According to MvvmCross 5.3 documentation you can mix Xamarin.Forms and Xamarin.Native:
"With MvvmCross 5.3, you will now be able to mix and match Native Xamarin views with Xamarin.Forms pages using ViewModel navigation!"
My scenario is the solution contains Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS projects which rely quite heavily on MvvmCross. Going forward I would like to be able to create new views/pages using Xamarin.Forms. I'm assuming this is what is meant by "mix and match".
Other than the above statement I can't find any documentation or examples on how to do this.
I tried extending the MvvmCross TipCal app to show a new Xamarin.Forms view/page without any luck.
Can someone explain or provide an example of how to mix and match Xamarin.Forms with Native Xamarin using MvvmCross?
I think if you truly want to mix forms/native you need to either create a custom view presenter or trick the existing view presenter to "embed" a forms page into a viewcontroller/fragment/activity.
I have created a helper library as a proof of concept to embed Xamarin.Forms content pages into fragments/activities/viewControllers but could use some help ironing out some bugs with Android. It seems to work fine for iOS.
Let's take iOS as an example.
This approach has you create you content page as normal, but also create a wrapper viewController. You embed the content page in the viewController and when you navigate, you navigate to the viewController wrapper instead of the content page.
https://github.com/dornerworks/Mvx.Forms.PageWrapper.iOS
https://github.com/dornerworks/Mvx.Forms.PageWrapper.Android
Related
I have a very important library written in swift with 3D rendering model on scenekit. So is there a way to mix native code screens and Xamarin screens without the need to go through the binding path? Meaning, I want to keep my app on xamarin as is, but I want to add some screens in pure native swift code.
So is there a way to mix native code screens and Xamarin screens
without the need to go through the binding path?
Short answer is no, you cannot.
When you have swift code and need to use it with xamarin apps you have only two ways.
Binding way as you mentioned
Rewrite you library from swift to c#.
Is it possible to mix iOS Storyboards and Xamarin Forms within one application? I have a bunch of views that are easier to be created in Forms, but some which are heavily customized so we would need to create some of them in native code.
I would like to use Storyboards to create the native parts, but can't seem to find a way to navigate from a Forms page to a Storyboard and vice versa.
I don't mind doing it from code, just need to know the direction to look into and if it's even possible.
You can create native views using the concept of Custom Renderers (see links below). The idea is that you create a Xamarin Forms Control that's shared between all platforms and which old common properties (like colors, general data etc), and do the native rendering on the iOS/Android/WP projects.
So, for your storyboard, you can create it usign Xamarin.iOS, and render using a Custom Renderer. The link posted by #GSerg in the comments have some information and examples, but you can take a closer look at the oficial documentation as well:
Introduction to Custom Renderers
Customizing Controls on Each Platform
Customizing Control Rendering in Xamarin.Forms (video)
Also, for more real world examples you can take a look at the Xamarin Forms XLabs project.
Thanks to Rafael Steil's answer. I looked at the links and a few more samples.
Notably:
Custom Renderer Map
Using Xamarin Forms alongside Storyboard
And I created a sample project to show the back-and-forth navigation between Xamarin Forms and pages created in Storyboards. You can find it over here:
Xamarin Forms Mixed with Native
I am working in xamarin pcl project , I am trying to keep sliding drawer in my pcl project but i dont know how to do that .
Are you using Xamarin.Forms?
If not, i would advice to use a framework like MvvmCross (https://github.com/MvvmCross/MvvmCross)
This would enable you to split the actual implementation of the drawer / hamburger menu into the different UI projects like iOS and Android(maybe WP8 too).
Since those platforms all behave differently, for example Android uses Fragments which are replaced inside the activity containing your navigation drawer, you should use a custom presenter to determine where you want the specific platform to navigate to. You can find more information on that topic here: http://slodge.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/presenter-roundup.html
I'm trying to add a Xamarin.Forms page to an existing Xamarin Android app.
I'm struggling to figure out how to mix native Xamarin Android pages and Xamarin.Forms pages.
All the articles and examples I have seen describe either Forms or Xamarin apps and not a hybrid of the two.
The best idea I have read about so far is to add a native stub and replace the content with Xamarin.Forms content but I'm not sure how to achieve this.
Update
I'm using MvvmCross so my android view is inherited from MvxActivity. I have a StackLayout containing views using Xamarin.Forms. How do I get XF to convert to android code so I can use with SetContentView?
When you create a new Xamarin.Forms project, for instance with a SharedProject approach, it will create the launcher project and initial class file that will be executed for you for each platform.
For instance on Android this is in MainActivity.cs. If you look inside this file you will notice that it inherits from AndroidActivity which in turn inherits from Activity, which is the typical class used on activities.
So you have two options available for you to create a mixed hybrid solution:-
1) Inherit from AndroidActivity in your platform-specifc stub-page should you want to display Xamarin.Forms content, or alternatively
2) Inherit from Activity, and do the same as usual.
If you want to display a Xamarin.Forms page from the stub-page you can then just use some boiler-plate code such as the following in the OnCreate method:-
SetPage({some class that returns a Xamarin.Forms.Page object, i.e. ContentPage});
You can then use the normal navigation that is specific to Android to either display a Xamarin.Forms page or a platform-specific Activity page.
I’m working on an application for Android and iOS, which requires a certain flexibility for one or two views. That’s why we created & implemented a service that translated a basic list of objects into a user interface for both iOS & Android. But now that Xamarin.Forms is released, we decided to replace our service by the one Xamarin provides. I did succeed in creating the views with Xamarin.Forms, resulting in better looking & smoother running pages. But my problem lies in the navigation of it. Here is a little drawing on what I would like to achieve:
I would like my app to start an activity that starts with a custom fragment. After clicking a button on this fragment, I would like the page I created with the Xamarin.Forms api to be added to my current navigation stack! Once the user is finished with the Xamarin.Forms page, it navigates to a second custom fragment, all that without breaking the navigation cycle. Does anybody have an idea on how I can achieve this?
For the iOS developpers: replace Activity with NavigationController & Fragment with ViewController
Take a look at CarouselPage for Xamarin.Forms' own approach. It doesn't look like that's what you need but you can also look at its source code and maybe make a custom renderer yourself.
You may also want to take a look at MVVM
As for the easier/hackier way you'd want to make a button on each page and when the button is tapped execute Navigation.PushModalAsync(nextPage) - there won't be a "< Back" button any more, you may need to implement that yourself if you need it.
If by your meaning of 'current navigation stack' is for using the native Navigation of each platform, then remember that you don't have to use Xamarin.Forms' Navigation Model and functions such like PushAsync.
If you prefer to do Navigation with code specific to each platform then you can do this the same as normal. Just create your stub pages in each platform specific project and set the Xamarin.Forms content for each page from the shared project.
From each platform specific stub page (Activity / UIView / PhoneApplicationPage) you could then execute an Action<> call setting on the shared Xamarin.Forms page to help with the navigation, or alternatively, hook into a custom-event that is raised from the Xamarin.Forms** page back to the platform specific stub page to allow you to do navigation from there.
Like Sten mentioned there won't be any 'Back' button so you will most likely have to do that yourself.