Getting Started with Xamarin.Forms and Azure Mobile App Service

Jeff Hopper .NET, Articles, Azure, Cloud, Development Technologies & Tools, Mobile, Tutorial, Xamarin 3 Comments

Earlier this month my friend Ryan introduced us to Getting Started with Xamarin Forms and Prism. In that post, Ryan started a mobile application to display blog posts which he called SimpleBlog.

In this article, I would like to continue that demonstration by adding a back-end server to persist and share these blogs. This will be accomplished using Azure’s Mobile App Service which falls within its free tier services.

Yes, you did read that right: you can spin up an Azure account and have access to try out many of Azure’s features. For instance, the example I am going to walk you through today can be hosted indefinitely without costing you anything, and to that, you could add nine more web, mobile, or API services. See https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/free/ for more information.

There is no way I am going to be able to cover all the possibilities available in an Azure Mobile App service, much less what Azure has to offer. My intent in this post is to help “whet your appetite” on the possibilities by giving a quick overview of just two great frameworks that play great together: the Microsoft.Azure.Mobile.Client mobile framework tied to an Azure Mobile Apps Service….

Go Forth and AppSync!

Mat Warger API Development, Articles, AWS, Development Technologies & Tools, GraphQL, JavaScript, REST 1 Comment

In a previous post, we discussed the basics of GraphQL and how it can be a great REST API alternative. In this one, we’ll see how AppSync can be more than just a great API alternative — it gives you a soft landing into the world of GraphQL.

Recall our Game API example? Let’s start with the basic type of a game. Follow along and we can implement a simple schema in AppSync together….

Reading and Writing from Excel in Spring Batch

Rik Scarborough Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Java, Spring, Spring Batch, Tutorial 4 Comments

We have discussed many different ways to read and write data in Spring Batch. The framework comes with quite an assortment of Readers and Writers that can be used directly or reused in some manner. Most of the time, the requirements consist of reading the data from some type of text file or database.

So what happens when the business we are supporting asks for something out of the ordinary, such as reading an Excel file and outputting the data to another Excel file? Typically the off-the-cuff response would be, “can you convert it to a CSV or other delimited text file?” Or “You know, Excel will read a CSV file just fine.” Sometimes that works, and sometimes the business requirements do not allow that type of flexibility.

Consider this scenario; in these days of Cloud and other online computing, the input file is likely created by a server that the company has no direct access to as far as programming. The file it creates is in one format, Excel. The output of your process has to go before several executives or other business clients and needs to be formatted in a professional looking manner. Adding a manual process to import a CSV and format it diminishes the value of using Spring Batch.

For the sake of the honor of the coding profession, you agree to the requirement to read and write from an Excel file directly. Now, how do you do that?…

Getting Started with Xamarin Forms and Prism

Ryan Nguyen .NET, Articles, Development Technologies & Tools, Mobile, Xamarin 3 Comments

In this blog, I’ll show you how easy it is to create an Android and iOS application using Xamarin Forms while utilizing Prism.

What are Xamarin Forms?
Xamarin Forms is a platform that allows developers to create native Android, iOS, and Windows applications while using the beloved C# programming language. 

An attractive feature of Xamarin Forms is that it uses a shared C# codebase to create a native user interface specific to their platform. Out of the box, Xamarin provides large collections of controls to get started. It also has the ability to access native platform features, such as camera access, GPS, text to speech, etc, by using the Dependency Service.

What is Prism?
According to the Prism website, Prism is defined as “a framework for building loosely coupled, maintainable, and testable XAML applications in WPF, Windows 10 UWP, and Xamarin Forms. Prism provides an implementation of a collection of design patterns that are helpful in writing well-structured and maintainable XAML applications, including MVVM, dependency injection, commands, EventAggregator, and others.” In other words, Prism helps users to write better code…. 

See Keyhole at Nebraska.Code() 2018 – Sponsoring & Speaking

Keyhole Software Articles, Community, Company News, Educational Event, GraphQL Leave a Comment

Keyhole Software is excited to once again be a Gold sponsor of the Nebraska.Code() Conference.

The 2018 conference is Wednesday through Friday, June 6th-8th with excellent technical talks on the schedule. Wednesday will consist of half and full-day workshops, while Thursday and Friday will consist of 100+ one-hour breakout sessions. This year, the conference has moved to the Mid-America Center in Council Bluffs, IA, right across the river from Omaha, NE.

Sessions To Watch
Numerous conference sessions will be led by Keyhole Software team members on a myriad of technical topics. Make sure to attend the following Keyhole sessions when setting your own personal conference calendar…