Xamarin.Forms Project Architecture

Introduction

Xamarin.Forms are used to create cross platform applications like on Android, iOS or Windows mobile. Therefore, we are going to learn how to create the Xamarin.Forms solution from scratch. Xamarin.Forms solutions consist of different projects such as Portable, Android, iOS and Windows. Here, we will put our business logic inside the portable code and some platform specific code inside the Android/iOS/Windows project.

Solution

Description of the architecture is shown below.

To create Xamarin.Forms solution, you need to follow the steps given below.

Step 1

Open Visual Studio and create New Project - select Cross Platform -select Blank app (Xamarin.Forms.Portable).



Now, the Xamarin.Forms project has been created. Here, you can see different projects as Portable Portable Project, which contain views, ViewModels and Models.

Droid Android Project is used to run the solution on an Android platform.

• iOS
  iOS Project is used to run the solution on iOS platform.

Now create an app, repositories, and service folders. Move all three projects to App folder.

Step 2

Now, in this project, we are going to use MVVM library, so go to portable project, select to Add Nuget Packages, Add MvvmLightLibs



Step 3

Create some folders in Portable project named Views, ViewModels, Models, Helpers, and Converters. 



Folder Details are given below.

• Views
  Consists all the View files (UI) like XAML.
  
  
• ViewModels
  Consists all the ViewModels.
  
  
• Models
  Consists of all Models.
  
  
• Helpers
  Consists of Helpers like Network Connectivity etc.
  
  
• Converters
  Consists of Converters such as Image Converter etc.

Step 4

Now, go to Repositories folder and add New Project. Select Class Library (Xamarin.Forms), add new class library named My Sample App. IRepositories (Portable).



MySampleApp.IRepositories project will contain all the interfaces of the repositories.

Step 5

Now, go to Repositories folder and add New Project, select Class Library (Xamarin.Forms), add new class library named MySampleApp.Repositories (Portable).



MySampleApp.Repositories project will contain all the repositories which implement IRepositories.

Step 6

Now, go to Services folder and add New Project, select Class Library (Xamarin.Forms), add new class library named MySampleApp.Services (Portable).



MySampleApp.Services (Portable) project contains all the Services like SQLite tables, Models, Table Operations etc.

Now, the solution is ready to use.