Integrate your Xamarin apps with MobileFirst Foundation 8.0 on Bluemix
Srihari Kulkarni May 02, 2018
MobileFirst_Foundation Xamarin
The MobileFirst SDK for Xamarin is now available for MobileFirst Foundation v8! You can download the component from the Xamarin Component Store.
Get the goodness of MobileFirst Foundation v8
With this release of the SDK, your Xamarin apps can leverage all the new features of MobileFirst Foundation v8. To mention a few, MobileFirst Foundation as a service on IBM Bluemix , improved DevOps support, web interface for all app settings etc. For a full list of new features, visit the release notes.
Componentized SDKs
Starting with this release, the Xamarin SDK is componentized into separate libraries for Core, JSON Store and Push. This means Push and JSON Store libraries are optional, leading to reduced footprint of your apps. After adding the Core SDK, add the other SDKs when you start using those features.
PCL Support for C# SDKs
Starting this release we have introduced Portable Class Library (PCL) support for all our C# SDKs. Xamarin for Android and iOS and the native C# SDK for Windows UWP. The C# API set is now common across Xamarin (for Android and iOS) and Windows UWP. For C# developers this allows code that you write for your mobile apps can be run across Android, iOS and Windows.
###Integrating your Xamarin app with MobileFirst Foundation on Bluemix
Now the V8 MobileFirst server is available on Bluemix as a service called MobileFirst Foundation. This allows Xamarin developers to get started with the development in minutes by creating a development server on Bluemix. No need to setup a server locally.
To get started with MobileFirst on Bluemix and Xamarin, perform the following steps.
- Download the Xamarin component for IBM MobileFirst
- Unzip the file ibm-worklight-8.0.0.0.zip
- Open the sample project found in
ibm-worklight-8.0.0.0/samples/WorklightSample - Login to bluemix.net and add the MobileFirst Foundation service to your account.
- Build and deploy MobileFirst adapters to your console. To begin with, you can use the UserLogin and ResourceAdapter from the MobileFirst samples. See how to create and deploy adapters here.
- Run your app from Xamarin Studio / Visual Studio and get all the goodness of MobileFirst Foundation v8 on Bluemix.
See the video below for a complete end-to-end demonstration of this process.
Inclusive terminology note: The Mobile First Platform team is making changes to support the IBM® initiative to replace racially biased and other discriminatory language in our code and content with more inclusive language. While IBM values the use of inclusive language, terms that are outside of IBM's direct influence are sometimes required for the sake of maintaining user understanding. As other industry leaders join IBM in embracing the use of inclusive language, IBM will continue to update the documentation to reflect those changes.