The team I'm on created a cross-platform application that runs on iOS, Android, and Windows Mobile that was created using Xamarin's tools and MonoCross. We're looking at MvvmCross as a possible MonoCross replacement but don't want to write the application from scratch.
Does anyone have experience with or thoughts on migrating a Xamarin/MonoCross cross-platform application to Xamarin/MvvmCross? Is it possible for the two frameworks to coexist in the same app (the ideal solution would have us migrate the app one screen at a time).
Thanks in advance.
Following Stuart's advice below I confirmed that it is possible to integrate MvvmCross into an existing MonoCross application.
In the original code a selection on View 1 initiates a call to Controller 2 using MonoCross URI navigation. Controller 2 displays View 2, passing it the data from Model 2.
Following the example in this video I created an MvvmCross View and ViewModel. A selection on View 1 still navigates to Controller 2 but Controller 2 now displays the new MvvmCross View 2. View 2 is data bound to ViewModel 2 which takes over Controller 2's functions of getting the Model data.
I don't know of anyone who's done this recently, but I originally ported several of the MonoCross samples over when I first created MvvmCross. The overall idea of one page to one "ViewModel" stays the same, although the mvvm binding offers more continuous view-viewmodel interactions than the more discrete Controller-Action model.
At a practical level:
MvvmCross itself is very modular and can be used in "CrossLight" mode where it simply provides data-binding and plugins - see CrossLight in http://mvvmcross.wordpress.com/. You might be able to use this for migrating pages one-by-one
MonoCross isn't really very interface/IoC based - so you may find that your resulting MvvmCross migration would also not be interface based either
MonoCross apps tend to use file-linking and #defines rather than PCLs - so you may find it easier to not use PCLs in MvvmCross
I suspect the best option for this migration is to let your team experiment - they already have lots of knowledge about your app and about what they do and don't need and what benefits they do and don't get from a framework.
Related
I am new to Xamarin and not sure if chose Xamarin.Forms to create a application for ios and android platform has a problem or not.
The application has some features below:
The application will be able to running some code in background without launching application by user.
The application can be launched by a href link or a notification.
The application is able to launch a builtin Camera application, and receive picture data from Camera application.
Thanks,
Bo
The features you are mentioning can be done with both. Actually, anything you can do on Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android can be done with Forms. Because Forms is only an abstraction layer for the UI which is installed by a NuGet package.
Now, having that said when to use Forms or when to use iOS/Android? It is mostly about UI. Are you going to do some advanced or platform specific stuff is is easier to implement that with the platform specific project.
If you UI will be the same in both platforms and mostly consists of some lists and input fields, then that is a very good candidate for a Forms project.
Notice how I said it is easier to do in the platform specific projects. Again here, you can do anything in Forms as well by the means of Custom Renderers, it is just a bit harder to do.
Ideally try it out yourself and see what suits you best.
In regard with your need to execute code in the background. This will be tricky and is very dependent on the platform that you're on. You will definitely have to write platform specific code for that for which you can use the DependencyService to abstract it to your shared code.
However like AlancLui mentioned executing code in the background isn't something that is easy to do on mobile. On iOS it is restricted to accessing location data or playing music, but still your app needs to be running (in the background). Android has something called Services for this, which makes it a bit easier.
VS2013 update 5, MVC5 using Areas
I have a stand-alone function programmed for a website. The functionality is a specific user interface to collect survey responses in a particular way. It has several controllers, a model and a group of views. The functionality is completely contained in an Area of the project, except for the Shared _Layout file that provides the main menu for consistency.
'Is it possible for me to' / 'how do I' compile this Area into a single or set of .dll file(s) that I could then add conveniently to other websites? I'm assuming creating something for transfer/download is very standard functionality. For example, I used Elmah.MVC for this site. What I want to do is pretty much create a package that can be downloaded in a similar way to how we integrate Elmah.MVC into a site. (Be certain I'm not talking about creating error logging software, I'm only using Elmah.MVC as an example of software that is easily integrated into other website applications.)
I've never compiled any website functionality into a .dll(s) for use elsewhere and would appreciate either some specific guidance, or perhaps what would be easier is to provide a link with a good step by step tutorial or explanation for how to do this. Most of what I've found on the web describes bits and pieces of doing this, but it's not enough for me to feel confident with it.
It seems to me there are a lot of 'moving parts' to taking a particular piece of an MVC application and turning it into something that is easily added to other projects.
A particular issue I don't quite grasp is the difference in downloaded packages between getting code and getting just the .dll(s). For instance, when I download an MVC5 site, I get controllers, models and views, but when I download Elmah I get a .dll and no code files. Also, I do understand the concept of transforms, but I'm just struggling right now with even getting from my programmed application into a 'package' regardless of the transforms that make it easy to integrate into another website.
These are just some of my questions I have about how to perform this particular process in developing deliverable and/or shareable software.
What you are looking to do is create a portable MVC Area project. A Portable Area is a set of reusable multi page functionality can be dropped into an application to provide rich functionality without having to custom build functionality that is literally the same in every application. An MVC Portable Area is really just a dll that contains the views, controllers, scripts, etc… needed to use in a website that is either a Web Forms website or an MVC website. A developer can use them for a reusable widget or a complete engine. I have actually used them for both. Here is a link with some basic info to get started. http://elegantcode.com/2012/04/06/mvc-portable-areas/
We have an app written in Objective C. It uses CoreData, RestKit, about 10 viewcontrollers.
