CODEWITHSUNDEEP
windows-runtimewindows-phonewindows-store-appsxamarinportable-class-library
Nate Diamond
Nate Diamond

Reputation: 5575

Images loaded from Portable Class Library

I have a Windows Store App that has many, many images in it. Further, these images need to be access in multiple projects on multiple plaftorms.

I had created a class library specifically targetting WinRT. This worked well and I was able to access the images using the Uri: "ms-appx:///MyImageClassLibrary/PathToImage/ImageName.png".

The beautiful part of this was that I could have my images sorted by scale similar to how I would in the local assets themselves, via a folder structure such as

/Images
    /scale-100
        Image1.png
    /scale-140
        Image1.png
    /scale-180
        Image1.png
    /scale-80
        Image1.png

Unfortunately, when I retargeted the library to a PCL (targeting Profile 259), This functionality broke. I now have to manually refer to the same image as "ms-appx:///MyImageClassLibrary/PathToImage/scale-100/ImageName.png".

Is there a way to fix this? Must I target the library to specifically WinRT? If I do target the library to WinRT, can that include Windows Phone 8.1? Will Windows Phone 8.1 be able to process the differently-scaled images?

Based on my intuition, I think I'll likely have to make a different image library for each platform. If this is the case, is there a way to auto-generate or link a subsequent class library targeted at another platform (such as Xamarin.iOS/Xamarin.Android) that copies all files in a given folder of the base project (such as all of them in scale-100). I know that I can link files manually, but can I link folders so that any updates to the canonical project are reflected in platform-specific projects?

I will be experimenting more with this process, and will update here with any information I find.

Thanks.

Updates:

The scaling and direct reference work just fine with both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 targetted.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 336

Answers (1)

Daniel Plaisted
Daniel Plaisted

Reputation: 16744

It appears you've figured this out, but for a PCL to support AppX resources, it needs to exclusively target platforms which support AppX resources. Right now that means Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1.

Upvotes: 1

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