Tag Archives: Xamarin

Deploying a SQLite database file with a Xamarin.Forms app–(UWP update)

Say you have a SQLite DB you want to deploy with your Xamarin Forms app. Here is an excellent article on how to do this from Rob Gibbens of Xamarin University fame…

http://arteksoftware.com/deploying-a-database-file-with-a-xamarin-forms-app/

The article has wp8 but it uses Application.GetResourceStream and that is only for Windows phone, and the code below I have updated for UWP. Also, in November the UWP team posted some great sample code where I found the answer at: https://github.com/Microsoft/Windows-universal-samples/tree/master/Samples/FileAccess

So, just replace the WP8 code in the blog article with this code below and you will all set. The iOS and Android code works fine in the blog.

var storageFile = IsolatedStorageFile.GetUserStoreForApplication();

if (!storageFile.FileExists(dbPath))

{
// copy storage file; replace if exists.
var fileToRead = await Windows.Storage.StorageFile.GetFileFromApplicationUriAsync(new Uri(“ms-appx:///people.db3″, UriKind.Absolute));

Windows.Storage.StorageFolder storageFolder =

Windows.Storage.ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder;

StorageFile fileCopy = await fileToRead.CopyAsync(storageFolder, “people.db3″, NameCollisionOption.ReplaceExisting);

}

MAD Tampa Xamarin University Spring Fling set for This Saturday 5/21!

The Mobile Application Developer Tampa user group is sponsoring a Xamarin spring fling beach BBQ!!!! This is a worldwide Xamarin event and we will have Xamarin and Syncfusion Swag for this Greater Tampa area fling. Limited seating, so sign up now!

Rain or shine, we have an incredible event shaping up for this weekend on Saturday 5/21 in the greater Tampa area! This event should be fun and is a great way to meet Xamarin developers in your local area. All folks who have registered are invited to join the Xamarin Slack Team using http://xamarinspringfling.slack.com/ We hope to see everyone active on Slack, May 21. Don’t forget to take pictures to share! Take a bunch and tweet away with #XamarinUSpringFling

When
Saturday, May 21, 2016 from 3:00 PM to 8:30 PM (EDT) – Add to Calendar
Where
Robert K Rees Memorial Park – 4835 Green Key Road, New Port Richey, FL 34652 – View Map

Register for this event which is on 5/21 at 3pm at: http://madtampaxamarinspringfling.eventbrite.com

It’s been a long time since we had a geek BBQ! No PowerPoint’sPowerPoints or projectors on the beach, we use White Boards and flip charts for beach meetings. Battery power only for laptops.  We might have a Brighthouse signal there. I will check that, but count on no internet. We will have the big hut with the huge grill, so this event is on rain or shine. It’s a county park so this is $2 parking with incredible sunsets. There is a playground for kids. Walking trail lookout over the Gulf where you can see houses on stilts in the water. No bottles on beach. See park rules and general info here for Green Key beach.

Event starts at 3PM (eat at 5) and runs until sunset, which should be about 8:30 . Everyone needs to bring a side dish to share as well as your own beverages and we have sponsors to buy all the grill meats, charcoal, paper plates and red plastic cups. The optional after party will be at the Reef in Downtown New Port Richey, 5-minute drive away on Main St and Grand Ave in New Port Richey, FL.

IT WILL BE A BLAST! We will be on the blog page of Xamarin for sure with the photos we all take.

See great info on this PowerPoint presentation about  Xamarin University !

Special Thanks to our Sponsors:

Syncfusion

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Xamarin

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Where is Russ Fustino in July? The tour continues!

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July 2, 6:30 PM – Space Coast User Group

  • Topic: Improving Your App Quality with Raygun
  • Register at: http://www.meetup.com/Space-Coast-Net-User-Group/events/222906128/?a=wc1d.2_gnl&gj=wc1d.2_e&rv=wc1d.2_e
  • Location: Aerotek new office, 6767 North Wickham Road Suite B-104, Melbourne, FL
  • Join MVP and Raygun Community Evangelist Russ Fustino as he shares a great error reporting tool that is fast and reliable, no matter what the load. See how he used Raygun this during the development cycle to help debug errors and some weird bugs for the Xamarin Forms Endorsed Jethro Tull app. It is also great for the production environment and gives you real time data and affected user information no matter what the platform including JavaScript, .NET, Ruby and more. Be proactive and fix errors before your users hound you down. See an overview of Raygun and the many supported platforms as well as integrations. Download your free trial today! www.raygun.io and follow @raygunio

