- •Table of Contents
- •About the Author
- •About the Technical Reviewer
- •Acknowledgments
- •Introduction
- •What is .NET MAUI?
- •Digging a Bit Deeper
- •Where Did It Come From?
- •How It Differs From the Competition
- •Why Use .NET MAUI?
- •Supported Platforms
- •Code Sharing
- •Developer Freedom
- •Community
- •Fast Development Cycle
- •.NET Hot Reload
- •XAML Hot Reload
- •Performance
- •Strong Commercial Offerings
- •Limitations of .NET MAUI
- •No Web Assembly (WASM) Support
- •No Camera API
- •Apps Won’t Look Identical on Each Platform
- •Lack of Media Playback Out of the Box
- •The Glass Is Half Full, Though
- •How to Build .NET MAUI Applications
- •Visual Studio
- •Visual Studio (Windows)
- •Visual Studio for Mac
- •Rider
- •Visual Studio Code
- •Summary
- •Setting Up Your Environment
- •macOS
- •Visual Studio for Mac
- •Xcode
- •Remote Access
- •Windows
- •Visual Studio
- •Visual Studio to macOS
- •Troubleshooting Installation Issues
- •.NET MAUI Workload Is Missing
- •Visual Studio Installer
- •Command Line
- •Creating Your First Application
- •Creating in Visual Studio
- •Creating in the Command Line
- •Building and Running Your First Application
- •Getting to Know Your Application
- •WidgetBoard
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •Project Structure
- •/Platforms/ Folder
- •Android
- •MacCatalyst
- •Tizen
- •Windows
- •Summary
- •/Resources/ Folder
- •Fonts
- •Images
- •Generic Host Builder
- •What Is Dependency Injection?
- •Registering Dependencies
- •AddSingleton
- •AddTransient
- •AddScoped
- •Application Lifecycle
- •Application States
- •Lifecycle Events
- •Handling Lifecycle Events
- •Cross-Platform Mappings to Platform Lifecycle Events
- •Platform-Specific Lifecycle Events
- •Android
- •Windows
- •Summary
- •A Measuring Stick
- •Prerequisites
- •Model View ViewModel (MVVM)
- •Model
- •View
- •XAML
- •C# (Code-Behind)
- •ViewModel
- •Model View Update (MVU)
- •Getting Started with Comet
- •Adding Your MVU Implementation
- •XAML vs. C# Markup
- •Plain C#
- •C# Markup
- •Chosen Architecture for This Book
- •Adding IWidgetViewModel
- •Adding BaseViewModel
- •Adding ClockWidgetViewModel
- •Adding Views
- •Adding IWidgetView
- •Adding ClockWidgetView
- •Viewing Your Widget
- •Modifying MainPage.xaml
- •Modifying MainPage.xaml.cs
- •Taking the Application for a Spin
- •MVVM Enhancements
- •MVVM Frameworks
- •Magic
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •Prerequisites
- •Models
- •BaseLayout.cs
- •FixedLayout.cs
- •Board.cs
- •Pages
- •BoardDetailsPage
- •FixedBoardPage
- •ViewModels
- •AppShellViewModel
- •BoardDetailsPageViewModel
- •FixedBoardPageViewModel
- •App Icons
- •Adding Your Own Icon
- •Platform Differences
- •Android
- •Splash Screen
- •XAML
- •Dissecting a XAML File
- •Building Your First XAML Page
- •Layouts
- •AbsoluteLayout
- •FlexLayout
- •Grid
- •HorizontalStackLayout
- •VerticalStackLayout
- •Data Binding
- •Binding
- •BindingContext
- •Path
- •Mode
- •Source
- •Applying the Remaining Bindings
- •MultiBinding
- •Command
- •Compiled Bindings
- •Shell
- •ShellContent
- •Navigation
- •Registering Pages for Navigation
- •Performing Navigation
- •Navigating Backwards
- •Passing Data When Navigating
- •Flyout
- •FlyoutHeader
- •FlyoutContent
- •Selected Board
- •Navigation to the Selected Board
- •Setting the BindingContext of Your AppShell
- •Register AppShell with the MAUI App Builder
- •Resolve the AppShell Instead of Creating It
- •Tabs
- •Search
- •Taking Your Application for a Spin
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •Extra Assignment
- •Placeholder
- •ILayoutManager
- •BoardLayout
- •BoardLayout.xaml
- •BindableLayout
- •BoardLayout.xaml.cs
- •Adding the LayoutManager Property
- •Adding the ItemsSource Property
- •Adding the ItemTemplateSelector Property
- •Handling the ChildAdded Event
- •Adding Remaining Bits
- •FixedLayoutManager
- •Accepting the Number of Rows and Columns for a Board
- •Adding the NumberOfColumns Property
- •Adding the NumberOfRows Property
- •Building the Board Layout
- •Setting the Correct Row/Column Position for Each Widget
- •Using Your Layout
- •Allowing for the Registration of Widget Views and View Models
- •Creation of a Widget View
- •Creation of a Widget View Model
- •Registering the Factory with MauiAppBuilder
- •Registering Your ClockWidget with the Factory
- •WidgetTemplateSelector
- •Registering the Template Selector with MauiAppBuilder
- •Updating FixedBoardPageViewModel
- •Finally Using the Layout
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •Extra Assignment
- •What Is Accessibility?
