With the dawn of the Internet of Things, smart homes, and connected devices, mobile apps have become key elements of creating harmony between everything. Most IoT devices require users to provision their devices on a home wireless network, which can sometimes cause poor user experience. However, apps have the ability to ease these pain points by programmatically connecting to wifi networks. Read more on Programmatically Connecting to WiFi in Your Xamarin.Forms App…
xamarin
Adding an EmbedIO Embedded Web Server to Your Xamarin Forms App
On my current project, we were searching for a good way to fake out our API for testing purposes. One idea that my teammate came up with was to create a local server within the actual Xamarin Forms app so we could make API calls to it. Read more on Adding an EmbedIO Embedded Web Server to Your Xamarin Forms App…
Creating BroadcastReceivers that Run while Your Android App Is Backgrounded
In my latest project, I’m building iOS and Android apps that have to handle incoming Bluetooth data even when the apps are backgrounded. To achieve this on Android, I decided to implement a BroadcastReceiver.
Read more on Creating BroadcastReceivers that Run while Your Android App Is Backgrounded…
Exporting a Java Library to a Xamarin.Forms Android Project
The device on our current project has two unique software development kits (one for Android and one for iOS). My team wanted to use Xamarin.Forms to create an application for the device so that the core logic of the app could be stored in one place.
However, in order to also incorporate the platform-specific SDK methods, we had to export Java code (for Android) and Swift code (for iOS) as libraries and then import those libraries into a Xamarin.Forms project. Read more on Exporting a Java Library to a Xamarin.Forms Android Project…
Supercharging Xamarin Studio’s Play Button with Custom Build Steps
As my team’s current project has morphed from a heavy Ember.js app running in a thin PhoneGap web view into a thin Ember.js front end driving a rich Xamarin back end, we’ve had to change our approach to build automation. Here’s how we leverage custom build steps in Xamarin Studio to make our workdays easier.
Read more on Supercharging Xamarin Studio’s Play Button with Custom Build Steps…
Simplify Your Storage in Xamarin with SimpleStorage
While developing a mobile application, it’s important to consider the data storage architecture that best suits the needs of the app. In many cases, especially if the app is data-intensive, a database is the best option. I have had a great experience using the SQLite.NET package for Xamarin, in particular. However, there are some cases where a database is not the best option for data storage. For example, a simple key-value store is often a great solution for small pieces of data, such as user preferences and app settings, that can be easily retrieved by a unique key. Read more on Simplify Your Storage in Xamarin with SimpleStorage…
Utilizing the iOS Background with Xamarin: Part 2
The Background Transfer Service in iOS is a service that allows your app to download or upload large amounts of data in the background with no time limits. Whether your app is in the foreground, suspended, or sitting in the background, it can download as much data as it wants without the time limits that iOS enforces with other mechanisms. Read more on Utilizing the iOS Background with Xamarin: Part 2…
Utilizing the iOS Background with Xamarin: Part 1
Over the last few months, I have had the opportunity to work with Xamarin, a platform for writing native mobile apps (iOS, Android, Windows) in a single, cross-platform implementation. Based on the Mono framework, Xamarin allows for maximum code reuse between mobile platforms, while preserving any native APIs. Even very platform-specific APIs, such as iOS Background Fetch are no match for Xamarin!
Read more on Utilizing the iOS Background with Xamarin: Part 1…
Native HTML Apps with Xamarin
At the tail end of last year, my team was working on an Ember.js app. That would usually be pretty normal, but in this case, it was an Ember app running in Cordova utilizing massive amounts of offline support. We needed to support Android and iOS. Offline support meant downloading most of our users’ data, processing it, and storing it—all while keeping the UI responsive using the single Javascript thread. As the project progressed, it became clear that this tech stack was not going to hold up.