Publishing the Nuget of my Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms!

Let me share the journey of me publishing the Nuget Package of my interactive Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms that I built using SkiaSharp.

So some time back I built an Interactive and responsive Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms (Android, iOS, UWP) with a whole bunch of awesome features. On a Canvas with a beautiful Color spectrum similar to a rainbow gradient effect spreading across, drag, drop, swipe and pan over the Canvas to pick the Color you need easily, in a fun-to-use interactive experience. Built from pure Xamarin.Forms based on SkiaSharp, lightweight and fast!

Backstory…

In my previous blog post I shared with you guys how I built my interactive Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms, https://theconfuzedsourcecode.wordpress.com/2020/02/26/i-built-an-interactive-color-picker-control-for-xamarin-forms/

Since then I had been adding a whole bunch of extra feature to this Color Picker Control I built, so I thought it was a good idea to publish it as a Nuget Package and share with everyone! 😀

So this time, let me share my journey of implementing more advanced features and publishing the Nuget Package of my Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms! 😉

Some thought…

So before I isolated my Color Picker Control into a stand alone reusable package, I wanted to make sure that I maintain my philosophy of building Plugins. This would definitely have a big impact on your Users who will will be using these Plugins to build their apps, therefore I’ll share the tick list that I consider as important as follows…

Plug and Play: The plugin should easy to set up with. Do not force Devs to set up any dependencies or property values by themselves. The properties and behaviors of the Plugin should have default values assigned to them.

Customization: It should be easy and straight forward for the Devs to customize the appearance or the behaviors of the Plugin. In some case this might be limited, but you must build the Plugin in a way it make it easy as much as possible.

Embedded: In the case of UI Element Plugins, you should make it easy to be embedded into any Layout structure, being able to inherit the Parent Layout’s behaviors and values, without overriding or disrupting them.

Keep it Light: Make the Plugin as lightweight as possible, give the Dev the chance to choose which assemblies to be included in the plugin. Remove unnecessary references or dependencies from your Plugin core, so it’s light weight as possible.

Performance First: It shouldn’t cause any performance bottleneck, therefore from scratch you must build the Plugin with performance in mind. Constantly check for performance improvements during the development of your Plugin.

So may be go over this list before you build or release a Plugin for the public! 😉 Alright, with all those principles in mind, let’s move ahead…

The Features!

So here are the features that are already available in the Color Picker Control that I built which I had shared from my previous blog post…

• Picked Color: The Property that allows Users to retrieve the Color values that’s selected from the Color Picker. This value is only a Get Property.

• Picked Color Changed Event: The Event that fires up every time the PickedColor Value is changed during Color selection. You can subscribe to this event and observe the behavior.

Since my venture into this Color Picker Plugin I had a few ideas in mind as improvements or rather add as extra features, rather than just being a UI Element which allows you to pick a color on a beautiful spectrum! 😉 So here are the extra features that I’ll be building up into it..

• Change the Available Base Colors List: You can set the primary list of Colors where the gradient spectrum will be rendered from. So choose the base colors you want to be populated as you wish and it will be rendered on the Color Picker.

• Change the Color List Flow Direction: You will be able to change the direction of the flow of the colors on the canvas, where it be Horizontal flow or a Vertical flow of the color spectrum. Further more Horizontally being starting off the flow from left to right, and Vertically being top to bottom.

• Change the Color Spectrum Style: You will be able to change the style of the Color Spectrum gradient, the rendering combination of base colors (Hue), or lighter colors (Tint) or darker colors (Shade). You’ll be able to set it with different order as well, ex: Hue Colors, Shade Colors, Tint Colors or Tint Colors, Hue Colors, Shade Colors, etc..

• Change the Appearance of the Pointer: The white color circle that is used as the Picker Pointer on the Canvas, should be able to customized based on its Diameter or Thickness of the Circle border. Another nice addition would be to allow user to set the position of the Pointer as they wish.

Alright, now that we listed down the new intended feature set that I’m planning to ship out with my Color Picker Control, let’s get down to building it… 😀

Sneak Peek!

Just to give a little glimpse of the awesomeness I ended up building and publishing… 😀 behold the Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms!

Pretty awesome eh! 😉 I have moved out of my previous repo to a new standalone repo in github, since I’m publishing this as a package. Therefore all the new development will be done in this repository.

Project hosted on github:
https://github.com/UdaraAlwis/XFColorPickerControl

So feel free to take a look in there before we continue… 😉

Time to Build!

Since I already explained in my previous blog post how I built my Color Picker Control from scratch step by step, I won’t be repeatedly going through same code bits in this post, but rather focus on the new changes and features only.
If you haven’t read that one yet, then I would recommend you take a peek there first, I built an Interactive Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms! And continue here…

I named the Solution as Udara.Plugin.XFColorPickerControl, and in return I intend to keep the Package reference with the same naming. I am using Visual Studio 2019 on Windows 10 here as my development environment.

I have created a VS Solution with a .NET Standard 2.0 Library which will hold the UI Control in place, with the naming ColorPicker. You can see I have added the dependencies of the Plugin, with Xamarin.Forms and SkiaSharp.Views.Forms packages. 😉

Notice the pure Xamarin.Forms DemoApp project inside the Demo folder that I have added to the same solution? That is for testing and showcasing the Plugin’s use, also as a reference point for anyone who wants to learn how to use the Plugin in many different ways, this attached DemoApp could come handy. 😀

The ColorPicker.xaml is the UI Element that users will be using under the namespace Udara.Plugin.XFColorPickerControl.ColorPicker in their XAML or C# code for building the UI. Here’s base skeleton implementation of the ColorPicker.xaml.cs, which all the core implementation will be taking place…

namespace Udara.Plugin.XFColorPickerControl
{
    [XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
    public partial class ColorPicker : ContentView
    {
        public ColorPicker()
        {
            InitializeComponent();
        }

        // Implementation goes here
    }
}

Next let’s get into the implementation of Features one by one as I discussed before…

Building the Features!

So I’m going to use the same code for the two features that I already implemented in my previous blog post, Picked Color and Picked Color Changed Event feature that’s represented by PickedColor Property and PickedColorChanged Event Handler.

[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class ColorPicker : ContentView
{
	/// <summary>
	/// Occurs when the Picked Color changes
	/// </summary>
	public event EventHandler<Color> PickedColorChanged;

	public static readonly BindableProperty PickedColorProperty
		= BindableProperty.Create(
			nameof(PickedColor),
			typeof(Color),
			typeof(ColorPicker));

	/// <summary>
	/// Get the current Picked Color
	/// </summary>
	public Color PickedColor
	{
		get { return (Color)GetValue(PickedColorProperty); }
		private set { SetValue(PickedColorProperty, value); }
	}
	
	...
}

Now considering the rest of the features that I discussed in the beginning, all those features can be implemented and exposed via Bendable Properties, and handling the Property Changed events internally to react for any changes requested during run time.

[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class ColorPicker : ContentView
{
    ...
 
    public static readonly BindableProperty PropertyNameProperty
        = BindableProperty.Create( 
        ... 
        
            validateValue: (bindable, value) =>
            {
                // validate value
                return (..);
            },
            
            propertyChanged: (bindable, value, newValue) =>
            {
                if (newValue != null)
                    // action on value change
                else
                    // handling null values
                    ((ColorPicker)bindable).PropertyNameProperty = default;
            });
        );
 
    public type PropertyName
    { ... }
 
    ...
}

All the Bindable Properties are safeguarded with validations as you see above. I have added an extra layer of protection against unnecessary null values being set up, by defaulting the property value to default of itself. You can check the full implementation of each of these Properties on the github repo itself. github.com/UdaraAlwis/XFColorPickerControl Let’s begin..

Feature: BaseColorList

Bindable Property, BaseColorList: Change the available base Colors on the Color Spectrum, of the Color Picker. This will take a List of strings of Color names or Hex values, which is held in an IEnumerable as show here, also I have set up the fallback default values with the rainbow color spectrum.

[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class ColorPicker : ContentView
{
    ...

    public static readonly BindableProperty BaseColorListProperty
        = BindableProperty.Create( ... );

    public IEnumerable BaseColorList
    { ... }

    ...
}

This Property is then consumed during the SkiaSharp rendering cycle as follows, where as we’re using the Xamarin.Forms built in ColorTypeConverter to parse the string color values to actual Color objects and then to SKColor objects, which is then used to render the render the color spectrum on the Color Picker Control. 😀

...
    private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
                   (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
    {
        ...
         
