I have gone all in on Arm devices! My main MAC machine is a Mac Book Air M1 and now my main driver at work is a Windows Dev Kit 2023 (aka Project Volterra). One tricky thing for developers is getting all the software we use to work properly on Arm. Things have come a long way since the original release of Arm devices for Mac and Windows. I have a full setup guide for my M1 for Xamarin and now .NET MAUI development, but what about Windows?

Visual Studio 2022 recently released a full native Arm version and they have been adding more workloads for developers to use. .NET MAUI was recently introduced, which got me excited but I right away ran into an issue, which was that there are no compatible Android emulators for Windows Arm and apparently no plans from Google :(. So, what are our options? Two come to mind.

Deploy to a device

Well, it may be obvious, but you can just plug in a device and use something like Vysor to mirror your device. I am always a fan of deploying and testing on devices as you have full access to everything including Google Play services. As a bonus you don't drag down any resources on your main machine. If you don't have a device, you are still in luck!

Windows Subsystem for Android

That's right! I have blogged and talked about it a bunch, but the Windows Subsystem for Android(WSA) is a great way to deploy and debug applications on any Windows 11 machine. It has expanded into more regions since its first release, which is awesome. If you haven't heard about WSA, it is a mode that you can enable that allows you to run Android applications directly on your Windows machine. There are limitations of course, the largest being no access to Google Play services, but for a lot of developers this will get you off the ground running. Checkout my full video:

If you are using Visual Studio 2022 there is a great extension that will help you get up and running and automatically connect.

Once you have it all set up, it is ready and available!

So, there you go! Two ways to get deploying Android apps if you are developing on a Windows Arm device.

The more and IDE or code editor can do for you the better I say. Visual Studio has been crushing it with new refactorings, IntelliSense, and IntelliCode, one of my favorite features ever. One thing that I have always been hoping for as a XAML developer is deeper connectivity between the XAML and the View-Model. We have seen increased IntelliSense in this area, but with the release of Visual Studio 2019 v16.9 comes code generation from XAML! That is right, you can now have Visual Studio automatically create your properties, commands, and more!

I will walk through this awesome feature for Xamarin.Forms, WPF, and UWP, but if you just want to see it in action, I made an entire video:

Enabling Code Generation

The first thing to do is to create your ViewModel and implement INotifyPropertyChanged (or inherit from something that does). Then just create a control with a Binding associated with it. For example:

<StackLayout>
    <Label Text="{Binding Text}"/>
</StackLayout>

Once you do this, Visual Studio will put little dots under the Text binding and a lightbulb will show up (if you don't see this simply re-compile). The lightbulb will look to assign your x:DataType in Xamarin.Forms or d:DataContext in WPF/UWP.

When I selected this option, it auto added the following code:

xmlns:app1="clr-namespace:App1"
x:DataType="app1:MyViewModel"

What is x:DataType you may be asking? Well, it is a compiled binding, which makes your bindings and apps faster! This is an awesome feature of Xamarin.Forms that you should totally use!

With this code in place, you will now see the dots remain and a new lightbulb show up to create a property called Text for you!

Here, it is recommending adding the property and creating a SetProperty method to invoke PropertyChanged, which is AWESOME!!!! Now, at this point you probably want to refactor the code a little bit and create  BaseViewModel that you put this method in and then in future ViewModels it will not attempt to create the code and just add the property. If you are using Mvvm Helpers, you can use this code as your base:

public class ViewModelBase : BaseViewModel
{
	public bool SetProperty<T>(ref T field, T newValue, [CallerMemberName] string propertyName = null) =>
		SetProperty<T>(ref field, newValue, propertyName, null, null);
}

Now, if you add another control with another binding, you will see nice tight code will be generated for you:

Is your mind blown yet?!?!? Mine is! However, it gets even better!

Generating Commands!

Now, let's say we are going to add a Command to a Button we would naturally want that code to be generated as well, correct? Well, you are in luck because it will!

This code is really neat because it not only created the command and the method, but it also brought in the correct namespace to use the Xamarin.Forms Command!

Command Generation on UWP/WPF

If you are over on UWP or WPF you will not see this code generation because the core framework does not have an implementation of ICommand. However, if you are using a framework or library such as Mvvm Helpers then it will be smart enough to figure it out and recommend code for you!

