Onward and UpwardKeith Ward, Editor in Chief, Visual Studio Magazine
Blog archive
Microsoft Releases SkyDrive SDKs for .NET, Windows Phone 8
Microsoft's making a huge push for its SkyDrive cloud data service. It makes sense, since a cloud backend is critical in the consumer space where customers are used to, for instance, Apple's iCloud service. If Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 are going to compete with iOS and Android, as Redmond hopes, then SkyDrive needs to be as useful as possible.
Toward that end, Microsoft today announced new SkyDrive SDKs for .NET and Windows Phone 8. The post, by Omar Shahine, explains the need for the new tools:
"Since we first introduced our SDKs, we have seen a lot of developers ask for a .NET library that would work for both client desktop apps and ASP.NET applications. With this release you can now create applications that target traditional desktop scenarios and as well as server side scenarios."
There are two versions of the .NET SDK: client and server. The client SDK enables developers to build console, Windows Form or Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) applications for end users, to help them better integrate SkyDrive with their daily tasks.
The server version is more about building ASP.NET Web sites and Web server components. The post even contains a code snippet showing how to retrieve SkyDrive data from a server .NET application.
As for the Windows Phone 8 SDK, it leverages one of the phone's best new features -- the new Task<T> async pattern and dynamic keyword. "With this you can easily move your code between your Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 application," writes Shahine. He then includes a code snippet showing how to do this, as well.
The SDKs are available from the developer portal, or via NuGet from within Visual Studio.
Posted by Keith Ward on 11/16/2012