Mobile Development with C

www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Mobile Development with C# Greg Shackles Beijing • Cambridge • Farnham • Köln • Sebastopol • Tokyo www.it-ebooks.info Mobile Development with C# by Greg Shackles Copyright © 2012 Greg Shackles. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472. O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titles (http://my.safaribooksonline.com). For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or [email protected]. Editor: Rachel Roumeliotis Cover Designer: Karen Montgomery Production Editor: Iris Febres Interior Designer: David Futato Proofreader: Iris Febres Illustrator: Robert Romano Revision History for the First Edition: 2012-05-04 First release See http://oreilly.com/catalog/errata.csp?isbn=9781449320232 for release details. Nutshell Handbook, the Nutshell Handbook logo, and the O’Reilly logo are registered trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Mobile Development with C#, the Caspian tern, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where those designations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc., was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps or initial caps. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information con- tained herein. ISBN: 978-1-449-32023-2 [LSI] 1336160978 www.it-ebooks.info Table of Contents Preface ..................................................................... vii 1. Surveying the Landscape ................................................. 1 The Players 1 iOS 1 Android 2 Windows Phone 2 Write Once, Run Anywhere 2 An Alternative Approach 4 Summary 7 2. Hello, Platforms! ........................................................ 9 iOS 9 What Is MonoTouch? 10 Create the Application 12 Android 22 Mono for Android 22 Create the Application 25 Windows Phone 36 Create the Application 36 Summary 46 3. Code Sharing Techniques ................................................ 47 Project Setup 48 File Linking 49 Abstraction 52 Observer Pattern 54 Partial Classes 56 Conditional Compilation 58 Summary 60 iii www.it-ebooks.info 4. Accessing the Network .................................................. 63 Reaching into the Cloud 63 Shared Layer 63 iOS 66 Android 71 Windows Phone 76 Notifying the User Interface 79 Shared Layer 79 iOS 81 Android 82 Windows Phone 84 Summary 84 5. Storing Data .......................................................... 87 Project Setup 87 Shared Layer 88 iOS 88 Android 95 Windows Phone 103 Accessing the Filesystem 109 Direct File Access 110 Isolated Storage 113 Using a Local Database 117 iOS and Android 117 Windows Phone 121 Open Source Alternatives 124 Summary 124 6. Location, Location, Location ............................................ 125 Mapping 125 iOS 125 Android 128 Windows Phone 132 Mocking Location 136 iOS 137 Android 137 Windows Phone 138 Using Location Data 139 iOS 140 Android 142 Windows Phone 146 Summary 147 iv | Table of Contents www.it-ebooks.info A. Creating Android Virtual Devices ........................................ 149 B. Further Reading ...................................................... 153 Table of Contents | v www.it-ebooks.info www.it-ebooks.info Preface As you start to look at getting into mobile development, it can be overwhelming to try and choose between all the different options and platforms available to you. Each platform comes with its own set of tools, preferred languages, and overall way of doing things. In many cases, you won’t want to restrict your application to a single platform, so naturally you’ll start looking for ways to reuse your code across the different platforms. If you’re a .NET developer, you are already in a great position, as you can actually leverage the .NET framework across iOS, Android, and Windows Phone, and hit the ground running on all of them. This book will introduce you to all three platforms from the ground up, exploring how to write native applications for each of them. As part of this exploration, you will see how to perform some common tasks required by applications, such as accessing the network, finding the user’s location, and persisting data on the device. In addition to learning about the platforms themselves, you will see how you can use .NET and C# to build these native applications, as well as various techniques for achieving a large amount of code reuse across all of them. Who Is This Book For? This book assumes that you are already familiar with the basics of the .NET Framework and the C# programming language. If you aren’t already experienced in either of these, this book will still be useful, but I first suggest familiarizing yourself with the basics before diving in. That said, this book does not assume any level of familiarity with mobile development prior to reading. If you’re brand new to mobile development, or even if you’re familiar with the platforms but are curious to see how to leverage C# across them, this book will walk you through everything you need in order to get started writing your applications. vii www.it-ebooks.info Contents of This Book Chapter 1 Introduces the different platforms and options for developing applications for them Chapter 2 Walks you through setting up your environments and creating your first application on each platform Chapter 3 Presents several techniques to help maximize code reuse across each platform Chapter 4 Describes how to access network resources in your applications Chapter 5 Introduces several methods for saving data in an application, including the filesystem and local databases Chapter 6 Demonstrates how to access a user’s location in an application, as well as how to use each platform’s mapping APIs Appendix A Explains how to customize Android virtual devices in order to emulate different device configurations Appendix B Lists various resources for learning more about developing for each platform Conventions Used in This Book The following typographical conventions are used in this book: Italic Indicates new terms, URLs, email addresses, filenames, and file extensions. Constant width Used for program listings, as well as within paragraphs to refer to program elements such as variable or function names, databases, data types, environment variables, statements, and keywords. Constant width bold Shows commands or other text that should be typed literally by the user. Constant width italic Shows text that should be replaced with user-supplied values or by values deter- mined by context. viii | Preface www.it-ebooks.info This icon signifies a tip, suggestion, or general note. This icon indicates a warning or caution. This Book’s Example Files You can download all of the code examples from this book from the following locations: http://github.com/gshackles/MobileDevelopmentInCSharpBook http://examples.oreilly.com/0636920024002/ In the example files you will find the completed versions of the applications built in every chapter of the book, which will contain all the code required to run them. Using Code Examples This book is here to help you get your job done. In general, you may use the code in this book in your programs and documentation. You do not need to contact us for permission unless you’re reproducing a significant portion of the code. For example, writing a program that uses several chunks of code from this book does not require permission. Selling or distributing a CD-ROM of examples from O’Reilly books does require permission. Answering a question by citing this book and quoting example code does not require permission. Incorporating a significant amount of example code from this book into your product’s documentation does require permission. We appreciate, but do not require, attribution. An attribution usually includes the title, author, publisher, and ISBN. For example: “Mobile Development with C# by Greg Shackles (O’Reilly). Copyright 2012 Greg Shackles, 978-1-449-32023-2.” If you feel your use of code examples falls outside fair use or the permission given above, feel free to contact us at [email protected]. Safari® Books Online Safari Books Online (www.safaribooksonline.com) is an on-demand digital library that delivers expert content in both book and video form from the world’s leading authors in technology and business. Preface | ix www.it-ebooks.info Technology professionals, software developers, web designers, and business and cre- ative professionals use Safari Books Online as their primary resource for research, problem solving, learning, and certification training. Safari Books Online offers a range of product mixes and pricing programs for organi- zations, government agencies, and individuals. Subscribers have access to thousands of books, training videos, and prepublication manuscripts in one fully searchable database from publishers like O’Reilly Media, Prentice Hall Professional, Addison-Wesley Professional, Microsoft Press, Sams, Que, Peachpit Press, Focal Press, Cisco Press, John Wiley & Sons, Syngress, Morgan Kaufmann, IBM Redbooks, Packt, Adobe Press, FT Press, Apress, Manning, New Riders, McGraw-Hill, Jones & Bartlett, Course Tech- nology,

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