MIND BLOWN!!!! ARE YOU NOT IMPRESSED!?!?!? Amazing!

Cleaner Code with C# 8 & 9!

One of the things you may have noticed is that the code for Xamarin.Forms and WPF/UWP are different in the screenshots. That is because my WPF sample app is using .NET 5, which uses C# 9 by default. The Xamrin.Forms app is using .NET Standard 2.0, which defaults to C# 7. However, you can easily adjust what version of C# is used in your project by adding the LangVersion into your csproj.

<LangVersion>8.0</LangVersion>

Take a look at my previous blog about upgraded a project to C# 9 in a minute.

Once you upgrade to 8.0 or higher the old code:

private ICommand clickCommand;

public ICommand ClickCommand
{
	get
	{
		if (clickCommand == null)
		{
			clickCommand = new Command(Click);
		}

		return clickCommand;
	}
}

private void Click()
{
}

will be upgraded to this lovely clean tight code:

private ICommand clickCommand;
public ICommand ClickCommand => clickCommand ??= new Command(Click);

private void Click()
{
}

Code Generation for Models

So far we have had Visual Studio generate code in our ViewModel classes on our page, but what about our models that are bound to an ItemsSource in a ListView or CollectionView Well no worries, all you need to do is set your x:DataType on your DataTemplate:

<ListView ItemsSource="{Binding Items}">
    <ListView.ItemTemplate>
        <DataTemplate x:DataType="app1:Item">
            <ViewCell>
                <Label Text="{Binding Text}"/>
            </ViewCell>
        </DataTemplate>
    </ListView.ItemTemplate>
</ListView>

Then you will see lightbulbs on any control inside of the DataTemplate!!

Again, this is pretty mind blowing and amazing! I was able to create all of my ViewModels and Models all without leaving the XAML!

Just the start!

This is all from me just playing around with Visual Studio 2019 v16.9 for a few minutes exploring this awesome new feature. There is for sure much more to come as Marco from the XAML Tooling team tweeted about the new feature and discussed with commentors about extending the templates for code that is being generated. Also, as of right now this is just a feature on Visual Studio on Windows, but since Visual Studio for Mac uses pretty much the same engine, we can imagine it will make its way to VSM soon.

This is just one of the many features that was included in Visual Studio 2019 v16.9 so check the release notes and upgrade today!

quicktype! Yes that quicktype that I blogged about late last year on how to convert JSON to C# classes in the browser. I am back talking about it again because they have made tons of great enhancements and just today released a new extension for Visual Studio 2017! I should mention here that all of this is FREE.

Watch Now, Questions Later

Want to see it in action? Checkout my short video overview:

Doesn't VS Do This?

It is true that Visual Studio has a Paste JSON as Classes feature, but it basically does the bare minimum. quicktype will automatically add in JsonProperty names, has enhanced partial classes, better names on parameters, fills in a full class and namespace, and even adds helper classes for you so you don't have to write boiler plate code.

Here is a good example of the power of quicktype. Let's take the Azure Cognitive Services Text Analytics JSON that is returned from the RESTful call.

It is pretty complex JSON with mutliple classes and arrays. If I use the "Special Paste" we do get C# classes back, but they aren't very pretty.

I now have to go through and fix all of the parameter and class names and add in JsonProperty attributes to the tops.

Now let's see the quicktype version:

Now we are talking! Look at those pretty classes and parameters!

Alright, that is enough show an tell for today. Go grab the extension and tell them Motz sent you on their community Slack!

This is NOT sponsored content. I do know the awesome quicktype team and was given early access to the extension. I just believe this is an awesome tool developers should have

Visual Studio 2017 was just released yesterday, and it is awesome! You can re-live all the keynote and demo deep dives on Channel 9. There are tons of new features and a huge revamp to installation but things to me still aren’t absolutely perfect in the setup of how I like to develop. So in the spirit of my Cycle 8 and Cycle 9 installation guides I am proud to bring you the ultimate VS 2017 Setup Guide for Xamarin!

