Co-development for Windows Phone 7/8 and Windows 8 guide - Revision history

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Vaishali Rawat - - Introduction

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← Older revision		Revision as of 07:22, 29 April 2013
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−	[[Category:Windows Phone 8]][[Category:Windows Phone 7.5]][[Category:Windows Phone]][[Category:Windows%208]][[Category:Multi-Platform Development]][[Category:General Programming]][[Category:Code Snippet]]	+	[[Category:Windows Phone 8]][[Category:Windows Phone 7.5]][[Category:Windows Phone]][[Category:Windows%208]][[Category:Multi-Platform Development]][[Category:General Programming]][[Category:Code Snippet]][[Category:MonoGame]]
	{{Abstract\|This article explains how to write code that can target multiple platforms including Windows Phone 7/8, Windows 8 and beyond }}		{{Abstract\|This article explains how to write code that can target multiple platforms including Windows Phone 7/8, Windows 8 and beyond }}

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 Building applications that target multiple platforms is always hard. We would like to minimize maintenance, testing and coding time in order to ship more quickly.
-Each platform has its own set of APIs, it can have different capabilities, screen resolutions and all those differences creep into the code. The key is to isolate code that is platform agnostic, i.e. it is the same for all platforms, and separate it from the platform specific code. This separation will minimize written code. Traditional solutions for reusing code across projects were either "copy paste pattern" which didn't help reducing the overall code size or sharing source files in multiple projects. The latter way introduced its own quirks and, as we will see later on, this technique is pretty much still used, although significantly less.
+Each platform has its own set of APIs, it can have different capabilities, screen resolutions and all those differences creep into the code. The key is to isolate the code which is platform independent, i.e. it is the same for all platforms, and separates it from the platform specific code. This separation will minimize the written piece of code. Traditional solutions for reusing code across projects were either "copy paste pattern" which didn't help reducing the overall code size or sharing source files in multiple projects. The latter way introduced its own quirks and, as we will see later on, this technique is pretty much still used, although significantly less.
 But how do we do that? One way is to structure your application using the MVVM pattern and keep views in the platform specific projects and put view models and models inside a shared library. Since ordinary class library cannot be shared between multiple platforms, there is a new project type called Portable Class Library (later referred as PCL). It can be consumed in Windows Phone 7, Windows Phone 8 and Windows 8 projects (later referred as WP7, WP8 and W8 respectively).

← Older revision		Revision as of 18:27, 17 February 2013
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−	[[Category:Windows Phone 8]][[Category:Windows Phone 7.5]][[Category:Windows Phone]][[Category:Windows%208]][[Category:Multi-Platform Development]][[Category:General Programming]]	+	[[Category:Windows Phone 8]][[Category:Windows Phone 7.5]][[Category:Windows Phone]][[Category:Windows%208]][[Category:Multi-Platform Development]][[Category:General Programming]][[Category:Code Snippet]]
	{{Abstract\|This article explains how to write code that can target multiple platforms including Windows Phone 7/8, Windows 8 and beyond }}		{{Abstract\|This article explains how to write code that can target multiple platforms including Windows Phone 7/8, Windows 8 and beyond }}

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+|update-timestamp= 20130121
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← Older revision		Revision as of 03:08, 21 January 2013
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	Unfortunately, you cannot write single WinRT compoment and use it in both WP8 and W8 projects. To share code between WP8 and W8 RT components, you must use linked files. All platform specific code should be wrapped in preprocessor directives similarly to the sample shown above.		Unfortunately, you cannot write single WinRT compoment and use it in both WP8 and W8 projects. To share code between WP8 and W8 RT components, you must use linked files. All platform specific code should be wrapped in preprocessor directives similarly to the sample shown above.
−
−
−	~~=== Enterprise Applications ===~~
−	~~Enterprise applications will want to make the same application available to their clients on various platforms like desktop, mobile, tablets, etc. <BR/>~~
−	Example: A sales application will be made for desktop for an extensive use, but a mobile app with some crucial functionality only, will be handy for the sales guy when he is on the road. These critical functionalities can be coded in a way to take advantage of reusability.
−	~~[[File:SalesApp.png]]~~
−
−	~~=== Consumer Applications ===~~
−	~~Some software products have a use case in both desktop and mobile environments. Example: Skype, Facebook, etc.~~

	==Cross Platform Code Reusability Best Practices ==		==Cross Platform Code Reusability Best Practices ==

