My Question:
In Xamarin.Forms 4.2+, can I suspend the App Shell in any way while I am manipulating it? Or can I suspend the whole UI layouting and rending for an instance?
My Situation:
I am creating an App with Xamarin.Forms where I use the new Shell Navigation. Cause I change the Flyout Menu during app runtime, I want to add and remove some of the FlyoutItem by code.
As an example, I have a LoginPage which I want to replace by a UserProfilePage in the App Menu (Flyout Menu). I always have an AppInfoPage in the menu.
Whenever I remove a FlyoutItem, Shell wants to display the next item. So when I remove the LoginPage, Shell displays AppInfoPage or at least calls the constructor and executes the overload of OnAppearing on the AppInfoPage. OnAppearing then does a lot of things to prepare the App info, which is not needed now cause the page will be OnDisappearing just a few ticks later.
Most UI frameworks have some function like this to avoid unneeded UI layouting and rendering. I tried setting IsVisible = false, IsBusy = true and calling BatchBegin(), but none of them helped me.
Code Example:
Check this simplified example, see the TODOs.
private static void SyncAppShell()
{
try {
// TODO Here I want to disable the automatic "navigation on menu modification"
Current.Items.Add(CreateFlyoutItem($"{flyoutIdPrefix}-{nameof(LoginPage)}",
resources[nameof(AppStrings.LoginPage)],
NavigationConstants.LoginPage,
new LoginPage()));
Current.Items.Add(CreateFlyoutItem($"{flyoutIdPrefix}-{nameof(AppInfo)}",
resources[nameof(AppStrings.AppInfo)],
NavigationConstants.AppInfo,
new AppInfo()));
Current.Items.Remove(_staticReferenceToLogoutPage);
}
finally
{
// TODO Here I want to enable the automatic "navigation on menu modification"
}
}
private static FlyoutItem CreateFlyoutItem(string id, string title, string route, ContentPage page, bool isEnabled = true)
{
var flyoutItem = new FlyoutItem { Title = title, StyleId = id, IsEnabled = isEnabled };
flyoutItem.Items.Add(new ShellContent { Route = route, Content = page });
return flyoutItem;
}
Related
Is there any way to detect the press of the back button of the Navigation Page in Xamarin forms?
You can override your navigation page "OnBackButtonPressed" method:
protected override bool OnBackButtonPressed()
{
Device.BeginInvokeOnMainThread(async () =>
{
if (await DisplayAlert("Exit?", "Are you sure you want to exit from this page?", "Yes", "No"))
{
base.OnBackButtonPressed();
await App.Navigation.PopAsync();
}
});
return true;
}
If you are using the shell, you can override the Shell's OnNavigating event:
void OnNavigating(object sender, ShellNavigatingEventArgs e)
{
// Cancel back navigation if data is unsaved
if (e.Source == ShellNavigationSource.Pop && !dataSaved)
{
e.Cancel();
}
}
Update:
OnBackButtonPressed event will get fired ONLY on Android when user press the Hardware back button.
Seems like you are more interested to implement when any page get disappeared you want to do something!
In that case:
You have the page's two methods -
protected override void OnAppearing()
{
base.OnAppearing();
Console.WriteLine("Hey, Im coming to your screen");
}
protected override void OnDisappearing()
{
base.OnDisappearing();
Console.WriteLine("Hey, Im going from your screen");
}
You can override those 2 methods on any page to track when they appear and disappear.
Recent updates to Xamarin forms mean you can now do this in an application made with Shell Navigation for navigation back arrow on both platforms.
Use the Shell.SetBackButtonBehavior method, for example running this code in the constructor of your page object will allow the back navigation to take place only when the bound viewmodel is not busy:
Shell.SetBackButtonBehavior(this, new BackButtonBehavior
{
Command = new Command(async() =>
{
if (ViewModel.IsNotBusy)
{
await Shell.Current.Navigation.PopAsync();
}
})
});
In the body of the Command you can do whatever you need to do when you are intercepting the click of the back button.
Note that this will affect only the navigation back button, not the Android hardware back button - that will need handling separately as per the answers above. You could write a shared method called from both the back button pressed override and the command on shell back button behaviour places to share the logic.
You must override native navigationbar button behavior with custom renderer. OnBackButtonPressed triggers only physical device button. You can read good article how to achive this here
I am trying to create a custom control for webview, i am trying to get a checkbox inside a webview Reason :- we have a bunch of text to be displayed and unless the user reaches the end of the scroll he cannot move to the next page and at the end of the scroll there is a checkbox where user has to check the the checkbox and then he can process. here i have tried putting the checkbox and webview inside the stacklayout but the issue is webview have its own scroll bar and and stacklayout scroll bar does not work when a user try to scroll as the webview scroller scrolls out also when i try to close the Webview Page with back button the webview gets close and not the page
i am not sure what approach should i apply here.
i am getting my html data from my webapi.