- •Why Make Your Applications Accessible?
- •What to Consider When Making Your Applications Accessible
- •How to Make Your Application Accessible
- •Screen Reader Support
- •SemanticProperties
- •SemanticProperties.Description
- •SemanticProperties.Hint
- •SemanticProperties.HeadingLevel
- •SemanticScreenReader
- •AutomationProperties
- •AutomationProperties.ExcludedWithChildren
- •AutomationProperties.IsInAccessibleTree
- •Suitable Contrast
- •Dynamic Text Sizing
- •Avoiding Fixed Sizes
- •Preferring Minimum Sizing
- •Font Auto Scaling
- •Testing Your Application’s Accessibility
- •Android
- •macOS
- •Windows
- •Accessibility Checklist
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •Extra Assignment
- •Adding the Ability to Add a Widget to a Board
- •Possible Ways of Achieving Your Goal
- •Showing a Modal Page
- •The Chosen Approach
- •Adding Your Overlay View
- •Updating Your View Model
- •Showing the Overlay View
- •Styling
- •Examining the Default Styles
- •TargetType
- •ApplyToDerivedTypes
- •Setter
- •AppThemeBinding
- •Further Reading
- •Triggers
- •Creating ShowOverlayTriggerAction
- •Using ShowOverlayTriggerAction
- •Further Reading
- •Animations
- •Basic Animations
- •Combining Basic Animations
- •Chaining Animations
- •Concurrent Animations
- •Cancelling Animations
- •Easings
- •Complex Animations
- •Recreating the ScaleTo Animation
- •Creating a Rubber Band Animation
- •Combining Triggers and Animations
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •Extra Assignment
- •Animate the BoxView Overlay
- •Animate the New Widget
- •What Is Local Data?
- •File System
- •Cache Directory
- •App Data Directory
- •Database
- •Repository Pattern
- •Listing Your Boards
- •SQLite
- •Installing SQLite-net
- •Using Sqlite-net
- •Connecting to an SQLite database
- •Mapping Your Models
- •Creating Your Tables
- •Inserting into an SQLite Database
- •Reading a Collection from an SQLite Database
- •Reading a Single Entity from an SQLite Database
- •Deleting from an SQLite Database
- •Updating an Entity in an SQLite Database
- •LiteDB
- •Installing LiteDB
- •Using LiteDB
- •Connecting to a LiteDB database
- •Mapping Your Models
- •Creating Your Tables
- •Inserting into a LiteDB Database
- •Reading a Collection from a LiteDB Database
- •Reading a Single Entity from a LiteDB Database
- •Deleting from a LiteDB Database
- •Updating an Entity in a LiteDB Database
- •Database Summary
- •Application Settings (Preferences)
- •What Can Be Stored in Preferences?
- •Setting a Value in Preferences
- •Getting a Value in Preferences
- •Checking if a Key Exists in Preferences
- •Secure Storage
- •Storing a Value Securely
- •Reading a Secure Value
- •Removing a Secure Value
- •Platform specifics
- •Android
- •Windows
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •Extra Assignment
- •What Is Remote Data?
