Xamarin Forms for Android and iOS Native Development

Create a cross-platform Xamarin.Forms project in Visual Studio for Mac, selecting a blank forms app with dotnet standard shared code, to target Android and iOS with shared UI and logic.

Create a cross-platform Xamarin forms project on Windows by selecting the mobile app template, choosing dot net standard, and enabling Android and iOS, which creates three dot net standard projects.

Explore how Xamarin forms define content pages and elements such as entries and text, using opening and closing tags, and learn how containers arrange controls for Android and iOS.

Learn how to use a StackLayout container to stack UI elements like entries and images, adjust margins for a clean cross-platform layout, and prepare for user interaction handling.

Create a main page for adding new contacts with named input entries and placeholders, and implement a save button click event handler, naming it clearly to handle actions on press.

Create and wire up a button click event in Xamarin.Forms by naming elements in the markup and implementing the handler in the C# code-behind.

Create a new contacts page and set a navigation page as the app’s main page, with the contacts page as its root to enable navigation.

Configure a toolbar with toolbar items in a Xamarin forms contacts app, wiring a new contact button to navigate from the main page to the new contact page.

Navigate from the contacts page to the main page using the navigation page, enabling back navigation and a single line to open the new contact page.

Test the Xamarin Forms app on Android by creating a virtual device, launching the app, and validating navigation from the contacts page to the main page via the toolbar.

Test iOS apps on the macOS iOS simulator by selecting the iOS project and a device such as the iPhone 10, then launch to verify native controls and navigation.

Learn how to test iOS apps from Windows by connecting Visual Studio to a Mac host, enabling remote login, and remoting the iOS simulator to Windows.

Add the sqlite lite package to a Xamarin forms project to enable a local database, using NuGet on Windows or Mac. Select the widely downloaded package by Frank Krueger.

Define the Android main activity to locate the database file path using environment special folders. Pass this path to the app via a shared class in the Xamarin Forms project.

Demonstrate iOS app delegate setup that mirrors Android, loading the shared Xamarin Forms app, wiring the app constructor, and resolving the database path by combining personal, example, and library folders.

Create a C# model class to map entries to a table, with properties for name, last name, email, phone, and address, and use primary key attributes for an auto-incremented ID.

Insert a new contact into a sqlite-like database in Xamarin forms by defining entries, creating a contact object, creating the table, and using a using block for insertion.

Read the contacts from the sqlite database each time the contacts page appears, using a using block for the connection and converting the query to a list.

Define the list view in the content page and bind its items source to the contacts list, converting it to an enumerable, then preview how elements render in the list.

Explore how to display list items in Xamarin.Forms by creating a data template and binding properties such as name and email to text cells, with styling for the detail text.

Explore extended resources and courses to advance your mobile development skills. Build more capable apps by applying SAML and C-Sharp knowledge, designing applications, and adding machine learning features.