anyone with some solution would be appreciable
here is my custom renderer which i have wrote but the piece missing here is how can i add another xamarin control inside this
public class CustomPdfViewRenderer : WebViewRenderer
{
public CustomPdfViewRenderer(Context context) : base(context)
{
}
protected override void OnElementChanged(ElementChangedEventArgs<WebView> e)
{
base.OnElementChanged(e);
if (Control != null)
{
Control.Settings.BuiltInZoomControls = true;
Control.Settings.DisplayZoomControls = false;
Control.Settings.LoadWithOverviewMode = true;
Control.Settings.UseWideViewPort = true;
}
}
}
You can try the following approach:
Add checkbox to HTML
When the user check checkbox call some JavaScript function
When JavaScript function is called, call C# function (Xamarin) which will enable the user to process to the next page (or some other Xamarin side stuff)
Here is how you can call C# function from JavaScript :HybridWebView
I have a Xamarin.Forms application which uses a TabbedPage, let's call it T, T consists of 3 ContentPage children A, B and C. Since the usere has the possibility to edit some data on tab B, I want to notify user before leaving tab in order to allow him to cancel the navigation change and save changes first or to discard changes and leave. So far I have managed to override OnBackButtonPressed() method and the navigation bar back button (which would exit TabbedPage). However I quickly noticed that I am still loosing changes when switching between tabs. I would like to override the click on new tab, so I could first present user with the leaving dialog and the skip the change or continue with it. What would be the best way to do this? I am currently working only on Android platform, so solutions on the platform level are also acceptible.
Thank you for your suggestions and feedback :)
I do not think there is an easy way to do this ,
you can use OnDissappearing and OnAppearing for the pages, that is as easy as it gets .
However I think you are using the wrong design.
Having tabs are ment to make it easier to navigate between pages, if you are going to notify the user when changing the tabs then it would be annoying . If I were you i would save the data for each page locally. so when you get back to the page you will have the data anyway.
So in the end I followed the advice of Ahmad and implemented the persisting of data on individual tabs so they are not lost when tabs are switched. (I no longer refresh input fields from data from model when OnAppearing is called).
But in order to know if there are some unsaved changes on my ChildB page, I had to implement the following procedures:
I created the method HandleExit on my ChildB page, which checks for unsaved changes in fields (at least one value in input fields is different from the ones in stored model) and the either prompts the user that there are unsaved changes (if there are some) or pops the navigation stack if there are no changes.
private async Task HandleExit()
{
if(HasUnsavedChanges())
{
var action = await DisplayAlert("Alert", "There are unsaved changes, do you want to discard them?", "Discard changes", "Cancel");
if(!action)
{
return;
}
}
await Navigation.PopAsync();
}
Since there are two ways on how user can return from Tabbed page (pressing the back button on device or pressing the back button in navigation bar, I had to:
A: override the back button method on my ChildB page, so it calls the HandleExit method. But since Navigation.PopAsync() needs to be called on UI thread, I had to explicitly execute the method on UI thread as written below:
protected override bool OnBackButtonPressed()
{
Device.BeginInvokeOnMainThread(new Action(async () =>
{
await HandleExit();
}));
return true;
}
B: Since there is no way to intercept the navigation bar back button on the ContentPage, I had to intercept the event on the platform level (Android) and then pass the event to the ContentPage if necessary via MessagingCenter. So first we need to intercept the event, when navigation bar button is pressed in one of the child pages and send the event via MessagingCenter. We can do that but adding the following method in our MainActivity.cs class:
public override bool OnOptionsItemSelected(IMenuItem item)
{
// check if the current item id
// is equals to the back button id
if (item.ItemId == 16908332)
{
// retrieve the current xamarin forms page instance
var currentpage = Xamarin.Forms.Application.Current.MainPage.Navigation.NavigationStack.LastOrDefault();
var name = currentpage.GetType().Name;
if(name == "ChildA" || name == "ChildB" || name == "ChildC")
{
MessagingCenter.Send("1", "NavigationBack");
return false;
}
}
return base.OnOptionsItemSelected(item);
}
Now whenever we will press the navigation bar back button in one of the child pages (ChildA, ChildB, ChildC) nothing will happen. But the button will work as before on the rest of the pages. For the second part of solution we need to handle the message from MessagingCenter, so we need to subscribe to it in our ChildB page. We can subsribe to the message topic in OnAppearing method as follows:
MessagingCenter.Subscribe<string>(this, "NavigationBack", async (arg) => {
await HandleExit();
});
Be careful to unsubscribe to the topic in OnDisappearing() otherwise strange things could happen, since there will be references left to your ContentPage even if you pop it from your navigation stack.