        // Draw gradient rainbow Color spectrum
        using (var paint = new SKPaint())
        {
            paint.IsAntialias = true;
 
            // Initiate the base Color list
            ColorTypeConverter converter = new ColorTypeConverter();
            System.Collections.Generic.List<SKColor> colors = 
                new System.Collections.Generic.List<SKColor>();
            foreach (var color in BaseColorList)
                colors.Add(((Color)converter.
		          ConvertFromInvariantString(color.ToString())).ToSKColor());
				
            ...
        }
    }
...

Pretty straight forward eh! Let’s see how you could use this as a developer.

How to use?

You can easily use this feature in XAML as follows, by accessing ColorPicker.BaseColorList property and setting up the list of color values you prefer as hex values or with pre-defined color value names.

<xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker
	x:Name="ColorPicker"
	...	>
	<xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker.BaseColorList>
		<x:Array Type="{x:Type x:String}">
			<!--  Yellow  -->
			<x:String>#ffff00</x:String>
			<!--  Aqua  -->
			<x:String>#00ffff</x:String>
			<!--  Fuchsia  -->
			<x:String>#ff00ff</x:String>
			<!--  Yellow  -->
			<x:String>#ffff00</x:String>
		</x:Array>
	</xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker.BaseColorList>
</xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker>

If you prefer in C# code, you can easily do as as well, a list of string values of the colors…

ColorPicker.BaseColorList = new List<string>()
{
	"#00bfff",
	"#0040ff",
	"#8000ff",
	"#ff00ff",
	"#ff0000",
};

Here’s some action…

Feature: ColorFlowDirection

The Bindable Property, ColorFlowDirection: Change the direction in which the Colors are flowing through on the Color Spectrum, of the Color Picker. This will allow you to set whether the Colors are flowing through from left to right, Horizontally or top to bottom, Vertically. I have defined an Enum type which will represent this type of course.

namespace Udara.Plugin.XFColorPickerControl
{
    public enum ColorFlowDirection
    {
        Horizontal,
        Vertical
    }
}

Let’s create our ColorFlowDirection Bindable Property based on that,

[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class ColorPicker : ContentView
{
    ...

    public static readonly BindableProperty ColorFlowDirectionProperty
        = BindableProperty.Create( ... );

    public ColorFlowDirection ColorFlowDirection
    { ... }

    ...
}

The default value will be set as ColorFlowDirection.Horizontal, and if the User changes value during run time, it will fire up a new SkiaSharp rendering cycle of the Canvas, effectively rendering the spectrum accordingly to the new color value, which is handled in the rendering logic as below…

...
    private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
                   (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
    {
        ...
        
            // create the gradient shader between base Colors
            using (var shader = SKShader.CreateLinearGradient(
                new SKPoint(0, 0),
                ColorFlowDirection == ColorFlowDirection.Horizontal ?
                    new SKPoint(skCanvasWidth, 0) : 
                    new SKPoint(0, skCanvasHeight),
                colors.ToArray(),
                null,
                SKShaderTileMode.Clamp))
            {
                paint.Shader = shader;
                skCanvas.DrawPaint(paint);
            }
            
        ...
    }
...

The trick here is to configure the SKShader.CreateLinearGradient() method’s start and end coordinate parameters, which governs the direction in which the gradient effect will be drawn with the list of colors, thus rendering the color list from left to right or top to bottom. As you can see for Horizontal effect, we use SKPoint (0,0) to SKPoint(<canvasWidth>, 0) by using the corner most value on the X axis for the end coordinates, the same pattern is used for Vertical effect with bottom most value on the Y axis.

Here how to consume this feature as a developer…

How to use?

You can easily use this feature in XAML, by accessing ColorPicker.ColorFlowDirection property and setting Horizontal or Vertical option as you prefer…

<xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker
	x:Name="ColorPicker"
	ColorFlowDirection="Horizontal"
	...	>
</xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker>

If you prefer in C# code, use the ColorFlowDirection.Horizontal or Vertical option…

ColorPicker.ColorFlowDirection =
	Udara.Plugin.XFColorPickerControl.ColorFlowDirection.Horizontal;

Here’s some action…

Feature: ColorSpectrumStyle

The Bindable Property, ColorSpectrumStyle: Change the Color Spectrum gradient style, with the rendering combination of base colors (Hue), or lighter colors (Tint) or darker colors (Shade). If you’re not familiar with these technical terms, here’s a clear illustration of comparison of Hue, Shade, and Tint of Colors.

We need to make sure our Color Picker is able to deliver to this kind of requirement, having darker or lighter colors of the given base colors on the Color Picker Spectrum. So I’ve created an Enum type which will consist of all the possible combinations of Hue, Shade and Tint colors based on the available Base Colors, that would facilitate this feature.

namespace Udara.Plugin.XFColorPickerControl
{
    public enum ColorSpectrumStyle
    {
        HueOnlyStyle,
        HueToShadeStyle,
        ShadeToHueStyle,
        HueToTintStyle,
        TintToHueStyle,
        TintToHueToShadeStyle,
        ShadeToHueToTintStyle
    }
}

Let’s create our ColorSpectrumStyle Bindable Property based on that,

[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class ColorPicker : ContentView
{
    ...

    public static readonly BindableProperty ColorSpectrumStyleProperty
        = BindableProperty.Create( ... );

    public ColorSpectrumStyle ColorSpectrumStyle
    { ... }

    ...
}

I will be setting ColorSpectrumStyle.HueToShadeStyle as the default value for this property, any changes to this value during run time will kick start a new refresh draw on the Color Spectrum, which is handled in the rendering logic as below…

...
    private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
                   (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
    {
        ...
         
        // Draw secondary gradient color spectrum
        using (var paint = new SKPaint())
        {
            paint.IsAntialias = true;
 
            // Initiate gradient color spectrum style layer
            var colors = GetSecondaryLayerColors(ColorSpectrumStyle);
			
            ...
        }
    }
...

Over here, we’re retrieving the list of colors based on the ColorSpectrumStyle value, which is a combination of Transparent, Black and White colors, which will be used to draw the secondary gradient layer. GetSecondaryLayerColors() will be returning the appropriate list of secondary colors that matches the ColorSpectrumStyle requested as follows.

...
    private SKColor[] GetSecondaryLayerColors(ColorSpectrumStyle colorSpectrumStyle)
    {
        ...
        
        if (colorSpectrumStyle == GradientColorStyle.DarkToColorsToLightStyle)
        {
            return new SKColor[]
            {
                SKColors.Black,
                SKColors.Transparent,
                SKColors.White
            };
        }
        
        ...
    }
...

I’m maintaining a simple If-else block chain which will check for the ColorSpectrumStyle value available and return the appropriate list of colors back. Quite straight forward! 😉

Now here’s how you use this awesome feature…

How to use?

You can easily use this feature in XAML, by accessing ColorPicker.ColorSpectrumStyle property and setting the appropriate Style option as you prefer…

<xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker
	x:Name="ColorPicker"
	ColorSpectrumStyle="TintToHueToShadeStyle"
	...	>
</xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker>

If you prefer in C# code…

ColorPicker.ColorSpectrumStyle =
	Udara.Plugin.XFColorPickerControl.ColorSpectrumStyle.TintToHueToShadeStyle;

Here’s some action…

Feature: PointerRing Styling

As you can see there’s a pretty neat Pointer Ring that’s pointing the picked color position on the Color Picker, it would be nice to be able to customized this too eh! 😉

Therefore I have introduced four features for this,

• PointerRingDiameterUnits
• PointerRingBorderUnits
• PointerRingPositionXUnits
• PointerRingPositionYUnits

Alright, let’s walk through them one by one..

Feature: PointerRingDiameterUnits

The Bindable Property, PointerRingDiameter: Changes the Diameter size of the Pointer Ring on the Color Picker. It accepts values between 0 and 1, as a representation of numerical units which is compared to the 1/10th of the longest length of the Color Picker Canvas. By default this value is set to 0.6 units.

[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class ColorPicker : ContentView
{
    ...
 
    public static readonly BindableProperty PointerRingDiameterUnitsProperty
        = BindableProperty.Create( ... );
 
    public double PointerRingDiameterUnits
    { ... }
    
    ...
}

This will be calculated against the longest length of Color Picker’s Canvas, whether it be Width or Height. The reason for adding another 1/10th of the value is to maintain the maximum size of the Pointer Ring, avoiding ridiculous sizing of the element. lol So the Precise calculation is as, Canvas Size (Height or Width) x PointerRingDiameterUnits x (1/10)
This value will render exactly to the same proportion against different screen sizes and DPs.

