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Introduction to Xamarin (Write Once & Run Anywhere Approach)

In this article, we are going to learn about Xamarin, its introduction, history and requirements.
Submitted by Ridhima Agarwal, on November 29, 2017

Xamarin is a platform which enables the developer to create Native as well as Hybrid, IOS, Android, MAC, & Windows app written in C# language. It is cross-platform which helps the developers to write the code for one device and will run the application on all the devices including IOS, Android, Windows.

It helps the users to achieve all major mobile platforms, here are the some Xamarin Unique Approaches:

1. Native User Interface.
2. Native Performance.
3. Shared Code Across Platforms.
4. C# and .NET framework.
5. Full API(Application Programming Interface) Coverage.

By native, we mean that in which we will write code for particular Operating System only like different code for IOS applications, differ code for Android applications even separate coding for Android applications.

While in cross-platform we write code for only one Operating System and by the help of different Plugins we can use the same code for applications in Android, IOS, and even for all Windows applications. By Xamarin Studio we can make both Native as well as Shared applications.

Therefore the title for xamarin 'Write once and run anywhere' approach is appropriate for this.

C# is used in this because of the following reasons:

• C# is LINQ support.
• C# works easily with XML XDocument.
• C# supports Event Handling and Delegates.
• The most important feature of C# is that it can easily convert the JSON data to C# data which is mostly used for API integration purpose.

History of Xamarin

• In 2000 Ximian was founded.
• 2001 it was Mono Started.
• In 2003 it was acquired by Novell.
• After that in 2009 first IOS product which is now Xamarin.IOS launched.
• In 2011 Xamarin was founded. It first released its Xamarin. Android application.
• In 2012 Xamarin.Mac was first released.
• After that in 2013, it got its Microsoft partnership.

Anything which can be done by using Objective-C or Java can also be done in C# and Visual Studio with Xamarin.

Requirements

Just like Android Studio is used for developing Android applications similarly for making native applications using C# we use Visual Studio.

For installing Visual studio in the system there are few System Requirements:

For windows

1. The system should have at least 2GB RAM and the window should be 7 or higher.
2. Visual Studio 2015 or 2017.
3. Xamarin Studio.

For MAC

1. MAC operating system Yosemite 10.10 or higher.
2. Xamarin IOS SDK.
3. Xamarin Studio.
4. Xcode Ide for apple.

In this, we are using Visual Studio for making our applications. So users are required to download the Visual Studio for their Systems. Here are the following steps for downloading the Visual Studio 2017.

Step1:

Follow this link to download the visual studio, https://www.visualstudio.com/downloads/?utm_source=mscom&utm_campaign=msdocs

From this, download Visual Studio Community 2017.

Step2:

Install the Visual Studio installer accept the policy and click on Continue button.

Step3:

Select the workloads you want to install in Visual Studio.

It will take some time after that click on Install button and finally launch.

Now we will start from basic, there are two ways for coding:

1. We can do it from back i.e. back coding.
2. Or can use the most appropriate pattern of MVVM.

Even can use both to develop the applications.