To get the most out of this book

We recommend that you read the first chapter to make sure that you are up to speed with the basic concepts of Xamarin in general. After that, you could pretty much pick any chapter you like to learn more about. Each chapter is standalone but the chapters are ordered by complexity; the further you are into the book, the more complex the app is.

The apps are adapted for real-world use but some parts are left out, such as proper error handling and analytics, since they are out of the scope of the book. You should, however, get a good grasp of the building blocks of how to create an app.

Having said that, it does help if you have been a C# and .NET developer for a while, since many of the concepts are not really app-specific but are good practice in general, such as Model-View-ViewModel and Inversion of Control.

But, most of all, it's a book you can use to kick-start your Xamarin.Forms development learning curve by focusing on what chapters interest you the most.

Download the example code files

The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Xamarin.Forms-Projects. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/9781789537505_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Open the DescriptionGenerator.cs file and add a constructor, as shown in the following code."

A block of code is set as follows:

public class DescriptionGenerator
{
  private string[] _adjectives = { "nice", "horrible", "great",
                                   "terribly old", "brand new" };
  private string[] _other = { "picture of grandpa", "car", "photo
                               of a forest", "duck" };
  private static Random random = new Random();
  public string Generate()
{
  var a = _adjectives[random.Next(_adjectives.Count())];
  var b = _other[random.Next(_other.Count())];
  return $"A {a} {b}";
}
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

{
    TabLayoutResource = Resource.Layout.Tabbar;
    ToolbarResource = Resource.Layout.Toolbar;

    base.OnCreate(savedInstanceState);
    
    global::Xamarin.Forms.Forms.Init(this, savedInstanceState);
    Xamarin.Essentials.Platform.Init(this, savedInstanceState);
    LoadApplication(new App());
}

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Select System info from the Administration panel."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.