MonoMac and Launch Services - monomac

I'm a .NET Developer trying my hand at an application on OS X. MonoMac makes so many things easy for me. I've managed to write an application useful to myself using just the MonoMac posts people have done and the Apple Developer documentation.
I can't seem to find out how to actually associate a file extension to my application. I believe this needs to be done via Launch Services or maybe add something to the Info.plist in my project.
Any hints, code or how tos?

Read this guidelines on Runtime Configuration from Apple: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/MacOSX/Conceptual/BPRuntimeConfig/000-Introduction/introduction.html as pointed by this answer: How to associate a specified type of file with my program?

Related

Xamarin.Forms or Xamarin.Android/Xamarin.IOS

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.

Converting a .Net dll to a .Net Core dll

We have this application written in Visual Basic (Windows Form Application) and I am tasked to convert it to Universal App (UWP). the said application uses a dll that is specific to .Net Framework so in order to convert it into a Universal App, I need to have a dll that is targeting .Net Core.
Is there a way to do it?
I know nothing in dll stuffs, can someone enlighten me up? Any help will be appreciated.
Your best bet in this case is the Desktop App Converter.
In summary, what that does is takes your existing .exe application and converts it to an Universal Store appx. In most cases this can happen without any code changes, and the resulting app can be deployed to the Windows Store or other UWP deployment channels (MDM solutions). It also lets you add some of the UWP features such as Live Tiles or Push Notifications, while others won't be possible with this (Adaptive Layouts). The application, though running under the new Application Model will still run with the same permissions as the original .exe (not sandboxed).
So, if you are being asked to convert the app for (some of) those reasons, it might be your best solution.
If this does not work for you, there is no other choice than a complete rewrite at this point since UWP does not support Forms, you will need to use XAML, so your entire UI stack needs to be redone at which point, a complete refresh usually makes more sense.

How to get information about UWP app?

How can I get information about an UWP application on Windows 10 from another application?
As a minimum, I am interested in application name and default tile. Then, I would like to be able to learn as much as possible, of course.
Some UWP apps can be linked to an EXE. That is, their main window is created by an EXE. This helps. At least, I know the location of "resource.pri", which presumably can be read.
But, there are apps which do not have EXE, and "hosted" by wwahost.exe instead. These are black boxes to me. Is there any way to know what is inside?
I would appreciate any hints.
Thanks
It's possible, but very different than what we do for desktop apps. I can share you the possible solution but there are some security issues, so I suggest you contact Microsoft to get a better way(maybe open some APIs for this kind of information) ensure your users have a safe system.
Here is what we need to do to get these information.
Enum WWAHost process.
You can enum "File type" items loaded into WWAHost, and find the one which is in this format: "C:\Program Files\WindowsApps\xxxx". When you view the app in Task Manager and view its properties, you will find it is a folder property windows. And you can also use Process Explorer to check the WWAHost process, and you will find the folder format I mentioned.
(Security Issue) To get the package name, version and more information, you have to access the folder I mentioned above. By reading the AppxManifest and dumping the resource.pri by using "makepri dump" and reading the generated resource.pri.xml, you will be able to get many information. But, we have to use special way to get access to the windowsapps folder and it will raise security risk to your users' OS(and maybe other issues). But if it is for your personal use, it's OK.

Azure Mobile services : using shared libraries in Custom API

Azure Mobile services (node.js backend) : I remember vaguely sometime back I had read somewhere that the shared libraries cannot be used in Custom API, however I don't remember where exactly I read that. Tried googling, searching here in SO, but didn't find anything. Now that I started coding my Custom API, I need to know this for sure, whether what I remember vaguely is really true or not; if someone has any idea about this, I'll much appreciate if you can confirm.
many thanks.
Yes you can create shared scripts and use them from your mobile service custom API scripts.
See this link for enabling source control and getting a local copy so you can create and push your scripts: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/mobile-services-store-scripts-source-control/#use-npm
Then take a look at this link for more on using some of the "native" node modules or helper functions: http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/mobile-services-how-to-use-server-scripts/#shared-code

How to execute local files on embedded chrome using Awesomium.NET or CefSharp

I have used several solutions like Berkelium project, CEfSharp, awesomium.net, The Web application i built constitutes of Javascipts, xml, CSS. When I used these solutions for files published on server they properly work out but when i give path like (file:///path) it stops responding.
Depending on your needs as alternatives to file:// maybe look at either:
Implementing a SchemeHandler as showcased by both the CefSharp.WinForms.Example and WPF ditto.
Maybe even an OWIN married with CEF implementation, like Harley
or see this other answer: Ajax not working in CefSharp based WebView with local files

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