Now that we have handled both requests for back navigation in our ChildB page, we also need to handle them in all of remaining child pages (ChildA, ChildC), so they will know if there are unsaved changes in ChildB page, even if it is currently not selected. So the solution is again compraised of handling the device back button, and navigation bar back button, but first we heed a way to check if ChildB has unsaved changes when we are on one of the remaining pages, so we again write HandleExit method but this time it is as follows:
private async Task HandleExit()
{
var root = (TabbedPage)this.Parent;
var editPage = root.Children.Where(x => x.GetType() == typeof(ChildB)).FirstOrDefault();
if(editPage != null)
{
var casted = editPage as ChildB;
if (casted.HasUnsavedChanges())
{
var action = await DisplayAlert("Alert", "There are unsaved changes, do you want to discard them?", "Discard changes", "Cancel");
if (!action)
{
return;
}
}
}
await Navigation.PopAsync();
}
The only thing that remains now is to handle both navigation back events inside remaing child pages. The code for them is the same as in the actual ChildB page.
A: Handling the device back button.
protected override bool OnBackButtonPressed()
{
Device.BeginInvokeOnMainThread(new Action(async () =>
{
await HandleExit();
}));
return true;
}
B: Subscribing to topic from MessagingCenter
MessagingCenter.Subscribe<string>(this, "NavigationBack", async (arg) => {
await HandleExit();
});
If everthing has been done correctly, we should now be prompted with a dialog on any of the child pages if there are unsaved changes on the ChildB page. I hope this will help somebody in the future :)
I need to add a custom tab item into my TabbedPage. That shouldn't be a page but an overlay view. It is "More" item for the bottom menu opening a more items menu over the currently shown page.
So far I found the following solution:
protected override void OnCurrentPageChanged()
{
base.OnCurrentPageChanged();
if (this.isInitialized)
{
if (CurrentPage.Title == "More")
{
CurrentPage = this.lastSelectedPage;
}
}
this.lastSelectedPage = CurrentPage;
}
It's enough to prevent opening the corresponding fake page. After this I need to show an overlay view and have no item how to do it from the tabbed page.
Another solution I'm working out now is to write a custom renderer for my tabbed page and manage all the custom work there. The question in this case is how to show my custom view over the existing content. I tried AddView (iOS) in the renderer but getting runtime exception.
public override void ItemSelected(UITabBar tabbar, UITabBarItem item)
{
base.ItemSelected(tabbar, item);
var view = new UILabel()
{
Text = "Test"
};
View.Add(view);
}
I have 2 pages in my Xamarin Forms app. My first page has 4 icons in the toolbar. My second page is a login page and has a tick and a cross in the toolbar.
I can't get the login page to show any icons unless I make it a navigation page. I also have to clear ToolBarItems on the first page before calling PushAsync() otherwise it complains there are too many toolbar items.
If I call PopAsync() on the login page it does not return to the first page. I'm guessing this is due to their being 2 navigation pages. I also tried PopToRootAsync().The back button works however.
My question is - how do I show different toolbar icons on 2 different pages in a way that allows navigation to work?
I'm testing this on Windows Phone 8.0
Here is the code calling the login page:
private async void ShowLoginPage()
{
ToolbarItems.Clear();
var page = new NavigationPage(new LoginPage());
await Navigation.PushAsync(page);
}
and here is the code to return to the first page:
private void Cancel()
{
Navigation.PopToRootAsync();
}
I'm running Xamarin.Forms v1.2.2.6243
One thing you could try is to keep your Login Page inside of a NavigationPage, and then instead of running PopAsync() within the Login Page after they have logged in successfully, simply replace the MainPage with your old Navigation page:
In your App class:
public NavigationPage AppNavPage = new NavigationPage(new FirstPage());
public App() {
MainPage = AppNavPage;
}
In your FirstPage:
private async void ShowLoginPage() {
ToolbarItems.Clear();
var page = new NavigationPage(new LoginPage());
await Navigation.PushAsync(page);
}
In Login Page:
private async void OnCreateClicked(object sender, EventArgs e) {
bool loginInfoIsGood = CheckLoginInfo(); //Check their login info
if(loginInfoIsGood) {
Application.Current.MainPage = App.AppNavPage;
}
}
Otherwise, I have also done a custom renderer for the NavigationRenderer on iOS to insert toolbar items onto the right side of the Navigation Bar and have overridden some Menu related stuff on Android to change the icon text/colors.
One option that you have, and one that I implemented in my own app, is a custom renderer that removes the navigation header from the app and then you could build your own custom header. With this approach, you do lose some of the native feel of the app, and you have to implement much of the transitional functionality your self. However, it gives you alot more control over the look.
CustomRenderer that removes the navigationBar:
//add using statements
// add all view here that need this custom header, might be able to build a
//base page that others inherit from, so that this will work on all pages.
[assembly: ExportRenderer(typeof(yourView), typeof(HeaderRenderer))]
class HeaderRenderer : PageRenderer
{
public override void ViewWillAppear(bool animated)
{
base.ViewWillAppear(animated);
this.NavigationController.SetNavigationBarHidden(true, true);
}
}
After this you can build a header view that can be placed on the top of every page (I am using xaml) so I don't know if it is relevant in you application.
Edit: You might need to change this renderer for differnt page types.