViewModels
Models
Core App Library
Services, Business Logic, Service Access, Data Access, etc.
Windows iOS Android
View / UI
Platform Specifics
View / UI
Platform Specifics
View / UI
Platform Specifics

11. SOME OTHER COOL THINGS ABOUT
XAMARIN…
Component Store: http://components.xamarin.com/
.NET Mobility Scanner: http://scan.xamarin.com/
F# preview: http://docs.xamarin.com/guides/cross-platform/fsharp/
Xamarin Test Cloud: http://xamarin.com/test-cloud

12. RESOURCES
Xamarin Sample / Starter-Apps
 Employee Directory App - http://xamarin.com/prebuilt/employeedirectory
 Field Service App - http://xamarin.com/prebuilt/fieldservice
Code from my demo
 CoffeeFinder-XamarinDemo - https://github.com/edsnider/CoffeeFinder-
XamarinDemo
Image credit: https://octodex.github.com/