July 7, 6PM – Tallahassee Capital City .NET User Group

  • Topic: Rock’in with Russ, Raygun and Xamarin Forms
  • Register at: http://www.meetup.com/tally-dot-net/events/223451975/
  • Location: Domi Station – 914 Railroad Avenue, Tallahassee, FL (map)
  • Join MVP and Raygun Community Evangelist Russ Fustino in this hot off the metal session as he shares insights into the trials, tribulations and joy of building the Endorsed Jethro Tull App. Share the excitement as Russ “tells all” about creating his Jethro Tull app. The app is now published for Android and iOS, Windows Store and Windows Phone. How did he do it? Is Xamarin Forms the real deal? Topics covered include: Custom Renderers, Embedded Resources, XAML, Third party controls and plugins, Building for Phone and Tablet, Dependency Injection, Store app review process,  and Third Party Endorsement Proof. Russ will close with showing his world class error reporting built into the app with proactive email support. He shares this great error reporting tool that is fast and reliable, no matter what the load. See how he used Raygun this during the development cycle to help debug errors and some weird bugs for the Xamarin Forms Endorsed Jethro Tull app. It is also great for the production environment and gives you real time data and affected user information no matter what the platform including JavaScript, .NET, Ruby and more. Be proactive and fix errors before your users hound you down. See an overview of Raygun and the many supported platforms as well as integrations. Download your free trial today! www.raygun.io and follow @raygunio

July 10-11, CodeStock attendee, Knoxville, TN

  • wait list for speaking:
  • Register at: http://www.codestock.org/
  • Location: Knoxville Convention Center 701 Henley Street, Knoxville, TN 37902

July 14, 6PM – South Florida Xamarin User Group

July 18, Tampa Code Camp

  • Topic: Rock’in with Russ, Raygun and Xamarin Forms
  • Register at: http://tampacodecamp.net/
  • Location: KForce 1001 East Palm Avenue, Tampa FL 33605

July 27-28 Disney Developer Days (onsite for internal employees) , Orlando

  • Improving Your App Quality

Russ Fustino, Full Time CEO of Fustino Brothers

  • I am back to being CEO of Fustino Brothers, full time. Email russ@fustinobrothers.com and please follow @FustinoBrothers and @RussFustino
  • I am taking a little break  from my contract with Xamarin and Developer Evangelism
  • On a little painful news, it is starting to look like I need laser surgery on my back. During recovery period I plan on doing a lot of coding, as traveling will not be possible, and publish the Jethro Tull iOS and Android Apps using Xamarin. I will know more in a couple of weeks.
  • I am heading up to the Jethro Tull shows in Providence, RI tonight and Lynn, MA on Saturday .  I will be  showing Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull the FBI Jethro Tull app  for Windows Phone and Windows Store right after sound check in Lynn. How exciting is this!
  • The App Studio team will be at the Lynn, MA show to capture the moment.
  • Then its off  to the MVP Summit for my favorite conference of the year! I am so looking forward to seeing everyone! I think I am in trouble however, as my room mate is the one and only Jonas Stawski. Yikes! Smile

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  • I will be documenting my way thru this experience of Using App Studio to start an app and using Xamarin to finish it. I am working on a new set of videos for WintellectNOW. More details to come as to topics and content.
  • I am working with the App Studio Windows   team to make the generated C# projects Xamarin friendly, facilitating cross platform capabilities.  The team is very close right now , and keeps getting closer in every release.
  • I hope to be back with Xamarin after the new year in some capacity.
  • I received my Xamarin Mobile App Certification in October and my 2014 Renewal for Microsoft MVP 2014 in Microsoft Platform Development!
  • Wish me luck!

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Contest: 4 days left! Favorite Xamarin Studio Feature

With recent updates to Xamarin Studio and the introduction of very affordable $25 per month Xamarin Indie subscriptions, more developers than ever are finding out just how fast, easy, and fun mobile development with Xamarin Studio can be. Submissions are needed by August 18,  so don’t let this pass by with just 4 days left. Click on the Xamarin blog post below for more info on how to enter and some great prizes.

http://blog.xamarin.com/contest-favorite-feature-of-xamarin-studio/

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What do Tom Hanks and Xamarin have in common?

Attention App Developers! See my 1st Xamarin  blog post!

http://blog.xamarin.com/tom-hanks-vintage-typewriter-inspired-hanx-writer-app/

I interviewed developer Jonathan Peppers of Hitcents about his Tom Hanks inspired app called Hanx Writer.   How did Tom Hanks inspire this app? Read the blog to find out! I think you will enjoy this post as it provides great info on how this app was built using the Xamarin Platform. He includes a wealth of knowledge including which API’s he used when he built this app. Enjoy and  by all means please share!

Please tweet w #hanxwriter   and download the Hanx Writer iPad app which was just released today!

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Screen shot from the new Hanx app just released today!

JonPeppers

Jonathan Peppers, Senior Application developer.

Where in the World is Russ Fustino?