...
    private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
                   (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
    {
        ...
         
        // Painting the Touch point
        using (var paint = new SKPaint())
        {
            ...
 
            var canvasLongestLength = (skCanvasWidth > skCanvasHeight) 
                    ? skCanvasWidth : skCanvasHeight;

            // Calculate 1/10th of the units value for scaling
            var pointerRingDiameterUnitsScaled = (float)PointerRingDiameterUnits / 10f;
            // Calculate against Longest Length of Canvas 
            var pointerRingDiameter = (float)canvasLongestLength 
                                                    * pointerRingDiameterUnitsScaled;

            // Outer circle of the Pointer (Ring)
            skCanvas.DrawCircle(
                _lastTouchPoint.X,
                _lastTouchPoint.Y,
                (pointerRingDiameter / 2), paintTouchPoint);

            ...
        }
    }
...

I’ve set up the skCanvas.DrawCircle() with the (pointerRingDiameter / 2) since it accepts radius value only for drawing the circle.

How to use?

You can easily use this feature in XAML, by accessing ColorPicker.PointerRingDiameterUnits property and setting the value against your Color Picker’s Width and Height.

<xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker
    x:Name="ColorPicker"
    PointerRingDiameterUnits="0.6"
    ...    >
</xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker>

If you prefer in C# code…

ColorPicker.PointerRingDiameterUnits = 0.6;

Here’s some action…

Feature: PointerRingBorderUnits

The Bindable Property, PointerRingBorderUnits: Changes the Border Thickness size of the Pointer Ring on the Color Picker. It accepts values between 0 and 1, as a representation of numerical units which is calculated against the diameter of the Pointer Ring. By default this value is set to 0.3 units.

[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class ColorPicker : ContentView
{
    ...
 
    public static readonly BindableProperty PointerRingBorderUnitsProperty
        = BindableProperty.Create( ... );
 
    public double PointerRingBorderUnits
    { ... }
    
    ...
}

This calculation executes against the Pointer Ring’s pixel diameter value as, (Pointer Ring Diameter in Pixels) x PointerRingBorderUnits, since this is dependent on the Pointer Ring’s diameter, we thickens the border inside that circle only. Basic technique here is to draw a Circle inside the Parent Circle, with the picked pixel point’s color, emulating the visual of a Ring.

...
    private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
                   (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
    {
        ...
         
        // Painting the Touch point
        using (var paint = new SKPaint())
        {
            ...
 
            // Draw inner circle with picked color
            paintTouchPoint.Color = touchPointColor;

            // Calculate against Pointer Circle
            var pointerRingInnerCircleDiameter 
                          = (float)pointerRingDiameter 
                              * (float)PointerRingBorderUnits; 

            // Inner circle of the Pointer (Ring)
            skCanvas.DrawCircle(
                _lastTouchPoint.X,
                _lastTouchPoint.Y,
                ((pointerRingDiameter 
                        - pointerRingInnerCircleDiameter) / 2), paintTouchPoint);
            ...
        }
    }
...

I’ve set up the skCanvas.DrawCircle() with the calculation, ((pointerRingDiameter – pointerRingInnerCircleDiameter) / 2) since it accepts radius value only for drawing the circle.

How to use?

You can easily use this feature in XAML, by accessing ColorPicker.PointerRingBorderUnits property and setting the value against PointerRingDiameterUnits you have used.

<xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker
    x:Name="ColorPicker"
    PointerRingBorderUnits="0.3"
    ...    >
</xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker>

If you prefer in C# code…

ColorPicker.PointerRingBorderUnits = 0.3;

Here’s some action…

Feature: PointerRingPosition<X,Y>Units

The Bindable Property, PointerRingPosition<X,Y>Units: Changes the Pointer Ring’s position on the Color Picker Canvas programmatically. There are of two bindable properties PointerRingPositionXUnits and PointerRingPositionYUnits, which represents X and Y coordinates on the Color Picker Canvas. It accepts values between 0 and 1, as a presentation of numerical units which is calculated against the Color Picker Canvas’s actual pixel Width and Height. By default both the values are set to 0.5 units, which positions the Pointer Ring in the center of the Color Picker.

[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class ColorPicker : ContentView
{
    ...
 
    public static readonly BindableProperty PointerRingPositionXUnitsProperty
        = BindableProperty.Create( ... );
 
    public double PointerRingPositionXUnits
    { ... }
	
    public static readonly BindableProperty PointerRingPositionYUnitsProperty
        = BindableProperty.Create( ... );
 
    public double PointerRingPositionYUnits
    { ... }
 
    ...
}

This calculation executes against the Color Picker Canvas’s actual pixel Width and Height as, (Color Picker Canvas Width in Pixels) x PointerRingPositionXUnits and (Color Picker Canvas Height in Pixels) x PointerRingPositionYUnits
Up on invoke of the PropertyChanged on those Properties, we make a call to the following SetPointerRingPosition() with the new X and Y position units requested from User.

...
    private void SetPointerRingPosition
                      (double xPositionUnits, double yPositionUnits)
    {
        // Calculate actual X Position
        var xPosition = SkCanvasView.CanvasSize.Width
                                 * xPositionUnits; 
        // Calculate actual Y Position
        var yPosition = SkCanvasView.CanvasSize.Height
                                 * yPositionUnits; 

        // Update as last touch Position on Canvas
        _lastTouchPoint = new SKPoint(Convert.ToSingle(xPosition), Convert.ToSingle(yPosition));
        SkCanvasView.InvalidateSurface();
    }
...

We’re calculating the actual X and Y coordinates against the Canvas pixel size and setting up the _lastTouchPoint with those values, for keeping the Pointer Ring position on canvas in sync with touch inputs positioning and programmatical positioning, then at the end we fire up the SkiaSharp rendering cycle with SkCanvasView.InvalidateSurface();

Handling Pointer Ring Position on Initialization!

We need to handle the positioning of the Pointer Ring on the initialisation or on the rendering of the element during run time. We can achieve this by a one-time execution with a boolean flag, that executes this logic. So upon the first SkiaSharp canvas rendering cycle, we hook up to the PointerRingPositionXUnits and PointerRingPositionYUnits properties and render the Pointer Ring Position to the set value.

...    
    private bool _checkPointerInitPositionDone = false;

...
    private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
                   (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
    {
        ...
          
        if (!_checkPointerInitPositionDone)
        {
            var x = ((float)skCanvasWidth * (float)PointerRingPositionXUnits);
            var y = ((float)skCanvasHeight * (float)PointerRingPositionYUnits);

            _lastTouchPoint = new SKPoint(x, y);

            _checkPointerInitPositionDone = true;
        }
    }
...

We use _lastTouchPoint variable which is used by the drawing functions for rendering the Pointer Ring on Color Picker’s Canvas.

How to use?

You can easily use this feature in XAML, by accessing ColorPicker.PointerRingPositionXUnits property and ColorPicker.PointerRingPositionYUnits setting the values against your Color Picker’s Width and Height.

<xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker
    x:Name="ColorPicker"
    PointerRingPositionXUnits="0.3"
    PointerRingPositionYUnits="0.7"
    ...    >
</xfColorPickerControl:ColorPicker>

If you prefer in C# code…

ColorPicker.PointerRingPositionXUnits = 0.3;
ColorPicker.PointerRingPositionYUnits = 0.7;

Here’s some action…

UWP Bug Fix!

One issue I noticed was on UWP run time, where the SkiaSharp’s Canvas touch event behaves differently than iOS and Android. The touch event would get activated even if you hover over the canvas using your mouse pointer, and this was causing the PickedColor property to fire up.
The Touch event should occur only if you actually click on the canvas and drag and drop on the Canvas, so in order to fix this I used the InContact property SKTouchEventArgs inside the touch event to validate on UWP run time.

...
    private void SkCanvasView_OnTouch
                (object sender, SKTouchEventArgs e)
    {
        // to fix the UWP touch behavior
        if (Device.RuntimePlatform == Device.UWP)
        {
            // avoid mouse over touch events
            if (!e.InContact)
                return;
        }

        _lastTouchPoint = e.Location;
        
        ...
    }
...

This fixed the bug on UWP, making sure the touch event is validated before executing the rest of the logic.

Nugetizing!

