Monotouch: Multitasking sample? - xamarin.ios

Are there any Monotouch multitasking sample I can download?
I'm having problems in finding out best practice using multitasking with Monotouch. How I should handle when user presses home button, my application goes to the background, reopens my program and I must show where he left off (how to show the correct form/view) ... a sample of that would I love to see.
Thanks!
Morten

You will have to override the methods DidEnterBackground and WillEnterForeground in the AppDelegate class. Inside these methods, you will have to save the current state of the app on your own (eg. which controller was active, what data was displayed etc).
The implementation of DidEnterBackground should be lightweight. In case you need more time for your app before it gets suspended, check how you could do it in this blog post.

you don't need to do anything.
that should be default behaviour on iPhones that supports Multitasking.
if not so check in you Info.plist for "UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend" or "Application does no run in background" it should be NO.

Related

can i correctly finish an android app in Kotlin, when i swipe it out?

I hope, I can formulate my question correctly and understandable.
When I write an Android App in Kotlin, I normally have a button to close the app and for example finish it with writing a file or something like that.
Now, sometimes I don't finish it with the button, but swipe it out. Then, the file is not wirtten..
Is there a Kotlin statement to catch the "swipe out" and perform some code? When I Inflate another view, at the end I have a dismiss-statement or dismiss.listener and can do some code.
example:
dialog.dismiss() or popupwindow.dismiss()
So question: is there a dismiss.app or something like that?
When your app's Activity is destroyed (either by the user swiping it away, or the system killing the app to free up some resources) it goes through the usual lifecycle steps, ending with onDestroy.
These steps also get pushed to any lifecycle-aware components that are observing that activity's lifecycle, including Fragments (like a DialogFragment) - so that will also get an onDestroy() call. Fragments can be destroyed at other times too, but you can look at the activity's lifecycle to see what's going on there if you need to.
But really, as a general rule you want to save data in something like onStop(), when the activity/fragment is going to stop being visible, i.e. it's going into the background. That's a good time to make sure you've saved all your important data and state, because the user may not be coming back, and you can't be sure onDestroy will be neatly called (e.g. there could be a crash, or the phone might suddenly lose power).
Don't rely on persisting data with the onSaveInstanceState() callback though - that's intended for saving UI state, and if the user backs out of the app / swipes it away, that's counted as a fresh start for the next time they load the app, so onSaveInstanceState won't be called (since the UI state isn't being saved). Use onStop instead (or onPause if you like - have a look at those links for more info on what the difference is)

Who is calling VisualStateManager.GoToState behind the scenes?

I am a newbie to xaml and windows app dev so sorry if this question might seem silly.
I created a textbox and in the designer I right clicked it and selected edit template=>edit a copy and put it into my custom dictionary.
In the control template for this textbox I saw visual states like disabled,focused and so on. And I modified them and run the mobile app and observed that my changes work like changing border color when textbox is focused.
But in order for this to work somebody has to call
VisualStateManager.GoToState("Focused")
when the textbox is focused so who is calling this because I don't see any visual transitions in the control template so how is this happening?
The code in the control itself is calling VisualStateManager.GoToState(...) .
When you start implementing your own custom controls, you might subscribe to events you have available and transition states based on your own logic. Here is an example of a custom control with its own two custom states.
https://github.com/xyzzer/WinRTXamlToolkit/blob/master/WinRTXamlToolkit/Controls/WatermarkTextBox/WatermarkTextBox.cs
XAML is a compiled language, and if you've looked extra close, what happens under the hood, is that the class behind your xaml has the same namespace as your xaml code.
This means (for no practical purpose) that compiling your program turns all of that XAML into C# code before then going over to MSIL and eventually execute as a binary program.
Much of the state changes that happen are event based, and TextBox, like all other user controls, will transmit a message and listen to messages. The Page that contains the TextBox will probably be the one that transmits a state change whenever one of it's children gets focus, and as a good control, the TextBox listens for this event and reacts to it.

WM_PAINT not send when using WS_EX_COMPOSITE

I'm working in a legacy application using MFC.
We have a mechanism to enable/disable controls depending on some business logic.
This mechanism is implemented in the CView-derived class. The way it works is all the views in the application derived from a common CView-derived class (CBaseView) and on the PreTranslateMessage all controls of the view are enabled/disabled.
This worked fine so far because all controls send at least WM_PAINT message when they need to be painted. So the system worked without the user having to move the mouse or anything. I recently added some drawing features and I had to use WS_EX_COMPOSITE to get ride of some flickering. With this flag activated my CView-derived class is not getting any called to PreTranslateMessage when creating the view....so the controls are not disabled until the user moves the mouse over the control.
I understand there is no way to send WM_PAINT using WS_EX_COMPOSITE but is there other message I can use to get the same behaviour???
Edited:
I am currently using the OnIdle approach but it has a big drawback, the windows doesn't become idle until after drawing all the controls...so when you enter the screen al controls are enabled and inmediately they are disabled...this makes a quite ugly effect!
More solutions???
Thanks in advance...
The logical place to enable/disable controls would be CView::OnUpdate, it is called by the framework after the view's document has been modified and from OnInitialUpdate(); you can also call this function if there is some change that would trigger re-evaluation of your business logic.
EDIT
After reading the question a bit more closely, what you could also do is to post a private message at the end of OnInitialUpdate and "catch" it in your PreTranslateMessage:
PostMessage(WM_APP, 0, 0);
Calling InvalidateRect followed by UpdateWindow against the window in question will mark the entire client area as dirty and force an immediate repaint. Remember that WM_PAINT is not really a message, in the queue in the usual sense, it is pushed out after all other messages have been processed for that window, which would include any invalidations of the area being drawn. No message is generated at all if there are no invalid segments of the active window display.

