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.
Related
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
I'm working on a xamarin PCL project and I want to implement a print function.
In my shared code, I have a grid that contains a content view. the content view contains another grid with a custom list that contains data I want to print. as a toolbar item, i have a print button that calls in a dependency service but I don't know how to implement a print functionality for xamarin PCL content views.
The main platform is up.
Any help?
I'm working on a xamarin PCL project and I want to implement a print function. In my shared code.
You could implement a print function via DependencyService for per platform. And invoke the unified interface in your xamarin PCL project.
For the interface implementation about per platform, you could refer to the following document.
Android:Native Printing with Android.
IOS : IOS Print Sample. UWP: Print case.
any idea how I can start a native UWP page from a Xamarin Forms page?
The reason why I'm asking:
I have a XF application that needs to start a UWP library after a click event.
This library provides a special ORC reader.
Therefore I created a dependency service to run the platform specific function.
What I need now, is to open that UWP page, that contains the "Camera stream" to show the user what he is currently scanning.
And this is where I am hanging at the moment.
In my class that is called from the dep. service, I
myPage mp = new myPage();
But how can I show the new page?
Frame fr = Window.Current.Content as Frame gives me the error, that this page cannot be converted from a XF Frame to a Window Frame.
Or is there generally another way to handle this? Some advice would be great.
This sounds like a custom renderer.
Create a new OcrView class in your shared project inherited from View.
Place it on your Xamarin Forms XAML page.
Handle the OCR component in the UWP renderer.
Have a look at the Implementing a View section on this custom renderer overview
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