Alright then, its time to set up our beautiful Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms as a Nuget Package using Visual Studio. I’m going first set the Nuget package properties first, then build the package, and finally publish it to Nuget, allowing it to be shared with everyone out there! 😀

Set up package properties…

You could do this straight from Visual Studio Project Properties, or directly from a Nuspec file added to the project itself. For now I would prefer setting up properties in VS Project -> Properties – Package tab, making sure to add all the necessary properties and information about the package as shown below…

Make sure to click on “Generate Nuget package on build” tick, which will enable all the property fields. You could also do this by editing .csproj file of the package project as well, if you require any fine tuned editing…

Now we’re ready to build the package of our Udara.Plugin.XFColorPicker library.

Building the Package…

We need to create the Publish Profile for the package.
Right click on Library project node -> Publish

If this was your first time, it will navigate you to create new Publish Profile tab as shown below…

It is easier to set up a Publish Profile, since you don’t have to manually change your build configuration to Release and then launch a build. Therefore I have set it up now, and next time I publish it will straightaway handle all the configuration for you! 😀

Click Publish, and it nicely builds…

Once we navigate to the folder location mentioned in the above build output…

There we have our nupkg package file, which we can then use to directly upload to Nuget!

Upload to Nuget…

Grab that nupkg file and drag and drop into the upload page of nuget.org and you’re done!

Here you’ll be able to add a short marked down documentation for the users, I would highly recommend you do that since it will increase the support and visibility.

Well that’s all it takes, and the package will be available in a few hours on Nuget!

Updating Package…

Now how do we update our package? if you have noticed around nuget, there’s no update option in in the page where you manage the package. You can update your package by using the NuGet command-line utility or directly uploading an increment build, in which I have opted for the end option to keep it easy.

So when you want to push an update to your package, make sure to update the package properties in Visual Studio to reflect the next immediate version, as shown below where I’m updating from version 1.0.2 to version 1.0.3…

Also do no forget the assembly versioning as well…

Now build your package and directly go to nuget upload page, drag and drop the file…

Make sure to add the nuget documentation and Submit!

Done and dusted, just like that, the updating is done! 😀

Published on nuget:
nuget.org/Udara.Plugin.XFColorPickerControl/

Now anyone can use my Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms by setting up this nuget package in their project…

Demoing it up!

As you saw at the beginning I have attached a Demo project into the same parent Solution of Udara.Plugin.XFColorPickerControl, which I have used for testing during development, and to maintain as a demonstration of all the awesome features this plugin provides! 😉

Since this plugin is meant to be compatible on a cross platform environment its impeccable do continuous testing on all the platforms. Anyhow here’s a sneak peek of the demo app…

I have created separate pages to demonstrate awesomeness of each special feature…

BaseColorList Demo:

Android, UWP and iOS…

ColorFlowDirection Demo:

Android, UWP and iOS…

ColorSpectrumStyle Demo:

Android, UWP and iOS…

PointerRingStyling Demo:

Android, UWP and iOS…

Since it’s a pure Xamarin.Forms and can be deployed directly to all three platforms, Android, iOS and Windows UWP, you can do the same with my plugin. Feel free to take a look at the demo app in case if you need trouble shooting.

Conclusion!

There you have it my Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms, now published to nuget as a package, with a whole bunch of awesome features, and anyone can easily use it in their own Xamarin.Forms projects! 😀 Pheww… What a joy! Sharing something you’ve been working so hard for a long time. So feel free to give a try, contribute, and any feedback is always welcome…

hosted on github:
github.com/UdaraAlwis/XFColorPickerControl

published on nuget:
nuget.org/Udara.Plugin.XFColorPickerControl/

Well that was fun! So keep in mind I’m going to be implementing more and more features for this plugin in future, and might end up changing some of those features or implementations as well. This blog post will not be constantly updated against them, so many sure to keep in touch with the docs in the github repo itself for future references.

Imagination is the limit yol! 😉

Share the love! 😀 Cheers!

UPDATE: Guess what yol? My little Color Picker Control got featured at the .NET Conf: Focus on Xamarin event by Microsoft!

WOOT! WOOT! Thanks @James Montemagno!

I built an Interactive Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms!

Let me share my adventure of building an awesome interactive and responsive Color Picker UI Control for Xamarin.Forms with the help of a little SkiaSharp magic! 😉

To blow your mind, imagine something similar to the Color Picker your have in Ms Paint, HTML Web Color Picker or Google Search Web Color Picker…

Think of how interactive and fun to use those UI Elements are, with their drag and drop pointers on the color spectrum which picks up the color from wherever you drop it.

Why can’t we have the same easy to use fun interactive experience in our Xamarin.Forms apps?

Color Picker control is something that’s missing out of the box in Xamarin.Forms, even when it comes to 3rd party controls out there, neither of them are interactive or responsive, let along any fun to use all. lol 😀

Backstory…

Some time back, I ventured in a project where it required me to build a Color Picking UI element, where it would be easy to use for the user to have a similar experience to what we have with Ms Paint, or Web Color Picker UI elements. So I started off by looking at existing 3rd party library controls out there, which ended up me being disappointed seeing all the controls are just static boring color selection lists of grid style elements.

So I started building my own interactive fun-to-use Color Picker from scratch modeled after the Color Picker UI controls we have in Ms Paint, HTML Web Color Picker, etc… The awesomeness of this would allow you to touch, swipe and pan across a beautiful spectrum of color scheme and pick the color you desire! 😀

So… What?

So what we really need to build in this case is, create a Canvas with a full Color spectrum similar to a rainbow gradient effect spreading across, while allowing the User to touch at any given pixel point, up on which an event will trigger capturing the Color value of that pixel point. Also we should be able to highlight that touch triggered pixel point, giving the feedback to the User.

How? in a Gist…

Frankly this is not possible at all, out of the box in Xamarin.Forms, but with the help of a little SkiaSharp magic, this would be possible! SkiaSharp is the awesome 2D graphics rendering library that let’s you do all kinds of cool stuff on top of Xamarin.Forms. So basically we’re going to draw the full Color spectrum with a rainbow-gradient style spreading across a 2D canvas with the help of SkiaSharp.

We will define the list of main colors we need to include across the Canvas, while defining the Gradient fading effect between them. Then with regards to Touch, we need to enable this on the SkiaSharp canvas, and subscribe to the touch handling events.

Then given the User triggers a touch even on the Canvas, we will pick up those coordinate values on the canvas, and pick the Color values of the Pixel at that point on the Canvas. Voiala! We got the Color value picked by the User! 😉 Then as a responsive feedback we will draw highlighting circle around that pixel point coordinates on the Canvas. 😀

Well there you have it, quite straight forward eh! 😉

Sneak Peak!

Just to give a little sneak peak, here’s what I build… 😀 Behold the Interactive Color Picker Control for Xamarin.Forms!

Pretty awesome eh! Xamarin.Forms + SkiaSharp magic! 😉

Project hosted on github:  
https://github.com/UdaraAlwis/XFColorPickerControl 

Alright then let me show you how I built it…

Let’s start building!

Let’s begin by adding SkiaSharp to our Xamarin.Forms project. Open up Nuget Package Manager on your Xamarin.Forms solution node and add SkiaSharp.View.Forms Nuget to your .NET Standard project node and platform nodes as shown below…

That’s it, no extra set up is needed… 😉

Next we need to create our Custom Control, which I’m going to name as ColorPickerControl!

The ColorPickerControl!

It’s better to keep this in a dedicated folder in the .NET Standard project, inside a “Controls” folder, for the sake of clarity! 😉 So let’s create our ColorPickerControl as a type ContentView XAML element in the Controls folder…

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<ContentView
    x:Class="XFColorPickerControl.Controls.ColorPickerControl"
    xmlns="http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms"
    xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml"
    xmlns:d="http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms/design"
    xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"
    mc:Ignorable="d">

    <!-- Content of the Control -->

</ContentView>

Then as of the code behind, let’s set up a PickedColor Property that holds the value of the Color that User picks during the run time, and an event that fires itself up on that action, PickedColorChanged event!

[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class ColorPickerControl : ContentView
{
	public event EventHandler<Color> PickedColorChanged;

	public static readonly BindableProperty PickedColorProperty
		= BindableProperty.Create(
			nameof(PickedColor),
			typeof(Color),
			typeof(ColorPickerControl));

	public Color PickedColor
	{
		get { return (Color)GetValue(PickedColorProperty); }
		set { SetValue(PickedColorProperty, value); }
	}

	public ColorPickerControl()
	{
		InitializeComponent();
	}
}

Alright next on to setting up the SkiaSharp bits in our Control…

The SkiaSharp magic!

SkiaSharp’s magical Canvas called SKCanvasView is what we’re going to use to Draw our Rainbow Color Spectrum and handle all the Touch event bits… So let’s begin by adding the SKCanvasView to our ColorPickerControl XAML and also the SkiaSharp.Views.Forms reference in the XAML itself..

