| if you have ___ in iOS | then you want ___ in Android | to |
|---|---|---|
| UIViewController | Activity | subclass to present a screen/form/page to the user |
| ViewDidLoad() | OnCreate() | setup the UI |
| Add() or AddSubview() | SetContentView() | use in ViewDidLoad/OnCreate to 'attach' UI to display |
| ViewWillAppear() | OnResume() | load/re-load data that might change and bind to UI |
| UITableView | ListView | visual control that presents a scrolling list |
| UITableViewSource | Adapter | subclass to broker the display of a data collection to the UI |
| GetCell() | GetView() | to build the layout(UI) for each cell/row, including re-using cells/views for performance |
| RowSelected() | ItemClick EventHandler | perform an action when a row is touched |
| RowsInSection | Count | tell the table/list how many rows to cater for |
UITableViewSource has been implemented as an nested class to resemble the iOS pattern of implementing the equivalent Obj-C protocols on the ViewController - this pattern makes no sense in Android so the classes are separate.tableView=new UITableView();AddSubview (tableView);) whereas MonoDroid loads layout XML files SetContentView(Resource.Layout.Speakers);. This can happen in both ViewDidLoad/OnCreate and GetCell/GetView where UI controls must be created and presented to the user.TableViewSource handles a touch for a specific row (NSIndexPath); MonoDroid implements the ItemClick EventHandler<ItemEventArgs> on the ListView for a given GetRow(e.Position).TableViewSource/SpeakersAdapter) of the 'broker' class to pass the actual business object collection for display. This pattern lets the data be filtered/sorted/whatever before being passed in for display.refreshSpeakers() from ViewDidLoad/OnResume is kinda redundant in this example since the list never changes - but in other spots (eg the Favorites screen) you would want to refresh the list each time because it may have changed.UINavigationController stack and your RowSelected creates a new ViewController object (passing whatever parameters you need) and calls NavigationController.PushViewController(). The ViewController instances in the navigation stack are 'stateful' and it is really easy to pass business objects around as parameters.var intent = new Intent();
intent.SetClass(this, typeof(SpeakerActivity));
intent.PutExtra("Name", speaker.Name);
StartActivity(intent);
conf.xml format that is the shared data structure for both platforms.
ConceptDevelopment.Kelvin code is also shared (different sizes in each aren't relevant for now).Main.cs::DeserializeConferenceFile, LoadWhatsOn and MonoTouch's AppDelegate.cs::FinishedLaunching both contain "very similar" code in the form of the conf.xml deserializer and parser. In MonoTouch it's 70 lines and in MonoDroid it's 307 lines. The MonoTouch version is heavily assisted by the Linq/MonoTouch.Dialog code in HomeController (another 150 lines or so) which explains part of the difference... but what is shared is the deserialization logic and a number of Linq statements that help parse it for display. These would be harded to shift into a common library due to the dependency on MonoTouch.Dialog - but there was definitely an efficiency gain by having the code already written and tested on one platform before porting to the other. I'll adjust both by the same 'average' LOC count to try and reflect the 'copy/paste but modify' efficiency gain.| Mono-for-Android | MonoTouch (iOS) | |
|---|---|---|
| Code | 375 lines | 827 lines |
| 'markup' | 14 AXML | 1 XIB |
| Views | 7 Activities | 9 ViewControllers |
| DataSources | 6 Adapters | 5 TableViewSource |
UITabBarController takes more code to setup than OnCreateOptionsMenu.SQLite implementation of saving Favorites is more verbose than the XML-serialized-file solution used on Android.