Alerts or Popups in MvvmCross

Does MvvmCross support a cross platform solution for displaying alerts or popups?
Searching the code I found MvxDialogActivityView but it has been commented out. Will this remain the case for now?
If there is no direct support how would you suggest this is best done? (Perhaps the ViewModel would change a property and call FirePropertyChanged so that the View would be aware of it and show an alert.)
Edit 16:04 16th June 2012
What I am trying to do for this specific case is as follows:
On the page a button is clicked, which causes a method to run in the ViewModel which does an evaluation to determine which of two messages should be shown to the customer. The message would be shown as an alert or popup (either native, or preferably totally styled by me). The message would fade after (the click of the OK button, or preferably 3 seconds).
After the message has been dismissed a new page will be navigated too (depending on which of the two messages was shown).
How to handle this definitely depends on what the situation is - there's no single best rule (IMHO)
For a general error display pattern, there's one proposal at http://slodge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/one-pattern-for-error-handling-in.html
I've used similar patterns for showing application level notifications - e.g. for when a long running operation completes or when a chat message arrives or...
One interesting post about how to display message boxes was: http://awkwardcoder.blogspot.co.uk/2012/03/showing-message-box-from-viewmodel-in.html - I'm not sure I'd completely follow the end solution, but there are definitely some good points there about what not to do.
For your updated scenario, I would consider using a messenger (like TinyMessenger) or using normal C# events exposed by the ViewModel and consumed by its View
On the page a button is clicked, which causes a method to run in the ViewModel
I would implement this using an ICommand bound to the button Click/Tap/TouchDown
which does an evaluation to determine which of two messages should be shown to the customer.
I would definitely implement the logic within a Service
This would be called from the ViewModel - and the result/decision would probably cause some property or private field state change.
How does the View then decide to show a message? I can think of 3 options:
The View could just respond to a Property change (normal Mvvm INPC) - this would be my preference
The ViewModel could expose a normal C# event which it triggers...
The ViewModel could send a Message
This last option (Messenging) is probably the most flexible solution here - it decouples the View and ViewModel in case you later decide to change responsibilities. To implement messenging, either:
implement your own hub (like I do for errors in http://slodge.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/one-pattern-for-error-handling-in.html)
or use a generic solution like TinyMessenger
The message would be shown as an alert or popup (either native, or preferably totally styled by me).
This is a View concern - so would be entirely controlled by the View project. I'd use controls like: UIAlert, Toast, ToastPrompt, etc - all of which can be styled
The message would fade after (the click of the OK button, or preferably 3 seconds). After the message has been dismissed...
I'd use some form of Code Behind (or maybe a Behaviour in WP7) in the View. This would detect the click/fade/disappear and would then invoke either an ICommand (my preference) or public method on the ViewModel
a new page will be navigated too
This navigation would be requested from the ViewModel
(depending on which of the two messages was shown).
This would be easy to track through the above flow... presumably the ViewModel already knows what to show.
So that's what I'd do...
it keeps the application flow logic inside the ViewModels (and lower)
it keeps the presentation inside the Views
...but I'm sure there are other options :)
One final note... the fade out and then navigate logic can really get "messed up" by Switching/Tombstoning on WP7 and Android - this may or may not matter for your particular scenario.

showing Wait Screen using LWUIT in J2ME?

Is there any way of showing Wait Screen, while some processing is done in backend, using LWUIT in J2ME ? if yes then how if no then is there any alternate ?
You can look at progress bar with LWUIT. Sample Wait screen used in the makeover demo and the browser demo application in current LWUIT Repository. Also see here.
I had this issue as well, but got a workaround: these suggestions here seemed not to be the best for me. The dialog when it displays will block any other action except it is discarded, even if it was created with no commands.
What I did was to add a wait screen to the BorderLayout.CENTER of the main container or the Form, then when the thread running my background task finishes, the component is now replaced with the loaded component.
I dont know if anyone would find this useful since this has already been answered. I just felt like posting my own trick.
You can start a thread in which you do your stuff of getting data and all and in the UI thread show the loading dialog and then dispose that loading dialog once you are done with your services call.

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