How to Create Cross-Platform Mobile Applications with Xamarin

It’s the dream of software developers to write code once and use the same code for multiple projects. This dream has been a reality for quite some time now, but it comes with its own cost of maintenance, testing barriers, and, for worse, a poor user experience. In this article, we are going to explore how to use Xamarin to build cross-platform mobile applications and share the code without compromising other aspects of our project. Xamarin works by sharing code and performing memory allocation. We’re going to dive deep into the Android and iOS platforms, but you can use the same approach for any other platform as well.

War Of Platforms

Ever since Apple announced the iPhone in 2007, Apple and Google have gone into legal wars to acquire their patent platforms. Along with these two giants, Microsoft also joined the legal battles and accused Android of using their patents. These legal battles have been going on for some years without any conclusion, but in all of them, two platforms stand out, which are Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. Mobile application developers are using the native SDK and have roots in developing desktop applications. Programming languages have been an obstacle for some developers for various reasons.

Cross-platform developers who have a background in building Java desktop applications and back-end development find it easier to build mobile applications rather than starting Objective-C from scratch for iOS. Building cross-platform mobile applications has never been a good choice for developers using Java-script-based frameworks like Titanium, Cordova, Sencha, etc. But then Xamarin came through. In order to comprehend how Xamarin works, we need to understand the types of mobile applications first.

There are three types of it:

1. Native
2. Web-applications
3. Combined

Native

Native apps directly belong to the mobile device and run using mobile hardware features such as cameras and sensors. For native apps, developers need to have knowledge of two different languages: Objective-C for iOS and Java for Android. Since Native doesn't offer the luxury of a single code base, this becomes expensive for companies that run their applications on multiple platforms.

Web-Applications

For the web applications, as the name indicates, they run using a web browser. In order to use it, the user needs to open the web browser and navigate to the correct URL. But web applications restrict the user's access to most of the hardware. These applications are less interactive.

Combined

The third and last type, which is combined, is a mix of the best elements of the first two methods: Use web languages (HTML, JavaScript, and CSS) for the remaining portions of the code that need to access particular hardware aspects of the device. Although this strategy sounds appealing, hybrid apps have poor performance and are difficult to scale as the user base grows.

Xamarin app development services are a combination of native approaches. In this article, we are going to explore how to use Xamarin to build cross-platform applications and share the code without compromising other aspects of our project. Let’s get going. Xamarin requires knowledge of C# for building cross-platform apps for both Android and iOS. Instead of restricting the developers to different platforms, it allows the cross-platform developers to use platform-specific features like animations, interfaces, graphics, and all phone features using only a single language, C#.

Whenever there’s an update to Xamarin, it includes the binding of new APIs for both Android and iOS. Data types, generics, garbage collection, language-integrated query (LINQ), asynchronous programming patterns, delegates, and a portion of the Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) are among the features present in Xamarin's NET implementation. Only the components that are referenced are maintained in libraries. Xamarin.Forms are added to the Windows Phone API and other UI connectors to provide a fully cross-platform user interface library.

Cross-Platform Application Development

Xamarin offers developers the option to choose from one of their two libraries in order to start building applications.

• Portable Class Library (PCL)
• Shared Project

There’s one limitation to writing code with the PCL library: since all platforms do not support.NET APIs, you need platforms that do. During the development process, PCL is combined into separate DLLs and loaded by Mono during runtime. This is a different implementation provided by the platform. The code is directly included in the final project.

But in contrast, if you are using a shared project, it gives you more room to write code to share across multiple platforms and has directories included in it that will be used according to the platforms where the code has been shared.

Structure your code with MvvmCross

Modularly written code has been saving companies so much money and time. And if you are a cross-platform developer, no one can praise the efficiency of nicely written and bug-free code. Xamarin provides this facility for writing nice, bug-free code that will be usable across platforms. Android and iOS developers need to write the same code twice or three times with the same logic in order to support the platforms, but Xamarin made it easier for us.

If Xamarin is capable of doing all this, then why do we need MvvmCross? As the name indicates, MVVM can be used in Xamarin with its own libraries, APIs, and other features that come into play when structuring the code.

Getting Started with Xamarin

Xamarin is a software company that initiated the common language infrastructure and used its implementation. It's the most identified platform that aims to create mobile applications for iOS, Android, and Windows. Following is a comprehensive guide to getting started with Xamarin to build an iOS app.

• Launch Xamarin Studio first.
• Click on the New button in the left corner of the interface to create a new project.
• Expand it and select the iOS section. Name the new project, and then click OK.
• Select your desired app structure, like single-view, tablet, or master-detail apps.
• Select a suitable location for your project to ease collaboration.

Configuring the project settings is another crucial step. Developers can choose the iOS and minimum deployment targets according to their device compatibility. You can also select the programming language, either C# or F#, depending on your familiarity and knowledge. To ensure accessibility, developers can access the libraries. Debugging is very important to counteract the troubleshooting issues during the development of the project. You can easily do this by enabling the troubleshooting option.

Conclusion

Finally, developers can configure physical iOS devices or set up emulators for testing. By doing this, it enables them to test their iOS app’s functionality and user experience. Developers can create a new iOS project in Xamarin Studio, choose project parameters and settings, and lay the groundwork for creating an iOS app using Xamarin by following the steps mentioned earlier in this guide. It might seem overwhelming at first to get started, but if you start slowly and follow one step at a time, you will be unstoppable in achieving your coding dream with Xamarin. Having a mobile app is not enough; create solutions that help users utilize the app. Making a mobile application with Xamarin makes the programming level more efficient and accurate. Xamarin is a successful tool that targets both creation and maintenance due to a shared code base without compromising quality.