<ContentView
    ...
    xmlns:skia="clr-namespace:SkiaSharp.Views.Forms;assembly=SkiaSharp.Views.Forms"
	...
	>

    <skia:SKCanvasView
        x:Name="SkCanvasView"
        EnableTouchEvents="True"
        PaintSurface="SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface"
        Touch="SkCanvasView_OnTouch" />

</ContentView>

Code on Github: /XFColorPickerControl/Controls/ColorPickerControl.xaml

As you can see on my SKCanvasView element, I have enabled touch events with EnableTouchEvents property and subscribed to Touch event with SkCanvasView_OnTouch. Subscribing to PaintSurface allows us to draw full blown 2D graphics on the Canvas, which is why we have created the event SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface event.

So let’s handle all those events in the code behind of our ColorPickerControl…

[XamlCompilation(XamlCompilationOptions.Compile)]
public partial class ColorPickerControl : ContentView
{
	...
	
	private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
                      (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs e)
	{
		var skImageInfo = e.Info;
		var skSurface = e.Surface;
		var skCanvas = skSurface.Canvas;

		var skCanvasWidth = skImageInfo.Width;
		var skCanvasHeight = skImageInfo.Height;

		skCanvas.Clear(SKColors.White);

		...
	}
	
	private void SkCanvasView_OnTouch
                      (object sender, SKTouchEventArgs e)
	{
		...
	}
}

Code on Github: /XFColorPickerControl/Controls/ColorPickerControl.xaml.cs

So we’re setting up the basic values we need to use inside SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface with the skImageInfo, skSurface, skCanvas, which will be very useful in our next set of code snippets!

This is where our core implementation is going to be taking place, let me get into details of each code snippet one by one, but you can always go back to the full code on github and take a look by yourself… 😉 Let’s continue…

The Touch!

Let me begin diving in with the SkCanvasView_OnTouch event method implementation, which handles the touch events occurs on the SkiaSharp Canvas we added into our Control.

We need to keep a track on each Touch event that occurs, so we will store that in a local variable _lastTouchPoint which is of type SKPoint. Since we need to only consider the touch events that occur inside the canvas region, we’re validating each touch coordinate (X,Y) that comes into the event.

...
	private void SkCanvasView_OnTouch
	               (object sender, SKTouchEventArgs e)
	{
		_lastTouchPoint = e.Location;

		var canvasSize = SkCanvasView.CanvasSize;

		// Check for each touch point XY position to be inside Canvas
		// Ignore any Touch event ocurred outside the Canvas region 
		if ((e.Location.X > 0 && e.Location.X < canvasSize.Width) &&
			(e.Location.Y > 0 && e.Location.Y < canvasSize.Height))
		{
			e.Handled = true;

			// update the Canvas as you wish
			SkCanvasView.InvalidateSurface();
		}
	}
...

Based on the validated touch event coordinate, we’re firing up the SkiaSharp Canvas drawing cycle, SkCanvasView.InvalidateSurface(), where we will handle, picking up the color on the touch point and redrawing the canvas to highlight the touch point coordinates on the Canvas.

The Rainbow Color Spectrum!

So this right here is the most critical functionality that we need to implement, drawing the beautiful rainbow gradient color spectrum on our SkiaSharp Canvas. We’re going to draw the following list of colors across the spectrum, which values I picked up with the help of Google Web Color Picker..

Red | Yellow | Green (Lime) | Aqua | Blue | Fuchsia | Red

This will take place in our SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface event method that we created in the previous step, where we create the Paint object that’s going to draw the color spectrum on the Canvas, along with the gradient fading effect between all the colors using SKShader object.

...
	private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
	               (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
	{
		// Draw gradient rainbow Color spectrum
		using (var paint = new SKPaint())
		{
			paint.IsAntialias = true;

			// Initiate the primary Color list
			// picked up from Google Web Color Picker
			var colors = new SKColor[]
			{
				new SKColor(255, 0, 0), // Red
				new SKColor(255, 255, 0), // Yellow
				new SKColor(0, 255, 0), // Green (Lime)
				new SKColor(0, 255, 255), // Aqua
				new SKColor(0, 0, 255), // Blue
				new SKColor(255, 0, 255), // Fuchsia
				new SKColor(255, 0, 0), // Red
			};

			// create the gradient shader between Colors
			using (var shader = SKShader.CreateLinearGradient(
				new SKPoint(0, 0),
				new SKPoint(skCanvasWidth, 0),
				colors,
				null,
				SKShaderTileMode.Clamp))
			{
				paint.Shader = shader;
				skCanvas.DrawPaint(paint);
			}
		}
	}
...

As you can see we are defining the list of Colors with SKColor objects, that’ll populate the rainbow color spectrum on our Canvas. Then we use SKShader.CreateLinearGradient() method to build the gradient shader using the list of colors, and then we draw it on the Canvas using skCanvas.DrawPaint().

Keep a note how SKPoint() objects define the starting and ending coordinates on the Canvas which the shader will spread through, thus we’re taking skCanvasWidth picking the corner most value on the X axis. 😉

The Darker Gradient Strip!

Next we need to draw the darker shadow gradient strip on the Canvas allowing Users to pick the Darker Colors of the primary colors we defined.

We’re going to paint the darker color regions by drawing another layer on top of the previous drawn layer creating the illusion of darker regions of each color.

This will take place in our SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface but below the code snippet that I showed before. Very much similar to the previous snippet, we’re doing almost the same thing but adding a darker gradient region at the bottom of the Canvas.

...
	private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
	               (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
	{
		...
		
		// Draw darker gradient spectrum
		using (var paint = new SKPaint())
		{
			paint.IsAntialias = true;

			// Initiate the darkened primary color list
			var colors = new SKColor[]
			{
				SKColors.Transparent,
				SKColors.Black
			};

			// create the gradient shader 
			using (var shader = SKShader.CreateLinearGradient(
				new SKPoint(0, 0),
				new SKPoint(0, skCanvasHeight),
				colors,
				null,
				SKShaderTileMode.Clamp))
			{
				paint.Shader = shader;
				skCanvas.DrawPaint(paint);
			}
		}
	}
...

Here we’re drawing the darkening gradient layer starting from Transparent color to Black color across the Y axis, thus we’re taking skCanvasHeight picking the corner most value on the Y axis similar to what we did before. 😉

Here they are side by side, before and after drawing darker gradient strip… 😀

The Lighter Gradient Strip!?

This this is bit of an extra cherry on top, as you may have seen some of those Color Pickers include picking Lighter versions of the Colors. We can easily do this by adding a White color object to the list of colors in the code snippet I shared above.

...         
	...
		 ...
			// Initiate the darkened primary color list
			var colors = new SKColor[]
			{
				SKColors.White,
				SKColors.Transparent,
				SKColors.Black
			};  
		 ...
	...
...	

This will draw the secondary layer with White | Transparent | Black gradient effects on top of the full color spectrum layer.

There you go, with the Lighter color gradient strip. Although I wouldn’t include this in my demo app code 😛 Just coz I don’t like it! lol

Picking the Color on Touch!

This is the most crucial bit of this Control, also the most time consuming implementation I had to go through during my trial and error experimentation to get this working! 😮

We are going to be using the _lastTouchPoint SKPoint object, that we created before, in order to access the coordinate data of the touch point on Canvas. Then we look for extract the pixel color values on that coordinate on the Canvas, given that the Canvas is already rendered with the Color spectrum.

This will take place in our SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface event method, below the color spectrum drawing code snippet.

Experimentation Phase…

Picking a pixel on the rendered Canvas layer is not a straight forward task, the idea here is to capture a quick snapshot of the Canvas graphic layer and convert that into a bitmap image, and use that image to pick the pixels from using the touch coordinates.

As you can see from below, the first implementation I put together which captures a snapshot of the Canvas surface layer and load it into a SKBitmap image, then I retrieve the Pixel data on that image using bitmap.GetPixel() by passing in the touch point values.

...
	private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
				   (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
	{
		...
		
		// Picking the Pixel Color values on the Touch Point

		// Represent the color of the current Touch point
		SKColor touchPointColor;

		//// Inefficient: causes memory overload errors
		//using (var skImage = skSurface.Snapshot())
		//{
		//	using (var skData = skImage.Encode(SKEncodedImageFormat.Webp, 100))
		//	{
		//		if (skData != null)
		//		{
		//			using (SKBitmap bitmap = SKBitmap.Decode(skData))
		//			{
		//				touchPointColor = bitmap.GetPixel(
		//									(int)_lastTouchPoint.X, (int)_lastTouchPoint.Y);
		//			}
		//		}
		//	}
		//}
		
		...
	}
...

