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API August

Welcome to API August, where we’ll be looking at how to build simple Windows Phone 8 apps using some of the more common, freely accessible API’s and web services.

All of the projects we’ll be building during API August will use an MVVM pattern, so that all of the heavy lifting is carried out by a Portable Class Library (PCL). We’ll use a Windows Phone 8 project to test the PCL functionality, however, if you’re keen to develop cross-platform, there’s nothing to stop you using the PCL in a Xamarin Studio solution and creating iOS or Android app as well.

As we’ll be focussing on how to call these APIs and return the results to the user, we’ll be keeping the UI very simple. Mostly we’ll just present the results as a list of records with an accompanying page to show the details of a single record. Occasionally we’ll add some searching or filtering, but we’ll leave the rest to your imagination. Having covered the basics in these posts, you’ll be able to go out and build fantastic, full-featured apps that take the world by storm. If that does happen, be sure to drop me a line, or offer me a job:)

As API August continues, we’ll update this post with links to the projects we’re creating, so take the time to bookmark this page and check back regularly.

Here's some basics that will apply across all of the solutions we'll cover in API August.

Solution Layout

Most of our sample solutions will follow a similar pattern. We’ll have an solution with two projects SolutionName.PCL – the portable class library and SolutionName.WP – the Windows Phone 8 app.

Views - ViewModels

Since our Views need to know whenever the underlying ViewModel has changed, all of our ViewModels need to implement INotifyPropertyChanged. We’ll create a single base class NotifyBase that handles the PropertyChanged events, which our ViewModes will inherit.
public class NotifyBase : INotifyPropertyChanged
{
 
    public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;
 
    protected virtual void OnPropertyChanged([CallerMemberNamestring propertyName = null)
    {
        PropertyChangedEventHandler handler = PropertyChanged;
        if (handler != null)
            handler(thisnew PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName));
    }
 
}

LongListSelector with bindable SelectedItem

In the API August projects, we’ll use a class derived from the built-in LongListSelector to display lists of results. The derived class adds the implementation for the SelectedItem property. This is not supported in the built-in control, but is extremely handy. 
public class LongListSelector : Microsoft.Phone.Controls.LongListSelector
{
    public LongListSelector()
    {
        SelectionChanged += LongListSelector_SelectionChanged;
    }
 
    void LongListSelector_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        SelectedItem = base.SelectedItem;
    }
 
    public static readonly DependencyProperty SelectedItemProperty =
        DependencyProperty.Register(
            "SelectedItem",
            typeof(object),
            typeof(LongListSelector),
            new PropertyMetadata(null, OnSelectedItemChanged)
        );
 
    private static void OnSelectedItemChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        var selector = (LongListSelector)d;
        selector.SelectedItem = e.NewValue;
    }
 
    public new object SelectedItem
    {
        get { return GetValue(SelectedItemProperty); }
        set { SetValue(SelectedItemProperty, value); }
    }
}
Posted: Aug 01 2014, 12:28 by CameronM | Comments (0) RSS comment feed |
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Filed under: C# | Windows Phone 8