How To


Choosing a Xamarin Strategy

Here's what you need to know before you create your first Xamarin application to run on a smartphone or a tablet.

Dealing with Unsafe DELETEs in RESTful Services

Your DELETE request to the service just timed out. Surely, it's safe to send it again. Actually, it may not be.

Styling Xamarin.Forms Apps with CSS

New support for styling Xamarin.Forms apps with CSS may be controversial, but Greg Shackles thinks CSS is a powerful (and frequently maligned) solution to the problem of styling native mobile applications. See what he means in this hands-on tutorial.

Dealing with Unsafe Methods in RESTful Services

Your update request to the service just timed out. Is it safe to send it again? Maybe. Here's how to ensure that all your update, delete and add requests are safe plus some advice on what you should really be calling them and handling concurrency.

Build a Xamarin.Forms Application with MvvmCross

Building cross-platforms applications has never been easier using Microsoft's Xamarin.Forms. In this article Nick introduces v6 of MvvmCross and shows how it can be leveraged to accelerate development and improve the architecture of a Xamarin.Forms application.

Build Your First TypeScript Application (2018)

Here's what a real-world "Hello, World" TypeScript application looks like (beginning with a discussion of whether you need TypeScript at all).

Creating New Classes from Old with Mixins

If you like the idea of creating a new class from whatever other classes you have lying around, you have two ways of doing in TypeScript ... and both are type safe (within limits).

Your First Xamarin.Forms Project

If you've got a recent version of Visual Studio (Visual Studio 2017 Community Edition, for example) then you can start creating an Android application. Here's what you need to do to get your first project set up.

Moving to the Cloud: A Piecemeal Strategy

You can move all your applications to the cloud in one giant migration. You might even live. Peter thinks there's a better, smarter way and it doesn't start with your Web applications.

Clustering Non-Numeric Data Using Python

The data science doctor explains everything you need to know about clustering data, the process of grouping items so those in a group (cluster) are similar and items in different groups are dissimilar.

Leveraging Raw SQL in Entity Framework Core

The ability to use SQL with Entity Framework Core has always been a cool feature. There's a new feature in Entity Framework Core that opens the door for whole new set of SQL-related functionality.

Setting Up Your TypeScript Application – 2018 Version

If you're wondering how to start integrating TypeScript into your development practices, here's both when to do it and how to do it.

Sound-Effect Audio with Xamarin.Forms

Wally builds an app prototype and in response to user feedback investigates how to play audio sound effects in response to events such as a button press.

High Performance Object-Oriented Data Access with Dapper

Entity Framework is fabulous ... but it does impose some overhead. If you like working with data in an O-O kind of way but feel the "need for speed," then you should be looking at Dapper.

Testing Precompiled Azure Functions Locally with Storage Emulator

If you're coding Azure Functions in Visual Studio 2017 to work with Azure Storage, one tool that can assist when running functions locally is the Microsoft Azure Storage Emulator, as shown in this hands-on tutorial.

Supporting Developers with JSON Schema

If you're building services it's critical that you support the developers who will create and read your service's messages. JSON Schema lets you support the three principles of good message design in a way that supports developers.

Managing and Enforcing Message Formats for Services

You can dramatically simplify life for developers creating services and their consumers by following three rules for designing messages and then enforcing your message formats with JSON Schema.

Designing Service Messages for Optimal Performance

If you're building services, then getting your message formats right can be the difference between success and failure. Here's an example of what can go wrong and how it could be fixed.

Invoking and Sharing View Components in ASP.NET Core

View components let you create reusable chunks of business logic coupled with a UI in multiple places in your application ... and then let you share that logic across multiple projects. Here's how to invoke them and share them.

Tools for Debugging Web Workers

Web workers in TypeScript give you concurrent processing but they can be awkward to debug. However, if you set up your web worker code as just another function, you can simplify debugging (or even build your web worker dynamically at run time).

Validating JSON with JSON Schema

Once you've created a JSON Schema that describes a JSON document, you can use it both in Visual Studio -- to provide guidance when creating JSON documents -- and in your code to validate the messages you're receiving.

Simple Concurrent Client-Side Processing in ASP.NET MVC with Web Workers and TypeScript

Here's how to use web workers in ASP.NET MVC with TypeScript to enable concurrent processing in your client-side code. And, as a bonus, the correct way to think about web workers.

Filtering List Boxes with a Little Help from XAML

This hands-on tutorial features an example app that displays a list of American cities, allowing the user to see a subset of choices by typing a filtering text value.

Defining JSON Messages with JSON Schema

If you're building a RESTful Web service, you can provide both guidance and control around the JSON messages your service works with by replacing documentation with JSON Schemas.

Quick Tip: Checking for Success in Web Calls

No matter how many HTTP codes there are, you really only need to check one property to determine success or failure.

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