Later it started causing performance issues due to calling Snapshot() method during each rendering cycle, which is a very heavy process, and even sometimes overloads the memory.

Better Solution…

So after a bit more exploration with trial and error, I managed to build a solution based on a Xamarin Forum response that I found to a similar requirement I had…
https://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/92899/read-a-pixel-info-from-a-canvas

What if instead of taking a snapshot, we use SKImageInfo object of the Canvas instance and extract a SKBitmap image and read the pixel color data of the touch point coordinates. This is way more efficient and consumes much less memory for execution… 😉

...
	private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
				   (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
	{
		...
		
		// Picking the Pixel Color values on the Touch Point

		// Represent the color of the current Touch point
		SKColor touchPointColor;

		// Efficient and fast
		// https://forums.xamarin.com/discussion/92899/read-a-pixel-info-from-a-canvas
		// create the 1x1 bitmap (auto allocates the pixel buffer)
		using (SKBitmap bitmap = new SKBitmap(skImageInfo))
		{
			// get the pixel buffer for the bitmap
			IntPtr dstpixels = bitmap.GetPixels();

			// read the surface into the bitmap
			skSurface.ReadPixels(skImageInfo,
				dstpixels,
				skImageInfo.RowBytes,
				(int)_lastTouchPoint.X, (int)_lastTouchPoint.Y);

			// access the color
			touchPointColor = bitmap.GetPixel(0, 0);
		}
		
		...
	}
...

As you can see we’re using skSurface.ReadPixels() to load the pixel data on the coordinates, and finally loading the exact pixel data into touchPointColor as a SKColor object type. 😀

So now we picked the Color from a given touch point on the Canvas, let’s move to the next bit…

The Touch Feedback!

This is the part where we provide on touch feedback for the User by highlighting the touch point on the Canvas up on each touch event. As you noticed we’re firing up the OnPaintSurface event upon each touch event of the Canvas, hence we can draw the highlighting region on the Canvas right here as a feedback loop.

We’re simply going to create a SKPaint object, with White color and use skCanvas.DrawCircle() to draw a circle around the touch point coordinates on the Canvas. Then as an added extra, I’m drawing another circle on top of it with the picked color, so that we can emphasize on the pixel color of the touch point. 😉

...
	private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
				   (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
	{
		...
		
		// Painting the Touch point
		using (SKPaint paintTouchPoint = new SKPaint())
		{
			paintTouchPoint.Style = SKPaintStyle.Fill;
			paintTouchPoint.Color = SKColors.White;
			paintTouchPoint.IsAntialias = true;

			// Outer circle (Ring)
			var outerRingRadius = 
				((float)skCanvasWidth/
                    (float)skCanvasHeight) * (float)18;
			skCanvas.DrawCircle(
				_lastTouchPoint.X,
				_lastTouchPoint.Y,
				outerRingRadius, paintTouchPoint);

			// Draw another circle with picked color
			paintTouchPoint.Color = touchPointColor;

			// Outer circle (Ring)
			var innerRingRadius = 
				((float)skCanvasWidth/
                    (float)skCanvasHeight) * (float)12;
			skCanvas.DrawCircle(
				_lastTouchPoint.X,
				_lastTouchPoint.Y,
				innerRingRadius, paintTouchPoint);
		}
		
		...
	}
...

As you can see _lastTouchPoint X and Y coordinates to draw the circle, and we’re calculating the radius value for both circles by adjacent to Canvas width and height, so it renders nicely on any device scale.

And then to the final step, returning back the Color that we Picked from our ColorPickerControl!

Return the Picked Color!

Now we need to return back the Color value that the User picked, to the subscribers or whoever’s listening to the PickedColor property and PickedColorChanged event.

...
	private void SkCanvasView_OnPaintSurface
				   (object sender, SKPaintSurfaceEventArgs  e)
	{
		...
		
		// Set selected color
		PickedColor = touchPointColor.ToFormsColor();
		PickedColorChanged?.Invoke(this, PickedColor);
		
		...
	}
...

It’s as simple as setting the Value and firing up the Event with the new Color value parameter…

Alright, that’s it! We’ve finished building our awesome ColorPickerControl! 😀

Let’s try it out!

Since we created it as a standalone UI Control you can use this little awesomeness anywhere in your Xamarin.Forms project as you would with any UI element as easy as below…

<controls:ColorPickerControl 
	x:Name="ColorPicker"
	PickedColorChanged="ColorPicker_PickedColorChanged" />

So let’s try adding this to a ContentPage with a nice little Frame element around it with a fixed Height and Width…

<Frame
	x:Name="ColorPickerFrame"
	CornerRadius="8"
	HeightRequest="200"
	HorizontalOptions="Center"
	WidthRequest="350">
	<controls:ColorPickerControl 
		x:Name="ColorPicker"
		PickedColorChanged="ColorPicker_PickedColorChanged" />
</Frame>

This will give a nice little frame around the Color picker control, then on to the code behind…

private void ColorPicker_PickedColorChanged
			(object sender, Color colorPicked)
{
	ColorPickerHolderFrame.BackgroundColor = colorPicked;
}

PickedColorChanged provide you the picked Color value, so you can do what you wish with it!

Fire it up!

Time to fire it up yo! 😀 I’ve prepared a little demo app with my awesome ColorPickerControl for Xamarin.Forms, deployed for Android, iOS and UWP…

Android, iOS and UWP side by side working like a charm! 😀

Project hosted on github:  
https://github.com/UdaraAlwis/XFColorPickerControl 

The possibilities are endless, just a matter of your own creativity! 😉

Conclusion…

An interactive and responsive Color Picker is something that’s missing from Xamarin.Forms out of the box, even when it comes existing to 3rd party controls, there’s no such that fills the requirement, similar to MS Paint Color Picker, or HTML Web Color Pickers.

You can do all kinds of cool interactive 2D graphics rendering stuff with SkiaSharp on Xamarin.Forms, and thanks this, I managed to build a full fledged interactive and fun-to-use Color Picker UI Control, which is lacking in Xamarin.Forms ecosystem right now.

I’m planning to release a nuget package with this control quite soon, with a whole bunch of extra cool features embedded in 😉 So keep in touch!

Imagination is the limit yol! 😉

Share the love! 😀 Cheers!

So I played around with Android Emulators in Visual Studio 2019!

Let me share some of my experience with playing around with the latest updated Android Emulators in Visual Studio 2019!

Microsoft had finally rolled out a full fledged Android Emulator set up (Xamarin Android Device Manager) that’s very stable and much easier to use with Xamarin mobile development, expiring the previously buggy always-out-dated VS Emulator set up that was shipped for Xamarin dev. Yeah seriously I hated that and had a lot of issues using those emulators.

Backstory…

So recently I got a little deep into the new Xamarin Android Emulator set up in Visual Studio 2019, where I had to build a whole bunch of custom Emulators for some experiments. I had to do a lot of fine tuning and customization for those Android Virtual Devices. Also I had to focus on Performance management as well, which was quite interesting to deal with given the HAXM and Windows Hyper-V separation.

It was a great learning experience, where I noticed a lot of new features and differences between the previous VS Emulator set up compared to this one.

So here I am sharing my experience…

Getting Started…

Here are some important articles that might be important for anyone to get started…

Managing Virtual Devices with the Android Device Manager
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/android/get-started/installation/android-emulator/device-manager?tabs=windows&pivots=windows
Great step by step guide on how to update Device Manager, create new Virtual Devices, Customizing and Managing the performance further…

Editing Android Virtual Device Properties
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/android/get-started/installation/android-emulator/device-properties?pivots=windows
Step by step guide for Editing Virtual Device Properties…

Troubleshooting
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/xamarin/android/get-started/installation/android-emulator/troubleshooting?pivots=windows
Basically this includes fixing HAXM issues, Hyper-V issues not configured up in BIOS, or not Enabled in Windows, etc.. It’s quite easy to miss those configurations so you might want to focus twice on those if you ever run into any issues.

The official documentation from Microsoft does a great job of explaining how to get started and all, so I won’t be repeating the same on my blog post, rather I would focus on the important bits that I experienced and issues I ran into which I eventually solved during my playing around! 😉

The adb binary is obsolete!?!

