Xamarin - Using Portable Class Libraries a mandatory way to go? - xamarin

Question

Recently I am requested to setup the design for a new app, which needs to be build using Xamarin. The team already created a DEMO app for Android, iOS and Windows Phone. So basically this demo version needs to be transformed/refactored into a proper maintainable product.
When looking into the code what currently is implemented in the DEMO app, I found out that some third party libraries are used which are not available as PCL. This means that I cannot build up my app using PCL's unless I can port this third party library into a PCL.
My findings are:
The functionality we use from this third party library works fine on all 3 platforms
I cannot find any blocking reason why I should not use normal Class Libraries
Questions:
Are there any blocking reasons why I cannot make use of normal Class Libraries?
Will the public apps stores accept these apps or is this not an issue at all?
If not.. Can you give recommendations where especially take care of going with normal Class Library's
If there are.. How can I port third party Libraries to PCL or is there any other way to work around?

Answer 1

First: public app stores don't care about the internals of your app, as long as it follows their guidelines. And that's something Xamarin takes care of, so everything that is dropping out of the compiler will be okay.
Second: You're totally fine with not using PCL if that fits your needs in a better way. In addition to PCL you could also make use of Shared Projects or just linking files from common library projects into each platform-specific project.
But from my personal experience PCL are a good way to make sure the code you're writing and the tools you're using are really working on every platform, so you don't have to be afraid of bad surprises afterwards. And with the PCL profile 78 support of stuff like LINQ etc. is pretty good.
What you can do in addition, is to use a facade inside your shared PCL code, that hides away the concrete implementation, that is then provided for each platform individually.
That could look like:
(PCL)
public interface ILogger
{
void Log(string message);
}
public static class SharedUtilities
{
public static ILogger Logger { get; private set; }
public static void SetUp(ILogger logger)
{
Logger = logger;
}
}
// Now Use it from everywhere in your code:
SharedUtilities.Logger.Log("Hello PCL!");
In your iOS app, for example:
public class IOSLogger : ILogger
{
public void Log(string message)
{
// Make use of a native logging library or whatever you want
}
}
// AppDelegate:
SharedUtilities.SetUp(new IOSLogger());