CODEWITHSUNDEEP
xamarin
user350213
user350213

Reputation: 385

Can I create an Android app using Xamarin only

I'm a Windows developer and have written all sorts of windows client applications using C++ and C#. I wanted to write an Android app and put it on the Google Store, but I'm only equipped with Visual Studio.

I wanted to ask if it is realistic to think that I can create an app, from scratch, including engine and UI using Xamarin only. I saw there are a few Xamarin samples out there, but I didn't want to start only to find out that it's not enough for some reason.

Currently I'm struggling a bit in getting my environment right, but thought I'd throw this question here to you guys ... Maybe it's not even worth starting?

Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1014

Answers (2)

tutiplain
tutiplain

Reputation: 1480

Yes, Xamarin can be used to develop Android apps from scratch. Xamarin has two main libraries that help with this.

Xamarin.Android will give you access to all the Android APIs directly from c#. Note that you still need to know the basic Android concepts like what is an Activity and an Intent. The other library is Xamarin.Forms. It is a cross-platform library that will give you a basic set of UI controls and widgets that you declare usong an xml syntax, and program with C#. This library has a few limitations, but you can also use the features of Xamarin.Android alongside it to get at the missing features.

Some advice: if possible, develop and debug directly on an Android tablet. Android emulators are not that good and hard to configure. Hope this helps.

Upvotes: 1

Vincent Elbert Budiman
Vincent Elbert Budiman

Reputation: 309

There are 2 types of Xamarin you can use.

Xamarin Forms : Which is the unified version that use XAML for the UI. It is very recommended to use this if you are building a simple application.

Xamarin Native : The "native" version of platform that are written in C#, if you want to create Android-only apps, I really recommend this, since it's very similar with the native Android code, but it's wrapped using C# (You can still using nuget package).

Upvotes: 0

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