A cross-platform programming software for mobile devices… that sounded too good to be true when I first started developing an android app for retrieving data for one of my main projects, the GReS Envimo. This was also the first time I started learning C#, as I had to be accustomed to it to use this software in programming the backend. I then looked further into it and despite quite a complex starting environment to begin with for Windows (not so much for Mac users), I started to piece things together little by little and begin building an interface for an app that can handle three platforms in one coding session: Android, iOS, and Windows Phone.
Using libraries such as XF-Material-Library and ContextMenu, I customized the look and feel of the platform where users could browse through for the data that they were looking for. This all was topped off by using their validation rules plugin to help verify processes that require validation. Here and there, I also imported packages through NuGet to customize the experience better since there are also a lot of the community already active within the development of this cross-programming software.
With connection tools to cloud platforms such as Azure, this also is a great way to get started on an IoT journey or build on that journey. I connected my app with the Azure database, which was receiving data from a test device at that time, which was a Raspberry Pi 3 with a DHT22 (temperature and humidity sensor) connected to it, and sure enough the data started to populate within the cloud system. It was also a good opportunity for me to compare and contrast Azure and Amazon Web Services’ capabilities, which I have previously been mostly using for most of my projects.
I also did a talk at MonkeyFest 2017 about this project, which was held at Singapore’s Microsoft Office (no pun intended). You can check it out in the talks page in this website to find out more in-depth about the project I did. Despite it being quite tough to grasp at first, this software is a must try for mobile programmers.