So this is the first weird issue I ran into when I tried out the Android Emulator on Visual Studio 2019, there is a reason why I call it weird though… lol

“The ADB binary found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Android\android-sdk\platform-tools\adb.exe is obsolete and has seriousperformance problems with the Android Emulator. Please update to a newer version to get significantly faster app/file transfer.”

Yeah notice the “seriousperformance” lol, no idea why they haven’t spell-checked the error message. Anyhow I kept on getting this warning message every time I launched my Android Emulators, I couldn’t really understand why, since I had VS 2019 updated to the latest version at the time. But later only I figured out that you need to manually update some other bits from your Android SDK Manager as shown in below steps…

Update Android Emulator!

You need to make sure to update your Android Emulator version, from the Android SDK Manager as shown below…

Go to the Tools tab, and expand the Android Emulator section, make sure you have installed the latest version as shown there. Most likely this won’t be updated by the usual VS Updater process, which was the issue in my case.

Also one more thing you need to do, since the “obsolete ADB binary issue” could be occurred from either one of these.

Update Android SDK Build Tools!

Go to Tool tab and expand Android SDK Build Tools section…

You need to make sure to have the latest version installed, and remove any older versions already installed of the Android SDK Build Tools as shown above. Because this could be causing the “obsolete ADB binary issue” that I mentioned earlier.

Intel HAXM vs Windows Hyper-V!

Now some devs seem to be getting confused about this, first think of it as this, you have an Android Emulator and you have these two different support systems that you can use to accelerate the performance of it. You can use only one of them, its either Intel HAXM or Windows Hyper-V, you cannot use both at the same time. Got it? 😉

Check out the docs: Hardware acceleration for emulator performance (Hyper-V & HAXM)
Well the documentation from Microsoft does a great job at explaining both these setups in great detail step by step.

I personally tried both of them separately in my Lenovo Windows Laptop, that’s running on Intel Core i7 Processor. Keep in mind, if you want to try Intel HAXM then you need to disable Windows Hyper-V and vise-versa, otherwise you’ll run into all kinds of issues.

Aha! Intel HAXM!

Intel’s Hardware Accelerated Execution Manager (HAXM). HAXM is a virtualization engine for computers running Intel CPUs. – Source

Check if your Intel Processor supports Virtualization Technology: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/support/articles/000005486/processors.html

You development machine needs to be running on an Intel processor in order for HAXM to work, even in that case that processor needs to support Intel VT, you can check it from the link I shared above. This works on both Microsoft Windows and Apple Mac OS systems, as long as the hardware requirements are met.

Intel HAXM has always been there since long time back for accelerating the performances of Android Emulators, so it supports Emulators that are running older versions of x86-based virtual devices.

If you’ve successfully set up Intel HAXM, you can check status of HAXM set up as follows:

sc query intelhaxm

Microsoft recommends this option to be your default choice for setting up your Android Emulators. But if your dev set up doesn’t support Intel HAXM acceleration, next let’s see the second option…

Ooo! Windows Hyper-V!

Microsoft’s Hyper-V and the Windows Hypervisor Platform (WHPX). Hyper-V is a virtualization feature of Windows that makes it possible to run virtualized computer systems on a physical host computer. – Source

As obvious as it is, this only works on Windows OS! This was introduced for Android Emulators quite recently, so you need to have the following set up for your local Android SDK and Tools:

• Android Emulator package 27.2.7 or later
• Android SDK Tools version is 26.1.1 or later

Also you need to have Microsoft Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education version installed. You can check if your system could support Windows Hyper-V as follows:

systeminfo

If all those values are shown as Yes, then you can go ahead and enable Windows Hyper-V on your machine 🙂

So, Intel HAXM or Windows Hyper-V!?!

Yeah, so which is better? given that you can ONLY think of if you’re development PC is compatible for both of them!

I’ve tried both of them, and to be honest I’ve seen much better performance with Intel HAXM Acceleration in my Windows 10 Lenovo Laptop, with Intel Core i7 processor. Since Microsoft docs also recommend this option, yes I would definitely recommend this be your primary choice as well for better performance.

FastBoot, Intel HAXM only!

Now this is something strange that I noticed during my try outs, FastBoot feature does not seem to be supported on Windows Hyper-V, during every launch it was executing a fresh cold boot. But with Intel-HAXM it works like a charm! So that’s probably something you need to keep in mind! 😉

If you’re not familiar with FastBoot, let me walk you through a little intro…

FastBoot vs ColdBoot!

You can see this configuration in the Properties from the Android Device Manager as following…

FastBoot allows you to directly boot your Android Emulator from a pre-saved snapshot state image, so you get a super fast boot and be able to deploy the apps faster when you launch directly from Visual Studio. Every time you close the Emulator it will save a snapshot of it’s current state, which will be used in the next boot.

So what is ColdBoot?

The opposite of FastBoot is ColdBoot, where during every launch the Android Emulator executes a fresh boot instance. ColdBoot is by default disabled as you can see in my previous screenshot, you need to tick on the fastboot.forceColdBoot in order to enable this. You should only use this if you need a fresh boot in each time your Emulator launches.

Now as obvious as it is, keep in mind you can’t use both of them at the same time, so make sure to tick on either forceColdBoot or forceFastBook as you prefer. 🙂

Maximum performance!

For maximizing the performance of your Android Virtual Device, I found utilizing on these three properties quite useful,

• hw.gpu.mode – the GPU allocation set up of your Emulator
• hw.cpu.ncore – number of Processor Cores allocated to your Emulator
• hw.ramsize – amount of RAM size allocated to your Emulator

Now the higher values you set for those properties will definitely provide better performance in your Android Emulator, but it will require consumption of more resources from your development machine, so make sure to cross check against it when you tweak those up!

hw.gpu.mode -> host!

By default this property will be set to “auto” mode which will set the Emulator to decide whether to use device GPU processor to render the Emulator’s GPU processing or use Software GPU Emulation.

If you’ve got a dedicated powerful GPU in your development machine, I would say this should set the “host” option for the GPU emulation in the Emulator, which forces the Emulator to use the system GPU device, which in return provides great performance.

New Camera magic!

Since the latest update Android Emulators are now updated with an awesome Camera emulation feature which allows you to emulate a virtual 3D scene. You can enable this by setting the hw.camera.back property to virtualscene value.

This is such an awesome feature it allows you to navigate through an emulated virtual scene in a 3D space, with full 360 degree camera angle movements.

Now that’s some awesomeness eh! 😉

LCD Density!

You can set the density of the screen in your Android Emulator, to a list of custom values possible to set up the density-independent pixels for rendering.

Keeping in mind, setting hw.lcd.density to 160 value will cause the emulator to render each pixel in the device screen equivalent to your host machine’s physical screen pixels. You should be able to find the most suited screen density for the screen resolution you have set up for your emulator.

Here’s an example of screen resolution 1080×2160 with each lcd screen density option available from 160, 240, 213, 320, 420, 480, to 560 as follows…

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Well well you can see how it clearly changes the UI rendered DPI based on the density settings you have set up… 😀

Custom Resolutions play!

So one tricky thing I got to play around was creating Android Emulators with custom screen resolutions, now this really requires a careful set up of the screen Density settings as well.

So for the fun of let me show you a custom Android Emulator that I build with the screen resolution equivalent to iPhone 11 which has height to width 1792×828 resolution…

So something to keep in mind is that, right on the first try you wouldn’t get screen density property compatible for the custom screen resolution, so you will need a few try outs to sort out the density property. Yes it took a few try outs for me as well! 😉

hw.lcd.height – screen height, hw.lcd.width – screen width, hw.lcd.density – screen density

Setting up skin.path value…

When you set up a custom resolution to your Emulator, you need to make sure to update the skin.path property value as well.

Set this value followed by the format resolution, widthxheight as shown here.

Not sure how this related to the custom resolutions, but if you miss this step your emulator screen will end up with the default resolution value set up here upon create. So make sure to set this value according to your custom screen resolution as well 🙂

Enabling on-screen Keys…

[ back | home | recent ] yes those on screen keys might not be available when you first create your custom emulator, to enable this you need to disable the hw.mainKeys property.

You should un-tick this property value to enable on-screen navigation keys.

And the resulting should be as straight as below… 😉

• 

• 

Well there you have it, working like a charm! and that’s pretty much it for all the tricks and lessons that I learned during my playing around with Android Emulators in Visual Studio 2019!

Conclusion

The latest updates to Android Device Manager allows you to create Android Virtual devices or emulators with incredible flexibility and easy to manage interface, with improved performances and enhancements unlike before. 🙂

The Microsoft documentations provide an incredible support for getting started step by step, and even customizing your Android emulators for Xamarin Development with ease.

