1. Xamarin Development with
Azure Mobile Services
July

2. Information www.linkedin.com/in/david-silver-1b637924 David Silver
Great Xamarin and Azure Tutorial:

3. Summary What this will cover Creating a new Xamarin Forms app
Creating a new Azure Mobile Service
Connecting the app to the mobile service
Enabling authentication
Enabling offline sync

4. What is Xamarin?
Cross platform solution for writing native mobile apps with C#
Xamarin.Forms allows you build a native UI shared across your platforms. All controls are mapped to native controls at runtime
A Mac is needed for iOS development
Mac can also build Android apps

5. Create New Azure Mobile Services
Create/login to Azure account
Click
Search for Mobile App
Click Mobile App > Create
Enter an App name and Resource Group
Choose your App Service plan – free tier is fine for this
Click Create
Once deployed go to the newly created resource

6. Quickstart Mobile Services
Go to Quickstart > Xamarin.Forms
Do step 1 to setup a new database
Free tier is fine for this

7. Creating Xamarin Forms Backend
File > New > Project > Visual C# Web > ASP.NET Web Application > Azure Mobile App
In order to have the tables be in Azure your backend project needs
A DbSet within the DbContext
A DTO for your table
A table controller
The Azure Mobile App Project contains one of each of these
Your DTO should use Azure Mobile Entity Data as it’s base class to take advantage of offline sync

8. Creating Xamarin Forms Backend Contd.
For automatic migrations
Enable migrations
Add initial migration
Replace the DbInitializer in Startup.MobileApp with a database migrator
Replace MobileAppConfiguration with AddTablesWithEntityFramework
Configure a SqlGenerator in the Migration Configuration file
Publish the backend to Azure

9. Creating Xamarin Forms App
Right click solution > Add > New Project…
Under Visual C# Cross-Platform > Cross Platform App(Xamarin)
Blank App, Xamarin.Forms, Shared or PCL
Article on Shared VS PCL:
MVVM pattern - create Models, Pages(Views), & ViewModels folders in PCL

10. Preparing For Azure Mobile Services
Add the following nuget packages: Microsoft.Azure.Mobile.Client(3.1.0), Microsoft.Azure.Mobile.Client.SQLiteStore(3.1.0), SQLitePCL(latest) (Original by Microsoft Open Technologies, Inc.)
If needed update Xamarin.Forms ONLY

11. Setup Mobile Project Create Interfaces
Cloud service interface is a singleton for auth and offline sync
Create services that implement the interfaces
Create models
Prep Offline Sync – Create a base model – string Id, DateTimeOffset UpdatedAt, DateTimeOffset CreatedAt, byte array Version (mimics Entity Data except Deleted field)
Copy azure site URL
Set your client to your azure URL – Be sure to use https

12. Create the Views (Pages) and ViewModels
Add XAML Content Pages to Pages Folder
Additional info on MVVM with Xamarin:
Setup binding to ViewModel
Add XAML UI
Create BaseViewModel – ViewModels should implement INotifyPropertyChanged
Add ViewModel to ViewModels folder
Setup ViewModel – Use observable collections instead of list for collections that will change

13. Add Authentication Set the Authorize attribute in the backend
Choose your auth provider
Login in their developer portal and setup your app
Add your secret and other info to Azure Portal in your App Service
Settings > Authentication/Authorization
Setup ILoginProvider to allow for cross platform implementation
Add Login to ICloudService
Implement ICloudService
Add platform specific code – Init the login provider in MainActivity.cs

14. Enable Offline Sync
Add “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.MobileServices.CurrentPlatform.Init();” to MainActivity.cs and AppDelegate.cs above the Xamarin Form init
Enable internet permissions on Android
Setup the Initialize
Setup offline sync table – local SQLite store
Setup Pull to bring in online changes – Use query name to allow for incremental updates
Setup Sync method to push pending local changes and pull server changes
Place the Sync method on your refresh, saving, deleting commands

15. Enable Offline Sync Contd.
Add “Xam.Plugin.Connectivity” nuget package to check for connectivity
If no connectivity, return before doing push/pull operations
Setup conflict resolver

16. Summary Create and setup ASP .Net backend – Azure Mobile App
Setup Azure mobile services including authentication
Create and setup Xamarin.Forms app
Enable offline sync and authentication in the mobile app