We would like to migrate it to Xamarin (so we can target Android and Windows).
I was hoping there was a way to bind the current code to a Xamarin solution and kind of rewrite features step by step within Xamarin (eg: replacing a viewcontroller at a time, and at the end replacing RestKit+CoreData, by SQLite + ServiceStack).
I am aware of the binding to Objective C option that they provide, however, it doesn't look to be the appropriate fit for this (way too complex, probably easier to rewrite the app from scratch).
Is there a way to migrate our current project to Xamarin so we can convert? or do we start from scratch?
Thanks.
Options:
Migrate full project - no;
Automatically create binding for libraries, rewrite business-code, UI-code - yes;
Rewrite from scratch using .Net/Mono classes - yes.
If code size is relatively small, you should rewrite the whole app. Moreover, thus you could have a chance to separate business-logic from UI code and tools libraries (RestKit, CoreData). In perspective, that code will be more reliable and cross-platformish.
This tool can help. It does Obj-c to C# translation (some manual cleanup required):
Automagical
Quite probably, a re-write, from scratch. One thing to keep in mind, if your back-end is .net.. and you are using DTO's.. like with AutoMapper from Entity Framework objects.. you'll be able to re-use those DTO objects on your mobile side with Xamarin. If you are using OData, I'm not sure if this is still a problem, but Xamarin studio wasn't generating OData service clients. So you had to generate them in Visual Studio, then take the generated client code and throw them into your Mobile projects.
sqllite-net is awesome. I've never had any problems with it.
https://github.com/praeclarum/sqlite-net
I currently have a project, with DTO Objects from an Azure WCF service, that I push directly down into SQLLite objects on IOS and Android with Xamarin. I use RestSharp, rather than Service Stack. I should probably go learn the difference.
If you are looking to use SQLCipher from the Component store, to encrypt your sqllite db locally on your device (Good advice to do so), you should be aware that there is an issue in android.. going to 2.2 or 2.3 with SQLCipher. Works for ICS and above though, if I remember right.
Just be careful on your security implementation for allowing clients to connect. I want to say.. don't take too much advice.. and don't take too little either. : )
What is your approach for creating your own set of controls aka own Extensions Library? After a few years of Xpages development we have a huge set of controls that are general purpose for building UI, some web services etc. (Probably as most other developers.) When we start a new project now we have to copy the entire stuff from one database to new one which involves controls, jars, css, images, JAVA code ... and then you completely loose control to maintain some central version of this controls & codes, everything is scattered among several projects/databases and things get messy fast.
We have thought about creating our own extension library as described here
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/dx/Master_Table_of_Contents_for_XPages_Extensibility_APIs_Developer_Guide but there is not enough documentation for this topic and the entire development process is quite complicated (at least seems to me. I tried two times based on docs above going through eclipse plugin project -> feature project -> update site and still having some bugs around)
What is your experience and approach for creating and maintaining shared Xpages controls in your Domino environment? Is there some hidden feature we miss here that can help us?
Take a look at the XSP Starter Kit on OpenNTF and the XPages SDK to setup an eclipse environment for plugin development. You'll also want Eclipse IDE for RCP and RAP Developers. Install the starter kit and SDK into eclipse and you should be all set.
The starter kit is a sample plugin with all kinds of examples of phase listeners, components, etc. Once you want to deploy your plugin, create an update site from within eclipse and use the Update Site NSF available on your server install to place your update site. Once that's done, you can replicate that NSF to any other servers that may need the plugin.
For more information about the starter kit, take a look at this slide deck. There is also a github project for the starter kit. Documentation for the XPages SDK can be found here. And a video for setting up the SDK is available on youtube. Lastly, here's the documentation for setting up the update site NSF.
While we haven't gotten to that yet in XPages, our model for regular Notes design elements is to have a central template that contains the elements that are shared, with those specific design elements marked to inherit from that template. Sometimes, a database inherits design elements from two different central templates.
That way, those centrally controlled design elements remain the same in all databases.
I would recommend looking at some example's on github for how they have library/components setup. One of the more simpler examples that has just a single component built into a Library is Steve Pridemore's App Layout Extension...https://github.com/DominoDev, Another good one is Nathan Freeman's Starterkit: https://github.com/the-ntf/xspstarterkit. Hopefully these will help you get the file structure down on which files you need and how they work.
Can existing .net application(in C#) be converted to MonoDroid? or
Can we port an existing .NET web app to Android using MonoDroid?
MonoDroid is intended to allow you to develop applications in C# as opposed to Java; not as a means to drop an existing application into place.
You asked about a web app, but I'm assuming you mean an ASP.NET web app, which wouldn't map to the Android API, and couldn't simply be copied over. Even taking your HTML and dropping it into something like Titanium would still require a lot of JS tweaking to make it work.
I have a feeling you're looking at a re-write. Maybe if you can provide more details (is this an ASP.NET app, etc.), I could give a better answer.
Yes no problem. But it wouldn't be an automatic process, nor a particularly simple one. All the UI elements, persistence stuff and so on (the platform specific parts of your application) will need to be redone. Depending on your app, and how it is written, this may be a major part, or a relatively small one. The more corners that were cut originally, the more it will cost to port over.
In addition to Tom's answer, I would say it has some limitations(link 1 and link 2) . I blogged some other interesting moments here.
Here is a good example of cross-platform mobile application (monoDroid, monoTouch, WP7).