#Xamarin for visual studio 2015 examples how to#
#Xamarin for visual studio 2015 examples android#
#Xamarin for visual studio 2015 examples code#

#Xamarin for visual studio 2015 examples android#

To call the native code, create a Xamarin project for iOS and Android each. Visual Studio will communicate with this tool through TCP/IP. This is not the regular Xamarin.iOS installation on a Mac but a Microsoft tool that is installed on OS X using npm. While the Android library can be compiled within Visual Studio, compiling the iOS library needs a connection to a build agent on the Mac.

For Android, a dynamic library (.so) should be built.

#Xamarin for visual studio 2015 examples code#

So the basic P/Invoke rules apply for your interface’s code: Either the code is plain C or, if you are using C++, the calls are either plain functions or static methods and contain only POC parameters and return values.įor the iOS project, the output format needs to be changed to a static library (.a file) since iOS does not allow dynamically loading code. NET will be using P/Invoke since C++/CLI is not available on iOS or Android. NET code (your interface) into the platform-specific projects while underlying code can reside in the shared project. For a real project, you will put any call that needs to be directly invoked from the. This code is called from a function in the platform-specific projects.įor the example code, this doesn’t make any sense. In the example, I’ve created a simple function clib_add_internal() that add two integers and resides in the shared project.

NET projects, file linking is not needed for C++ projects source code files do not have to reside inside a project’s folder or subfolder. This code can be identical in the Android and iOS projects and reside in the same files. This means that the platform-specific C/C++ projects need to contain code, too. For this reason, it is necessary to have calls into all code needed contained in the platform-specific projects. If code is not referenced, it is not compiled. The code will then be compiled in the context of the referencing project. Projects referencing the shared project can access code from any file in the shared project. A shared project can hold any type of file. The code in the shared project does not result in a DLL or library being generated. It is important to understand the shared project concept for this. This will create three projects: one for Android, one for iOS, and a shared project. You will need to have the corresponding Visual Studio package installed to have this option available. To get started, create a new C++ cross-platform project using Visual Studio 2015. The code cannot access any libraries which you only have binaries for that have been compiled for other platforms.

You will need the sources for the code you want to call to compile it for iOS and Android. Microsoft’s recent support for C/C++ on iOS and Android in Visual Studio can make this a simple task. However, it is entirely possible to call C code from a Xamarin app.

#Xamarin for visual studio 2015 examples how to#

Most examples found online show you how to use existing Objective-C libraries in Xamarin.iOS and existing Java libraries in Xamarin.Android. Sometimes, however, some legacy code may be too large or complex to make porting it to C# for your mobile app worthwhile. The Xamarin platform allows developing iOS and Android applications entirely in C#.