Creating a basic mobile application using C#.NET

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Creating a basic mobile application using C#.NET typically involves using Xamarin, a popular open-source platform for building modern and performant applications for iOS, Android, and Windows with .NET.

Here’s a simple step-by-step tutorial on how to create a basic “Hello, World!” mobile application using Xamarin.Forms in Visual Studio.

Prerequisites: Visual Studio 2019 or later with the Mobile development with .NET (Xamarin) workload installed.

Step 1: Create a New Project

  1. Launch Visual Studio and select “Create a new project”.
  2. In the “Create a new project” window, select the “Mobile App (Xamarin.Forms)” template and click “Next”.
  3. In the “Configure your new project” window, enter a name for your project and choose a location to save it, then click “Create”.
  4. In the “New Mobile App” window, select the “Blank” template, and ensure “Android” and “iOS” platforms are checked, then click “Create”.

Step 2: Understand the Project Structure

The solution created by Visual Studio includes three projects:

  • A .NET Standard project (shared code)
  • An Android project
  • An iOS project

The shared code project is where you’ll write most of your code, which will be shared across Android and iOS. The other two projects are for platform-specific implementations.

Step 3: Write Your Code

  1. In the Solution Explorer, expand the shared code project and open the MainPage.xaml file.
  2. Replace the <Label> element in the XAML code with the following:
<StackLayout>
    <Label 
        Text="Welcome to Xamarin.Forms!"
        VerticalOptions="CenterAndExpand" 
        HorizontalOptions="CenterAndExpand" />
    <Button 
        Text="Click Me!" 
        Clicked="OnButtonClicked"/>
</StackLayout>
  1. Open the MainPage.xaml.cs file and add the following method:
void OnButtonClicked(object sender, EventArgs args)
{
    (sender as Button).Text = "Hello, World!";
}

Step 4: Run Your App

  1. Select the Android or iOS project as the startup project.
  2. Press F5 or click on the “Start Debugging” button.

Your application will launch in the selected platform’s emulator. The screen will display a “Welcome to Xamarin.Forms!” message and a “Click Me!” button. When you press the button, the text on the button will change to “Hello, World!”.

This is a very simple example of a mobile application. Xamarin.Forms allows you to create much more complex applications with features like multiple pages, navigation, animations, data binding, and more.