My calendar has been filling up in my new Developer Evangelism role at Xamarin. Here is my current itinerary, I hope to see you at one or more of these events! If you have an event you would like to have me speak at, please let me know. @RussFustino

8/18/2014
South Florida Xamarin User Group

The Best of Xamarin University
http://www.meetup.com/South-Florida-Xamarin-User-Group/events/199391772/

8/19/2014
TechNite in Miami

Networking Event
http://technightattheballpark.com/

8/20/2014
Tampa Xamarin UG

The Best of Xamarin University
http://www.meetup.com/Tampa-Bay-Xamarin-User-Group/events/199363032/

9/4/2014
Tallahassee .NET UG

Xamarin.Forms
http://www.meetup.com/tally-dot-net/

9/13/2014
Jacksonville, Code Impact

Xamarin.Forms
http://www.codeimpact.org

9/18/2014
Portland, Maine, Casco Bay .NET Users Group
Xamarin.Forms
http://www.cbnug.org/

9/20/2014
Vermont Code Camp
Xamarin.Forms
http://vtcodecamp.org/

9/25/2014
Space Coast UG

Topic TBD
http://www.meetup.com/Space-Coast-Net-User-Group/

10/6 thru 10/10
Evolve – Atlanta

Topic: TBD
Http://evolve.xamarin.com

Xamarin Forms session by Russ Fustino, Xamarin Developer Evangelist

Xamarin at Successful Tampa Code Camp! Recap

I had the great pleasure presenting Xamarin Forms at the recent Tampa Code Camp. This event was resurrected from a one year hiatus and a welcome site to the Tampa Developer Community. Many are looking forward to a bigger and better code camp as part of a very engaged developer community here in Tampa next year.

Personally, this was a huge moment in the next chapter of my career as well. I delivered my first Xamarin Session, concluding with three weeks of intense training and setup. It was a culture shock, of sorts, for me to present on a Mac and I joked about it that it was more of a challenge for me to learn a Mac than learn Xamarin! The Mac is a better presenting machine in that there are fewer moving parts to demonstrate iOS development. I still use my Windows machine to develop on. Anyway, it all turned out good as about 60 in my session learned about the Xamarin Platform and Xamarin Forms.  For most of the audience, it was their first exposure to Xamarin.

Here are is PowerPoint for the session: http://1drv.ms/1AbKxPp

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First photo of Russ as a Xamarin Developer Evangelist in Action! (Thanks Scott Dorman!)

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It was a packed house! Greg Leonardo was working on my AV here.   It is funny, I once did that for him a few years back at one of his sessions. Full circle, huh?

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First Demo, Xamarin Forms Hello World in iOS, Android, and Windows Phone. This got a big warm round of applause!

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Russ with Greg Leonardo, Head organizer of Tampa Code Camp.

Fox News has a great piece on the code camp: http://www.myfoxtampabay.com/story/26016891/code-camp-brings-developers-together

Download Xamarin today at www.xamarin.com

Follow my new Twitter @RussFustino

and follow @XamarinHQ

Russ Fustino, Xamarin Developer Evangelist!

Hello all! I am happy to announce I am the new Developer Evangelist for Xamarin! I am so excited about this next chapter in my career. I am looking forward to learning and teaching one of the hottest set of software products on this planet, which will help the lives of many fellow geeks! It is a very rewarding position indeed and I am on cloud 9. Everyone I have met at Xamarin is awesome and I look forward getting to know the entire team.

For those that unfamiliar on what Xamarin does… we produce software for programmers which facilitates creating the same mobile app, natively, on multiple platforms such as Windows Phone,  Android and iOS. It is a ‘must have’ tool in the industry with some incredible recent announcements on the new version Xamarin 3.

xamarin

Xamarin

I will be traveling up to the Boston Xamarin office on occasion and I look forward to seeing all the “Shed Heads” back home. So, New England crew, get those lobsters ready!

And of course, I will be hitting up all the conferences for speaking engagements in and around Florida and all over the country. Drop me an email if you are interested in having me speak at your user group or conference. My new email at Xamarin is russell.fustino@xamarin.com .

I also setup a new twitter @RussFustino with my actual name (about time huh?). Please follow! I will have more details on my Xamarin blog once it gets set up. Stay tuned and follow me on twitter. Thanks!

 

Xamarin 3 Rocks! Tampa Xamarin Meetup Recap

I had the great pleasure of attending the Xamarin user group in Tampa the other night.  Xamarin 3 was recently announced on May 28, 2014.  James Montemango, Developer Evangelist for Xamarin, delivered a killer online session for the Tampa Xamarin User Group. The folks at the meeting were very appreciative of the fact that James took the time to present to us.  We had a packed house at the AgileThought office to see all the new features of Xamarin 3. Wow. Everyone was blown away. I overheard one attendee saying on the very next day, he would pitch  to his boss to get Xamarin licenses for entire staff at his company. So, I guess it was a successful meeting! Special thanks go to Michael Stark for heading up the new group and organizing this meeting with James.

