Develop iOS and Android apps with SharePoint/Office 365.

1. Develop iOS and Windows Store Apps using
Office 365/SharePoint 2013
Kashif Imran
Kashif_imran@hotmail.com

2. Agenda
 What are iOS and Windows Store Apps
 Why build iOS/Windows Store Apps
 Why use SharePoint/Office 365?
 Demo - Service Request Management App for iOS and Windows
Store
 Development Platform
 SharePoint APIs
 Which API to Use?
 SharePoint CSOM
 Demo – Customer Portal Code Review
 Office 365 Authentication
 REST/OData
 Demo – Staff Portal Windows Store App Code Review
 Demo – Staff Portal iOS App Code Review
 Questions?

3. What are iOS and Windows Store Apps
 Immersive
 Touch First
 Full screen experience without any chrome
 Support different layouts and

4. What are iOS and Windows Store Apps
(cont.)
 Sandboxed
 Distributed via App Store/Windows Store
 Application Styles
 Productivity applications (Contacts, Photos)
 Utility applications (Weather, Stocks)
 Immersive applications (Living earth, Carpenter)

5. Why build iOS or Windows Store Apps
 Web apps vs. Native Apps
 Advanced BI Visualization
 Offline Scenarios
 Device specific features
 Examples:
 Facebook (HTML5 or Native)
 YouTube
 …

6. Mobile Development Characteristics
 Compact screen
 Different device orientations
 Limited memory
 Usually one app at a time
 Minimal help
 No Quit button
 External events interrupt program flow
 Store state when stopping

7. Why use SharePoint/Office 365?
 Team productivity
 Document management
 Tailored solutions
 Cot effective file sharing
 Privacy
 Security
 Compliance
 Anywhere anytime access to data
 Rich set of capabilities
 Less training
 Deploy your way (cloud, on-prem, hybrid)
 Financially backed 99.9% backed SLA
 Enterprise grade support

8. Service Request Management App for iOS
and Windows Store
SharePoint
2013
Office 365
Customer Portal
Customers
submit service
requests from
public facing
site.
Staff Portal
Windows Store
App
Staff Portal
iOS App

9. Development Platform
 Windows Store Apps
 Windows 8
 HTML 5 and JavaScript
 XAML and C#/VB/C++
 DirectX and C++ (Games)
 Visual Studio 2012
 $49 for Individual, $99 Companies
 iOS Apps
 Mac - OS X
 Objectv-C
 Xcode
 iOS 5+ support ARC
 $99

10. Cross-Platform mobile apps
 Xamarin
 Miguel de Icaza
 Mono: open source ECMA standard compliant .NET
Framework compatible set of tolls including Compiler
and CLR
 MonoTouch:C# and .NET based application that run
on iPhone. MonoTouch apps are compiled down to
native machine code.
 iOS, Android and Mac apps in C#
 Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio

11. SharePoint APIs
 Server Object Model
 Client Object Model
 .NET Client OM
 Silverlight (and Mobile) Client OM
 JavaScript Client OM
 REST/OData Endpoints
 ASP.NET (asmx) web services
 Only supported for backward compatibility
 Direct Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) calls to the
owssvr.dll
 Only supported for backward compatibility

12. Which API to use?
 Type of Application
 Farm Solutions (w3wp.exe)
 With great power comes great responsibility
 Sandboxed Solutions (SPUCWorkerProcess.exe)
 “SharePoint sandboxed solutions are deprecated in SharePoint
2013 in favor of developing apps for SharePoint, but sandboxed
solutions can still be installed to site collections on SharePoint
2013.” MSDN
 SharePoint Apps (SharePoint-Hosted, Cloud-Hosted)
 Custom Logic in apps is distributed down to the client or up to the
cloud
 Must use one of the client object models or REST/OData endpoint
 External Applications
 LAMP web apps, iOS/Android apps
 Existing Skills
 JavaScript, ASP.NET, REST/OData, Silverlight, PowerShell
 Target Device

