Understanding Xamarin Forms - Build Native Cross Platform Mobile Apps

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26 Aug 2022

Beginner

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Xamarin Forms is a part of Xamarin family to build truly native apps for iOS, Android & Windows from a single and shared code base using C#. Xamarin.Forms offers the UI controls/views which you can use to develop UI. These UI controls/view at run-time are converted to platform-specific UI controls.

For Example

A Xamarin.Forms Button view will map to an Button on Android, a UIButton on iOS and a Button on Windows Phone or Windows UWP.

Xamarin Forms allows developers to declare the UI using XAML (Extensible Application Markup Language) or C# code. Using Xamarin Forms approach you can develop truely native cross platform mobile apps with shared UI and code behind code using c#.

Xamarin Forms Architecture

Xamarin.Forms is an abstraction layer on the top of the Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android to build shared UI using XAML or C# code. It also allows to interact with the platform specific APIs to access mobile native features.

Environment Setup

Xamarin Forms allows you to develop truly cross-platform native apps for Android, iOS, and windows using C#. A Xamarin forms project for Android, iOS, and Windows UWP are based on their platform standard project structure. Xamarin forms development you can do using IDEs - Visual Studio for Windows and Xamarin Studio or Visual Studio for Mac.

Xamarin Development with Windows Machine

Note

Visual Studio for Windows need a connection with Mac machine to develop iOS apps.

Xamarin (Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Android & Windows) vs. Xamarin Forms

Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Android & Windows

Xamarin Forms

Use separate UI per platform

Use one UI for all platforms

Use all platforms specific views for each platform

Use basic views, available on all platforms like Button, Textbox etc.

Need to learn all platform specific native UI views

No need to learn all platform specific native UI views

Takes time to develop cross platform mobile app

Faster cross platform mobile app development approach

Supports up to 60% code reuse

Supports up to 100% code reuse

Recommended where custom UI is more important than code sharing

Recommended where code sharing is more important than custom UI

Best for apps which use many platform-specific APIs

Best for apps which use little platform-specific functionality

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