Focusing on what matters most to customers is the key to our innovation strategy and will drive the growth of our business. This has meant reductions in certain areas, such as Mono. However, Mono remains part of the SUSE business and should customer demand for Mono products accelerate, our development efforts will rapidly respond. Regardless, we will continue to provide maintenance and support for all Mono products – MonoTouch, Mono for Android, Mono Tools for Visual Studio and SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension.But it sounds disingenuous considering they have already sacked the entire team... and WTF does "should...demand...accelerate" mean? How is demand going to grow when they've killed any chance of enhancing the product and do not market it?? If they were truly "Focusing on what matters most to customers" they wouldn't have sacked the engineers in the first place, or else should have released/sold/transferred the Touch/Droid IP to Xamarin where it has some hope of a future (IMHO, anyway). </2centsworth>
| iOS | WP7 | Android | |
|---|---|---|---|
| "View" | XIB (Interface Builder) | Xaml | axml |
| UIViewController | PhoneApplicationPage (codebehind) | Activity | |
| n/a (UIAutoResizing) | StackPanel | LinearLayout | |
| UITableView | ListBox | ListView | |
| UITableViewCell | ListBox.ItemTemplate | n/a (any view) | |
| UITableViewSource | n/a (binding, IEnumerable) | BaseAdapter | |
| Navigation "Controller" | NavigationController. PushViewController() | NavigationService. Navigate() | StartActivity() |
| n/a (object) | Xaml Uri | Intent.SetClass() | |
| n/a (object properties) | Xaml Uri querystring params | Intent.PutExtra() .AddFlags() | |
| n/a (object properties) | NavigationContext .QueryString .TryGetValue() | Intent .GetXXXExtra() | |
| Threading | InvokeOnMainThread | Dispatcher.BeginInvoke | RunOnUiThread |
| "Model" | C# .NET objects - shared thanks to Mono on iOS & Android. Also WebClient, Linq, Generics, Xml, Serialization, etc... :-) | ||
UITabBarController, ApplicationBar) to be permanently visible. Google, on the other hand, provides the Menu button to show the menu, meaning that most of the time it is hidden. This means your Android app UI might need to provide other visual clues so that navigation/features/options are more discoverable.Uri in WP7, an Intent in Android) which is stored as the user navigates through your application. At any time (unless you intercept it) the hardware Back button allows the user to cycle back through previous views until they have exited your app.UINavigationController - however the back button is 'soft' (displayed in the top-left corner of the screen) and the scope is limited to the set of views that the developer chose to include in that navigation context.
.sln files.
.xib files). The entire layout is done in C# for the MonoTouch example, whereas the WP7 and Android version use Xaml and axml respectively.
UIWebView to authenticate and grab the access_token you need for subsequent requests. 
UIWebView... we create one and navigate to https://graph.facebook.com/oauth/authorize which displays and processes the login form. A successful authentication results in a redirect to a 'known page'; the redirected URL contains the access_token needed for subsequent 'authorised' requests so the code strips it out and saves it. Thanks again to Jon without whom the rest of the code wouldn't be here!var b = wc.DownloadData(
new Uri("https://graph.facebook.com/me/home?access_token=" + token));
var s = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(b);
var posts = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<Posts>(s);The parsing works so easily because Objects.cs contains a set of classes that (roughly, not completely) match the JSON returned by Facebook, for example:{"data":[\{"id":"57755305836_10150135900140837","from":\{"name":"Tiga","category":"Musician\\/band","id":"57755305836"\},
"message":"Bad DJ Signs Vol.1: when your dancefloor reminds you of the \\"club\\" scene from \\"Vanilla Sky\\"",
"icon":"http:\\/\\/photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net\\/photos-ak-snc1\\/v27562\\/23\\/2231777543\\/app_2_2231777543_9553.gif",
"actions":[\{"name":"Comment","link":"http:\\/\\/www.facebook.com\\/57755305836\\/posts\\/10150135900140837"\},
\{"name":"Like","link":"http:\\/\\/www.facebook.com\\/57755305836\\/posts\\/10150135900140837"\},
\{"name":"\\u0040ciaotiga on Twitter","link":"http:\\/\\/twitter.com\\/ciaotiga?"\}],
"type":"status","created_time":"2011-02-18T07:23:42+0000","updated_time":"2011-02-18T08:25:22+0000",
"likes":33maps to
DeserializeObject() call is then all that is required to take the JSON string and turn it into an object graph that is easily bound to a UITableView (see Main.cs).WebClient is all it takes.System.Net.WebClient wc = new System.Net.WebClient();
var result = wc.UploadString
("https://graph.facebook.com/me/feed?access_token=" + token
, "message=" + status);