13. SharePoint Extension Types
Source: MSDN

14. SharePoint CSOM
 API to build remote applications
 Contains subset of functionality that is available in Server Object Model
 Many administrative functions are not available in CSOM
 Underlying communications is encapsulated in the runtime
 CSOM Implementations
 .NET Client OM
 Silverlight Client OM
 JavaScript Client OM
 Type names are similar to Server Object Model but do not have prefix SP as type names in Server OM
Server OM Managed/Silverlight
Implementation
JavaScript
Implementation
SPContext ClientContext SP.ClientContext
SPSite Site SP.Site
SPWeb Web SP.Web
SPList List SP.List
SPListItem ListItem SP.ListItem
SPField Field SP.Field

15. SharePoint CSOM

16. CSOM Updates in SharePoint 2013
 client.svc has been extended to support direct RESTful calls
 OData complaint implementation and support of HTTP GET,
PUT, POST, MERGE and DELETE
 New APIs for Server functionality
 Business Data
 Search
 Publishing
 User Profiles
 Taxonomy
 Feeds
 Sharing
 Workflow
 E-Discovery
 IRM
 Analytics

17. CSOM in SharePoint 2010
 Direct access to client.svc is not supported
 ListData.svc for REST calls and available in SP2013
only for backward compatibility

18. CSOM Architecture

19. .NET Client OM
 Queries are sent to the SharePoint server in batches
 Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.dll
 Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime.dll
 Root15ISAPI
 ClientContext
 Load
 Populates objects in place
 LoadQuery
 Returns results for query
 ExecuteQuery or ExecuteQueryAsync on ClientContext
 Collection and even some non collection properties are not loaded
by default

20. .NET Client OM - Load

21. .NET Client OM - LoadQuery

22. Demo – Customer Portal

23. Office 365 Authentication
Source: Omar Venado’s Blog:
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/omarv/archive/2012/10/25/windows-8-store-apps-office-365-enterprise-preview-sharepoint-online.aspx

24. Use Managed CSOM in Windows Store App
 Add new project using Windows Runtime
Component template in VS2012
 Add references to Microsoft.SharePoint.Client and
Microsoft.SharePoint.Client.Runtime
 Access Managed CSOM from C# or Javascript in
Windows Store App

25. REST
 REST VS SOAP
 Lightweight and easier to implement for various
types of potential clients
 Various open source JavaScript libraries that support
REST based programming
 Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter all has REST APIs
 Results are returned as JSON VS ATOM
 Results can be cached by proxy servers
 SOAP: Same URL, request is in header
 REST: Separate URL for different queries or
operations

26. OData (Open Data Protocol)
 Web protocol for querying and update data
 Build upon web technologies, HTTP, AtomPub and
JSON
 Ignores some of the REST constraints
 Data is served up as XML or JSON in Atom Feed
 Microsoft, SAP AG, IBM, Citrix, Progress Software
and WSO2
 OData services: Netflix, Azure
 OData clients: Excel 2010/2013

27. OData Terms and Concepts
 Built on Entity Data Model
 Collections contain Entries like Tables contain Rows
 Collections can be associated like Tables can be related
 Entry has properties like Table Row has columns
 Collections always have keys like Tables may have keys
 Browse to service root of OData service usually returns
all available Collections
EDM OData
Entity Set Collection
Entity Type Entry
Property of an Entity Type Property of Entry
Navigation Property Link

28. OData URIs
 Service root URI
 Resource path
 Query string options
Source: odata.org

29. Northwind OData Queries
 Available Collections
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/
 Metadata:
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/$metadata
 Query Entity Set (Collection)
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/Customers
 Customer With Single Entry
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/Customers('LETSS')
 Get One Property:
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/Customers('LETSS')/Address
 Value of a Property:
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/Customers('LETSS')/Address/$v
alue
 Collection of related Links without actual entries:
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/Customers('LETSS')/$links/Orde
rs
 Related Entries:
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/Customers('LETSS')/Orders(106
43)/Order_Details

