XAML

Introduction

In Xamarin if you want to use many Android native service/mechanism you have to implement it in Activity class. Or at least that is how Xamarin documentation wants you to do it.

Introduction

This article is builds on topics and solutions introduces in ViewFactory for Xamarin application and Xamarin Master-Detail Page articles. It shows method for easier navigation and use of services via IoC in Xamarin application. Knowledge from previous examples is not necessary, but makes this article bit easier to understand.

Reflection.Emit is very powerful tool. It creates IL code and since C# is converted into IL too, we have the same functionality as in C# and even more. It is very powerful and at the same time very complicated. Because of that it is worth to discuss how and for what it should be used. One idea is to create dynamic code with automatic implementations of interfaces - proxy types.

First things first - Why?

First of all I do not like how creating of views and navigation works in Xamarin. There is much boilerplate needed to just navigate from one page to another. Typically like in Xamarin documentation we have to obtain INavigation interface instance, create instance of a new page, create instance of view model and all dependencies it requires. When you page do not require view model things are real easy and Xamarin sample is just enough.

This article as previous ones (Frame With Padding , Frame Outline Problem , Inheritance from Implicit Styles ) also will be about Xamarin. This time we will inspect Master-Detail page control/mechanism. You can find official documentation for this control here . Quick spoiler: I never used this in any production application. Why? I will explain. Whole article will be to explain why this is just not worth your time. In this and subsequent articles I will introduce much better solution.

Next article about bugs in Xamarin will touch topic of Styles. Styles for all of controls not only Frame (and if you wondering why Frame you should check first two articles about Xamarin here and here) . First of all if you are using Styles in Xamarin you probably know how to define implicit styles. If not here is a sample:

<Application.Resources>
  <ResourceDictionary>
    <Style TargetType="Label">
      <Setter Property="FontSize" Value="45" />
    </Style>
  </ResourceDictionary>
</Application.Resources>

This is another article in mini series of Xamarin bugs and workarounds for them :) Previous one you can find here . This one is again about Frame control. I promise that another one will be about something else B) Issue can be observed when you bind BackgroundColor property of Frame control and something will trigger change of view model source property binded to background color.

If you are a bit advanced with Xamarin you should already now that there is possibility of styling your controls almost like in WPF. Almost, because there is a few strange bugs involving this. For example there is a problem with styling a Padding property in Frame. Consider following Xaml of Xamarin application (I tested it in Android):