- •Considerations When Handling Remote Data
- •Loading Times
- •Failures
- •Security
- •Webservices
- •The Open Weather API
- •Creating an Open Weather Account
- •Creating an Open Weather API key
- •Using System.Text.Json
- •Creating Your Models
- •Connecting to the Open Weather API
- •Registering Your Widget
- •Testing Your Widget
- •Adding Some State
- •Converting the State to UI
- •Displaying the Loading State
- •Displaying the Loaded State
- •Displaying the Error State
- •Simplifying Webservice Access
- •Prebuilt Libraries
- •Code Generation Libraries
- •Adding the Refit NuGet Package
- •Further Reading
- •Polly
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •Extra Assignment
- •TODO Widget
- •Quote of the Day Widget
- •NASA Space Image of the Day Widget
- •.NET MAUI Essentials
- •Permissions
- •Checking the Status of a Permission
- •Requesting Permission
- •Handling Permissions in Your Application
- •Using the Geolocation API
- •Registering the Geolocation Service
- •Using the Geolocation Service
- •Displaying Permission Errors to Your User
- •Configuring Platform-Specific Components
- •Android
- •Windows
- •Platform-Specific API Access
- •Platform-Specific Code with Compiler Directives
- •Platform-Specific Code in Platform Folders
- •Overriding the Platform-Specific UI
- •OnPlatform
- •OnPlatform Markup Extension
- •Conditional Statements
- •Handlers
- •Customizing Controls with Mappers
- •Scoping of Mapper Customization
- •Further Reading
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •Extra Assignment
- •Barometer Widget
- •Geocoding Lookup
- •Unit Testing
- •Unit Testing in .NET MAUI
- •xUnit
- •NUnit
- •MSTest
- •Your Chosen Testing Framework
- •Adding Your Own Unit Tests
- •Adding a Unit Test Project to Your Solution
- •Modify Your Application Project to Target net7.0
- •Adding a Reference to the Project to Test
- •Modify Your Test Project to Use MAUI Dependencies
- •Testing Your View Models
- •Testing BoardDetailsPageViewModel
- •Testing INotifyPropertyChanged
- •Testing Asynchronous Operations
- •Creating Your ILocationService Mock
- •Creating Your WeatherForecastService Mock
- •Creating Your Asynchronous Tests
- •Testing Your Views
- •Creating Your ClockWidgetViewModel Mock
- •Creating Your View Tests
- •Device Testing
- •Creating a Device Test Project
- •Adding a Device-Specific Test
- •Running Device-Specific Tests
- •Snapshot Testing
- •Snapshot Testing Your Application
- •Passing Thoughts
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •.NET MAUI Graphics
- •Maintaining the State of the Canvas
- •Further Reading
- •Building a Sketch Widget
- •Representing a User Interaction
- •Registering Your Widget
- •Taking Your Widget for a Test Draw
- •Summary
- •Source Code
- •Extra Assignment
- •Distributing Your Application
- •Android
- •Additional Resources
- •Certificate
- •Identifier
- •Capabilities
- •Entitlements
- •Provisioning Profiles
- •Additional Resources
- •macOS
- •Additional Resources
- •Windows
- •Additional Resources
- •Following Good Practices
- •Performance
- •Startup Tracing
- •Image Sizes
- •Linking
- •What Is Linking?
- •Issues That Crop Up
- •Crashes/Analytics
- •Sentry
- •App Center
- •Obfuscation
- •Distributing Test Versions
- •Summary
- •Looking at the Final Product
- •Taking the Project Further
- •Useful Resources
- •StackOverflow
- •GitHub
- •YouTube
- •Gerald Versluis
- •James Montemagno
- •Social Media
- •Yet More Goodness
- •Looking Forward
- •Comet
- •Testing
- •Index
CHAPTER 15
Conclusion
Wow! If you made it this far, I want to thank you so much! I really hope that you have enjoyed reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it. This book was designed to give you an insight into what .NET MAUI offers and how you can use it to build real world applications. The sample we built together covers a lot of the key concepts. Of course I could have filled the book with hundreds more pages, adding in so many more widgets and features to the application. This application is a concept that is near and dear to my heart so I can tell you that it will continue to evolve over time. I would love to hear where you decide to take it next, and I would love to see what you create next.
Looking at the Final Product
The application we just finished building together has been a pet project of mine for years, so thank you for helping me to finally reach this dream! Let’s take a trip down memory lane to review what exactly we have built. Figure 15-1 shows my prototype sketch.
© Shaun Lawrence 2023 |
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S. Lawrence, Introducing .NET MAUI, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-9234-1_15 |
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Chapter 15 Conclusion
Figure 15-1. Sketch prototype of the application
The process of building this application has taken you through many different concepts including
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Creating a .NET MAUI application project |
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Reviewing the possible architecture patterns you can |
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use to build .NET MAUI applications |
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Learning about the building blocks that make up your |
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application’s UI |
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How you can further expand on the UI through styling |
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How to make your application accessible |
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How to create your own layout and utilize some |
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cool features like BindableLayout to do a lot of the |
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heavy lifting |
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How to store data and the scenarios around where best |
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to store each type of data |
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Chapter 15 Conclusion |
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How to access different types of remote data and the |
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scenarios around when things go wrong |
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How to customize your application on a per- |
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platform basis |
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How to test your application |
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The concept of distributing your application |
All of the items above made for a really fun journey! And the end result is almost identical to my original plan. Figure 15-2 shows the final application with the widgets.
Figure 15-2. The final application showing the widgets that we have added plus the results of some of the extra assignment sections
Taking the Project Further
One main reason I really love this project is that I believe the possibilities of future widgets is wide open! I could provide a list as long as my arm on ideas that we could continue to achieve together. If I could, I would have fit them all in this book, but I would probably never have finished.
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