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James Montemagno delivered a session to Tampa from Seattle on Wednesday night at the Tampa Xamarin User Group.

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MVPs Kevin Wolf and yours truly, Russ Fustino were in the house.

James gave a quick overview of Xamarin and  covered the Xamarin Designer for iOS as well as Xamarin Studio & Visual Studio Enhancements.

Local developer,  Imaya Kumar, then showed off the new Xamarin Forms!

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Imaya Kumar, Solution Architect Convene Technologies
Ex MSFT

Here are my notes from the meeting:

  • C# on 2.6 Billion devices! Yes, billion not million!
  • Xamarin 3 is the best release yet!
  • Xamarin Mission Statement: Make it fast, easy and fun to create apps.
  • The third year of the company was celebrated with a Birthday cake! Happy Birthday Xamarin!

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Birthday Cake and Pizza were provided by Xamarin!

  • Xamarin is seeing explosive growth with strong recognition from the Gartner Magic Quadrant as a Visionary :

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  • Xamarin has a test cloud for all of the different Android devices. Wow! So, now you don’t have to buy all sorts of Android devices to test with.

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  • Users prefer to use Native apps that are fast, smooth and deliver a great experience. Hybrid apps typically don’t get good reviews. For example,  Facebook switched to a native interface and the downloads doubled.

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  • F# and C# are supported.
  • New meaning to “write once and run anywhere”.  Shared C# backend  code is typically  %75 of the code, but  now the UI code can be sharable too, raising that number even higher!
  • All native API’s are supported and are made available to C# Developers.

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  • Xamarin University is the quickest way to become a Mobile Developer? Numerous classes in all time zones are available 6 days a week with live training.

Major elements in Xamarin 3

  • Xamarin Designer for iOS
  • Xamarin Studio & Visual Studio Enhancements
  • Easy code sharing
  • Xamarin.Forms

Xamarin Designer

  • iOS provides and intuitive interface for developing iOS apps. For example, when you double click on an item in the designer it opens a code windows for the default event handler, etc.
  • Comprehensive editor, auto layout, etc.
  • iOS6 and iOS7 are both supported
  • Works on Windows and Mac

Xamarin Studio

  • Handy for those that don’t’ have Visual Studio and the interface has been improved. NuGet Package manager along with integration with Xamarin Component Store provides ease of access to many libraries.
  • Easy assess to solution
  • Main panel has new information from Xamarin, blogs, etc.

Visual Studio and Xamarin Studio

Easy code sharing

  • Shared project support
  • Editing can be in the context of the editing container. For example,  Android code is grayed out when in the iOS context.

Miscellaneous

  • Same project can be opened in both VS and XS
  • Build Story Boards to provide app functionality
  • iOS has native calls for face detection and sepia color editing, since 100 percent of the calls are available in Xamarin, this is no problem.
  • Custom Controls can be built as well
  • Screen shots of sample custom control, to crop and apply sepia filter

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Auto Crop (uses automatic face detection in iOS): provides real time update in designer.

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Sepia filter:

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Xamarin Forms:

Besides the Xamarin Birthday cake, Xamarin Forms was the topic I was the most excited about! Can you imagine using shared code for multiple platforms. Wow!

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  • Build native UI’s for iOS, Android and Windows Phone from a single shared C# codebase
  • uses XAML like code for the Xamarin compiler

With Xamarin Forms you can…

  • build the entire app with Xamarin Forms…
  • or use this to prototype, leaving the door open to incorporate  further platform specific features…
  • or take an existing project and add a new page, build you don’t want to do that three times

Pages, Layouts and Controls oh my!

  • Controllers are provided for pages using Master Detail , navigation, tabbed pages and more
  • Layouts are provided for stack, Absolute, relative, grid and more
  • Controls, controls and more controls. Being a former developer evangelist for control vendor, this is huge!

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I am about to update my Tull Tribute Windows Phone app (to be renamed Jethro Tull, which is endorsed with Tull assets). There is no doubt in my mind when porting to iOS and Android, I will be using Xamarin to to this.

If you missed the meeting, don’t worry… here are links to the deck and a recording of the announcement of Xamarin 3. The video features Xamarin’s Nat Friedman, CEO and Co-Founder, Miguel de Icaza, CTO and Co-Founder and James Montemagno, DE.

 

See more details of the Xamarin 3 Announcement:

http://blog.xamarin.com/announcing-xamarin-3/
Download Xamarin:
http://xamarin.com/
Webinar recording:
https://xamarin.wistia.com/medias/dnm9rouaer
Webinar slides:
http://www.slideshare.net/Xamarin/say-hello-to-xamarin-3