30. Query Language
 Options: $filter, $sort, $orderby, $top, $expand, $skip,
$take, $metadata…
 Operations: eq, ne, gt, ge, lt, le, and, or, not, mod, add,
sub
 Functions: startswith, substring, replace, tolower, trim,
round, ceiling, day, month, year, typeof,…
 Top 3 Customer from USA Order By ContactName
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/Customers?
$filter=Country eq 'USA'&$orderby=ContactName&$top=3
 Return related Entries Inline
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/Customers('
LETSS')/$links/Orders
 Get Data in JSON Format
 http://services.odata.org/Northwind/Northwind.svc/Customers('
LETSS')?$expand=Orders&$format=JSON

31. CRUD Operation and HTTP Verbs
 Standardize CRUD operations using HTTP verbs
such as GET, PUT, POST and MERGE
 Methods are mapped into Navigator operations via
GET (list.getByTitle)
CRUD Operation HTTP Verb
Read GET
Create POST
Update PUT or MERGE
Delete DELETE

32. SharePoint REST URLs
 _api => _vti_bin/client.svc
 _api/web/lists
 _api/web/lists/lists(guid)
 _api/web/lists/getByTitle(‘Announcements’)
 _api/web/lists/getbytitle(‘Announcements’)/items(2)/F
ieldValuesAsHtml/$select=Title,Author
 _api/web/getAvailableWebTemplates(lcid=1033)
 _api/web/?$select=title,id
 _api/web/lists/getByTitle(‘mylist’)?$select=title,firstna
me
 _api/web/lists/getByTitle(‘customers’)?$select=title,fir
stname&startswith(Title, ‘p’)

33. Demo - OData Queries in Browser
Demo

34. OData: ATOMPub Format
 ATOMPub: The Atom Publishing Protocol
 Application level protocol for publishing and editing web
resources.
 Based on HTTP transfer of Atom-formatted
representations.
 ACCEPT = application/atom+xml
 XML Parsing on client side (Easy in Managed Code)
 XML is default for SharePoint REST calls

35. ATOM-Formatted Data Example

36. JSON
 Lightweight data-interchange format
 Easy for humans to read and write
 Easy for machines to parse and generate
 ACCEPT = application/json;odata=verbose
 Client libraries like datajs
 Hierarchically in arrays and /or in
key-value storage
 Characters [] enclose arrays
 {} key value pairs
 “” enclose text values

37. Helpful Classes in iOS for REST Calls
 NSURLConnection
(synchronous, Asynchronous, delegate methods)
 NSURLRequest
 NSURLResponse
 NSError
 NSData
 NSJSONSerialization
 NSDictionary
 NSArray
 JSON Item Converstion:
 Array of Items => NSArray
 Key-Value storage => NSDictionary
 String => NSString
 Numbers => NSNumber
 Null values => NSNull
 NSXMLParser

38. Helpful Classes for Windows Store App
REST Calls
 HttpClient
 CookieContainer
 JsonObject
 JsonArray
 Dictionary<string, IJsonValue>

39. Updates and the Form Digest
 Form Digest can be acquired through
 http://site/_api/contextinfo
 http://site/_vti_bin/sites.asmx
 Special value created to protect again replay attack
 SharePoint adds this control through master page
 Web service clients need to acquire Form Digest
manually

40. Demo – Windows Store App

41. Demo – iOS App

42. References
 Choose the right API set in SharePoint 2013
 How to: Complete basic operations using SharePoint 2013
client library code
 How to: Complete basic operations using JavaScript library
code in SharePoint 2013
 How to: Access SharePoint 2013 data from remote apps using
the cross-domain library
 Programming using the SharePoint 2013 REST service
 How to: Complete basic operations using SharePoint 2013
REST endpoints
 Host webs, app webs, and SharePoint components in
SharePoint 2013
 Build mobile apps in SharePoint 2013
 http://www.odata.org/

43. Questions?