New Dropbox API one day, on Xamarin the next

Long-time Xamarin customers know that there is a history of delivering updates same day when the native platforms (iOS and Android, for example) are upgraded. Today there was another little surprise - the new Dropbox Datastore API that was announced at DBX yesterday was made available via a Xamarin Component today!

Think of it as a cross-platform iCloud-like key-value store ~ same kind of stuff you can do with Parse or even Azure Mobile Services.

Check out the Xamarin Blog for all the details and a cute sample app called MonkeyBox.

But wait, there's more!
In the past I've posted about porting a small "To Do List" application to various different platforms, including Azure (iOS, Android, Mac and more) twice as well as an iCloud version for iOS.

Here's the same basic code using the new Dropbox Datastore API (just iOS, for now...):

Here's a direct link to the code on github... to use just download the solution (which includes the Xamarin Dropbox Component) and:

1. Visit the Dropbox App Console to get your access credentials set-up.
2. Add the App key and App secret to the AppDelegate.cs in the project.
3. Add a Custom URL Type to the advanced Info.plist settings (replacing the identifier and also YOUR_APP_KEY with the correct credential value) like this
   

When the app is up-and-running, you can 'browse datastores' from the Dropbox App Console and see the data update on the server in real-time!

In only a few lines of code you can use a cloud-based data store simply and easily, across multiple platforms and devices! Load up the app on a couple of iOS devices (and/or the iOS Simulator) and watch the magic in action :)