Well, now that the Model is ready, and the database is created for both Android and iOS scenarios, there is nothing left for us to do but to start adding the functionality for the necessary requests inside of our application.
In this video, I start by explaining how to insert to the database, and how a specific usage of the using keyword will be rather important for you to understand.
In this video we create the C# class -or Model- that will represent the SQLite table that will exist in the database.
This class, of course, will also contain the properties that will represent all the columns in the table, as well as some attributes that will be very important for when the database is created.
When using SQLite inside of your applications, you will need to set the location for the database file.
In this video I cover what you have to do for the iOS scenario, which indeed will be slightly different from the Android one, which means that we will have two versions of the same code -one per platform- and that we will need to code some functionality in the platform-specific projects.
When using SQLite inside of your applications, you will need to set the location for the database file.
In this video I cover what you have to do for the Android scenario, which indeed will be slightly different from the iOS one, which means that we will have two versions of the same code -one per platform- and that we will need to code some functionality in the platform-specific projects.
So SQLite can be quite useful in a lot of scenarios. I believe most apps should use this light-weight version of a database, even when they rely on another cloud database for their information.
But before we learn how to implement SQLite into our apps, let’s first take a look at how can we add third-party functionality into our apps, so we don’t have to code SQLite functionality from the ground up.
Testing on an iOS Simulator is not as straight forward as on Android. You will find that it is still pretty easy but can get a bit confusing if you don't know about the restrictions that Apple sets, and how Visual Studio can help you meet those restrictions for your app to be able to run on a simulator, whether you are on macOS or Windows (this video covers Windows).
I don't know about you, but the selected element color of a ListView, when rendered on an Android device, can feel like too much, not to mention just off with the other colors. I don't mind the light gray color for the same behavior when rendered on iOS, but on Android, it just feels wrong.
Recently a student of mine asked a fascinating question that I hadn’t come up with, but that seemed to be easily implementable and super useful in at least one typical scenario: send your users over to the Play Store to get the latest available update to your app.
The iOS Simulator is quite easy to use, but here is the process you should follow.
The Android simulator can be tricky, here is what you have to do to make your app run perfectly in one of those.
Navigation is crucial in all applications, you better get it right, here is what you should do.
Using XAML in Xamarin Forms we can change the accent color of the Progress Bars we define, and being able to set it to a HEX value, the possibilities are endless (well, not exactly, only about 16 million, but you know what I mean).
But what if you want that color to change dynamically, say, depending on how much the progress bar is filled, especially if you're going to keep your code-behind as clean as possible, so no handling of events and messy code.
Something that I haven't always liked about Android is the top-side tab bars. You know, those that can take you from one page to another very easily without reaching your finger too far onto the screen or opening a side menu. I love bottom tab bars, iOS has always had them, and I use them a lot.
Toolbars and Toolbar items are awesome if you ask me, they look great on both Android and iOS apps.
What if you want to use a different page as the starting page of your project? Basically replacing the MainPage for something else? Here is how to do that.
Handling button clicks is super important to build any app, here is how do do it programmatically from the C# file.
In the previous post, I showed you how you could handle multiple states for a specific element using the VisualStateManager and defining various groups and VisualStates.
In this post, we will use this same feature to change the UI of an example application so that it hides a title when the device is on portrait mode, so there is more space for the main component of the interface, which will be a ListView.
If there is something that can take a good-looking app to an incredible-looking app that may very well be Visual States. By defining different Visual States you are able to define how a certain element must look depending on some interaction from the user. The simpler example is with buttons, with which you are able to see when someone hovers over them (perhaps they change color), someone presses them (maybe in addition to colors the scale also changes), maybe also when they lose focus.
Handling button clicks is super important to build any app, here is how do do it from the XAML file.
It could be a bit of a pain to try to use Images as buttons, for those scenarios when you needed to display a certain image but also needed the user to be able to click on it, with all that that implies. A nice animation, perhaps change of color, and of course the triggering of an event or the ability to bind a Command. As of Xamarin Forms 3.4, this is no longer a pain, now you can define an ImageButton like you would define any element in the interface, and use it similarly to how you would use an Image, and make it respond to how a Button would.