Installation

The installation is brand new and pretty awesome. You now pick “workloads” of development that you want to install and it will take care of the rest. It is highly configurable, but the default for me of installing tons of stuff was super fast and installed in under 30 minutes! If you just do the core VS 2017 install it will be installed in under 5 minutes! That is crazy. For Xamarin development there is literally a Xamarin checkbox under mobile, it is the first choice and really the only choice you need:

Some other work loads I recommend are pointed out including:

• UWP

• .NET Development

• ASP.NET

• Azure

• Data

• and hidden at the bottom .NET Core

Additional Configuration for iOS

Since the Xamarin documentation is amazing on this go read it here.

Additional Configuration for Android

There are a few tweaks here that I must make to be happy for Android development. While the installer is nearly perfect, here is my recommendation.

1.) Install the latest JDK 1.8 x64 (currently 8u121)

Installing the x64 version on Windows is extremely important because it is needed for custom controls in the Android designer and also for the Xamarin.Forms Previewer to work. If you don’t have a x64 machine know that these are a few of the restrictions that may not work on your machine.

You will then need to set the path in the tools-options menu:

2.) Update Android SDKs & Emulators

This is just good to know in general because you will need to update things every once in a while, but from Tools -> Android, you are able to get to the Android SDK and Emulators, let’s start with SDK Manager.

The installer sets us up for success with SDK 23 and the build tools needed, but I like to install the latest and greatest for API 24 and optionally you can pick SDK Platform 25:

The first 3 are really important and you will want to grab those to compile with the latest and greatest.

Android Emulators

This actually gets its own section because it is a bit complicated. We now install the default Google Emulators, both Arm and x86. The latter, x86 are extremely fast, but require you to turn off Hyper-V and ensure that you have the Intel Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (Intel HAXM) installed. So first, go turn off Hyper-V and then install Haxm and you will be nice and happy.

I then recommend going to the Android Emulator Manager and creating a new emulator with my preferred options:

I hear you yelling right now, JAMES I NEED MY HYPER-V!!!!!! Alright fine, then don’t install HAXM and install the Hyper-V VS Emulators for Android! Now there are some things to know with these. First, they are pretty nice and fast emulators. Second, you aren’t going to get the latest and greatest as they haven’t been updated in a while. Third, if you are running a Skylake or newer processor you need to turn on compatibility mode or your app will fail to debug. Lastly, there are no google play services or maps on them unless you hack around it and install gapps with this awesome guide.

Creating your first app!

It is time! Let’s create a new app with File -> new project, which will reveal all the Xamarin templates for mobile development:

If you are creating a solo iOS/Android/tvOS app with high fidelity UIs for each platform then head to those sections, if you want a cross platform solution or a Xamarin.Forms solution and project then head to Cross-Platform to discover the new Cross Platform App Template.

This will bring up a wizard to guide you through creating your first Blank app for Xamarin Native or Xamarin.Forms! 

There you have it! You should be all setup for success and building mobile apps in no time. Be sure to checkout the Xamarin blog on all the new stuff in VS 2017.

It has been a bit over a year since I first introduced my Xamarin.Android Templates pack for Visual Studio and things sure have changed in the world of Android since then. Early on the templates pack only introduced a few item templates for menu items and a simple implementation of the Navigation Drawer, my favorite way to navigate in Android. Then this March Google went and changed everything with AppCompat and the introduction of the new Toolbar. I rushed to update all of my templates to include all these nice new features. It looks like it is that time of the year again with the new Android Design Support Library, which yet again changes how we implement the Navigation Drawer and of course let’s not forget about the big change to AppCompatActivity. 

I am pleased to announce the latest release of my templates that incorporate all of these changes to make it easy to get up and running with AppCompat and the new fancy navigation drawer featuring the NavigationView.

You can grab these templates from the Visual Studio Gallery by going to “Tools->Extensions and Updates” in any flavor of Visual Studio and searching for Xamarin.Android Templates. 

Once installed you will see a few new Project Templates under Android to create a blank app that features AppCompat or a full Navigation Drawer enabled app also featuring AppCompat:

Once you have your app up and running you might want to add a few new menu items such as search, share, or just a menu item and I have you covered:

Of course everything is open source on GitHub so you take take a peek at what I am doing in the templates. Additionally, if you already have an app and are looking to upgrade your navigation drawer or tabs to the new material support library implementations then look no further than my Xam.NavDrawer GitHub repo that has been updated with an awesome new example! 

I hope you enjoy these new updated templates and I look forward to your feedback or suggestions for future updates!