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-[[Category:Windows Phone 8]][[Category:Windows Phone 7.5]][[Category:Windows Phone]][[Category:Windows%208]][[Category:Multi-Platform Development]]
+[[Category:Windows Phone 8]][[Category:Windows Phone 7.5]][[Category:Windows Phone]][[Category:Windows%208]][[Category:Multi-Platform Development]][[Category:General Programming]]
 {{Abstract|This article explains how to write code that can target multiple platforms including Windows Phone 7/8, Windows 8 and beyond }}
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 Unfortunately, you cannot write single WinRT compoment and use it in both WP8 and W8 projects. To share code between WP8 and W8 RT components, you must use linked files. All platform specific code should be wrapped in preprocessor directives similarly to the sample shown above.
-== Where does cross platform code reuse makes sense ==
 === Enterprise Applications ===
 Enterprise applications will want to make the same application available to their clients on various platforms like desktop, mobile, tablets, etc. <BR/>
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 ==Cross Platform Code Reusability Best Practices ==
-Now that we have seen the scenarios where code reuse makes sense and how can we achieve it in WP8 and Windows 8, let us have a look at some guidelines for the code that should be made reusable.
+Writing reusable code may take more time in the analysis and design phase, but this cost is usually recovered by reducing both the total cost of development and the cost of ongoing maintenance. This section contains a few key guidelines for creating reusable code.
 === Keep the UI separate ===
-.NET uses MVVM model i.e. view : view-model : model, where the view represents the UI layer.<BR/>
+.NET uses MVVM model i.e. view : view-model : model, where the view represents the UI layer.
 WP8 and Windows have similar UI design guidelines for a consistent look and feel. But the way apps appear and interact with desktop and mobiles differ and hence it’s good to avoid re-engineering too much on code reuse of this layer.
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 ===Reusing the data layer ===
-This is a bit tricky, as in some cases this layer can be made reusable but in some cases it won't. <BR/>
+This is a bit tricky, as in some cases this layer can be made reusable but in some cases it won't.
-Example : Above mentioned Sales App, the database and services pulling data from it will be the same and can be a part of reusable components.<BR/>
 But consider an example of a photo editor application; here the data (image files) on which the business logic will act can be highly platform specific and hence in this case, this layer should not be a candidate for code reuse.
 == Summary ==

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 However, PCL are C# assemblies and as for WinRT, there is no such thing for C++ based Runtime Components. You have to share the code between them using the old way. It will be described in more detail further down this article.
 == Platform overview ==
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 Unfortunately, you cannot write single WinRT compoment and use it in both WP8 and W8 projects. To share code between WP8 and W8 RT components, you must use linked files. All platform specific code should be wrapped in preprocessor directives similarly to the sample shown above.
 == Summary ==

← Older revision		Revision as of 04:55, 18 December 2012
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−	[[Category:Windows Phone 8]][[Category:Windows Phone 7.5]][[Category:Windows Phone]][[Category:Windows%208]]	+	[[Category:Windows Phone 8]][[Category:Windows Phone 7.5]][[Category:Windows Phone]][[Category:Windows%208]][[Category:Multi-Platform Development]]
	{{Abstract\|This article explains how to write code that can target multiple platforms including Windows Phone 7/8, Windows 8 and beyond }}		{{Abstract\|This article explains how to write code that can target multiple platforms including Windows Phone 7/8, Windows 8 and beyond }}

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 === Runtime differences ===
-Sometimes the code will compile regardless of the platform, but we need to check on which platform the code is executing in runtime. This is useful when dealing with In App Purchases or Live Tiles on Windows Phone. If you are still maintaining a Windows Phone 7 application, but you wish to target features that are provided by Windows Phone 8 OS, you can use reflection and use those features. Checking those features can only be done in runtime.
+Sometimes the code will compile regardless of the platform, but we need to check on which platform the code is executing in runtime. This is useful when dealing with In App Purchases or Live Tiles on Windows Phone. For example, if you are still maintaining a Windows Phone 7 application, but you wish to use the  features that are provided by Windows Phone 8 OS when you detect that you are running on it, you can use reflection to access them. It is obvious that you can check which operating system version you are running on only in runtime. This is useful when you do not want to convert or work in parallel on the WP8 version of your application.
 You can also adapt your UI depending on the OS version and load images of different sizes or use completely different assets. Code using reflection will compile regardless of the destination platform, but once the code actually runs, you can adapt your behavior depending on the runtime differences.
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 Sharing source code files will only get you so far. You still have to maintain a separate library for each new platform you wish to support. If you want to add a new class, you need to manually update each library and add the new file as a linked file. This is clearly impractical. To solve that, Visual Studio 2012 comes with a new project type called Portable Class Library.
-PCL is a special type of class library that is compiled only once and can be run on multiple .NET platforms without recompiling. This means that you can put your platform agnostic code in it and reuse it across different projects that target specific platforms. You now have one project that gives one assembly instead of having an assembly for each platform with shared code. Since the source file is not reused, this reduces the maintenance cost drastically and gives you flexibility when writing new apps.
+PCL is a special type of class library that is compiled only once and can be run on multiple .NET platforms without recompiling. This means that you can put your platform agnostic code in it and reuse it across different projects that target specific platforms. You write your source once, put it in one project and you compile it to one assembly - instead of having an assembly for each platform with shared code. Since you now maintain only one version of source files, this reduces the maintenance cost usually assigned to various platform's quirks drastically and gives you flexibility when writing new apps.
 When you create a PCL, you are prompted to choose which platforms you want to target. Depending on the chosen platforms, a minimal set of APIs that is present in all selected platforms is available to you. You can only add reference to other portable libraries which target the same set of APIs.