I happened to be stumbled upon a great opportunity to learn a few tricks and lessons for complex use of the latest Android Virtual Devices for Xamarin Development, which I had shared in this article. 😉

Hope it helps any of you fellow devs out there!

Share the love! Cheers! 😀

Building a bi-directional interop bridge with WebView in Xamarin.Forms!

Let’s build an advanced communication bridge into your Xamarin.Forms WebView, talk to it, and let it talk back to us at will!? 😉 lol Yes let me show you how to pass data from Javascript environment to C# .NET run time in the Web page rendered inside your Xamarin.Forms WebView!

I’m talking about building a bi-directional communication tunnel with HTML/Javascript inside your WebView in Xamarin.Forms yo! 😀 buckle up your seatbelts!

So in my previous article, Talking to your WebView in Xamarin.Forms! I talked about, how to build a uni-directional C# .NET to Javascript environment in Xamarin.Forms WebView.

WebView in Xamarin.Forms..

In this article I’m going to take another step forward and allow the same functionality to occur the other way around as well… We’re talking about a two-way invoking between .NET run time and javascript run time in a Xamarin.Forms WebView!

Unfortunately this cannot be done by default in WebView.

Behold, Hybrid WebView!

This right here is a bit more advanced extension of the WebView with a bit of Xamarin Native magic! 😉 In order to establish an invoke bridge directly from HTML Javascript sandbox that its running inside the WebView, out to the .NET runtime, we need something more natively handled in Xamarin!

Basically we’re going to implement a device native script handler for the WebView which is going to handle the bridging between the Javascript and the .NET runtime handshake, in return giving us the opportunity to invoke calls from javascript into the .NET run time the Xamarin.Forms is execution on! 😉

Well that’s a very simplistic explanation, but there’s a whole article about it on Microsoft Xamarin Docs, Customizing a WebView if you’re interested! Since its already there, I wouldn’t be going into complete details of it, rather I would be explaining the improved implementation I have done on top of it for the Hybrid WebView.

Over there it focuses on loading Embedded HTML content, but I will extend my implementation to support for dynamic HTML content, allowing you to handle javascript loaded from a Web Source and support even run time generated javascript.

Invoking C# from Javascript in the WebView!

In order to do this, in par with Xamarin.Forms WebView, we need to implement a Custom Renderer for WebView, which we will refer to as HybridWebView.

HybridWebViewRenderer will be created across all the native platforms we intend to use our HybridWebView, in Android, iOS and Windows native environments each equipped with its own javascript handler to build a bridge on to our .NET run-time. 😉

We access the native WebViewRenderer properties and basically implement a special handler to listen to a certain pre-defined Javascript method execution. In this method which we add into the javascript that is rendered inside the WebView, we will define the parameters we need to use, in that way we can pass any number of parameters and data types as we want.

We’re going to intercept the execution of this javascript method inside our Hybrid WebViewRender, and then redirect it on to the .NET method we’ve subscribed to. So in the Hybrid WebView definition we will have an Action method that we bind to in our Xamarin.Forms level which we will subscribe to wherever we’re using this magical bits! 😉

Let the coding begin!

Let’s begin with HybridWebView Control in Xamarin.Forms! Here we;re adding an Action that we will subscribe to in order to receive data from Javascript invokes inside the WebView rendered content.

HybridWebView

namespace XFWebViewInteropDemo.Controls
{
    public class HybridWebView : WebView
    {
        private Action<string> _action;

        public void RegisterAction(Action<string> callback)
        {
            _action = callback;
        }

        public void Cleanup()
        {
            _action = null;
        }

        public void InvokeAction(string data)
        {
            if (_action == null || data == null)
            {
                return;
            }
            _action.Invoke(data);
        }
    }
}

 

InvokeAction is the method that will be used by the Native Renderer object to direct the invokes from javascript executions. Using the RegisterAction we can dynamically register the Action we need to subscribe to.  You can add any number of parameters as you wish in here, but you need to make sure to handle them in the native renderer as well.

Native Renderers…

We’re going to build native renderers for each platform we’re targeting, Android, iOS, and UWP (Windows). Basically all the renderers follow the same basic concept as we discussed before, but each of their implementation is going to be different based on the platform.

We need to make sure to handle the subscribe and unsubscribe of the Element Native properties and events properly in the renderer’s OnElementChanged() event.

We’re going to inject the javascript method that we’re going to listen to in the renderers as following.

private const string JavaScriptFunction = "function invokeCSharpAction(data){....}";

 

We will be defining this in each renderer, according to the native platform. Every time a invokeCSharpAction() javascript method executes inside the WebView, it will get fetched by the Renderer and the following method call will occur.

((HybridWebView)Element).InvokeAction(value);

 

Up to the HybridWebView’s Action subscription on Xamarin.Froms run time, allowing our Action to fire up and retrieve the data coming in from javascript.

Alright now let’s get into details of each native renderer.

Android Renderer!

We’re going to use the Android’s WebViewRenderer to subclass our HyrbidWebViewRenderer.

github: /XFWebViewInteropDemo.Android/Renderers/HybridWebViewRenderer.cs

Like we discussed before for Android, we have the following script injection defined,

private const string JavascriptFunction = "function invokeCSharpAction(data){jsBridge.invokeAction(data);}";

 

For Android we need some extra bits of implementation, by creating a JavascriptWebViewClient that will set up listening to the execution of javascripts inside the WebView.

Then we have to create a JsBridge, which handles the interfacing with Javascripts, and fires up InvokeAction() method to redirect the execution flow up to the Xamarin.Forms level handlers.

Both those custom objects need to be set up in the HybridWebView in the renderer Element upon instantiation.

Control.SetWebViewClient
(new JavascriptWebViewClient($"javascript: {JavascriptFunction}"));
Control.AddJavascriptInterface
(new JsBridge(this), "jsBridge");

 

Once all that set up, and you build the Android project straight away, you might be getting a build error as following. (unless you’ve set this fix up before in your project)

Its caused by the JsBridge class we implemented with an Export attribute for the invokeAction method for our renderer, to export this into a native java method. So we need to add the Mono Android Export library.

You can fix this by going to Android Project -> References -> Add References -> Select Assemblies tab on the left panel -> tick on Mono.Android.Export Reference from the list of References.

Click Ok and rebuild, you’re all set! 😉

That’s pretty much it for the Android Renderer. Next on to iOS…

iOS Renderer!

For iOS we are going to use WkWebViewRenderer as the base renderer for our HybridWebView and in addition we have to implement IWKScriptMessageHandlder interface to handle the custom javascript execution monitoring that we target to handle.

github: /XFWebViewInteropDemo.iOS/Renderers/HybridWebViewRenderer.cs

We set up a WKWebViewConfiguration object in the constructor and we get access to the property WKWebViewConfiguration.UserContentController which allows us to set up our native bridge to Javascript execution firing up inside the WebView.

public HybridWebViewRenderer(WKWebViewConfiguration config) : base(config)
{
    _userController = config.UserContentController;
    var script = new WKUserScript(new NSString(JavaScriptFunction),
                   WKUserScriptInjectionTime.AtDocumentEnd, false);
    _userController.AddUserScript(script);
    _userController.AddScriptMessageHandler(this, "invokeAction");
}

 

Then for iOS, we have the following script injection defined using webkit API, accessing the invokeAction script that we attached and finally calling on the postMessage() method with the data parameter.

private const string JavaScriptFunction = "function invokeCSharpAction(data){window.webkit.messageHandlers.invokeAction.postMessage(data);}";

 

IWKScriptMessageHandler provides us with DidReceiveScriptMessage() method which we use to transfer the data up to the Xamarin.Forms level handler using, HybridWebView.InvokeAction(data).

Quite simple ans straight forward eh! next to Windows, or UWP as you might prefer.. 😉

UWP Renderer!

We use the Xamarin native WebViewRenderer for UWP or Windows platform.

github: /XFWebViewInteropDemo.UWP/Renderers/HybridWebViewRenderer.cs

The native default renderer grants us access to these two events NavigationCompleted and ScriptNotify. We need to make sure to subscribe to those events in our HybridWebViewRenderer in Windows as follows.

Control.NavigationCompleted += OnWebViewNavigationCompleted;
Control.ScriptNotify += OnWebViewScriptNotify;

 

NavigationCompleted, allows is to easily inject our javascript handler function, which is defined as follows for UWP or Windows,

private const string JavaScriptFunction = "function invokeCSharpAction(data){window.external.notify(data);}";

 

And then ScriptNotify, provides us the chance to redirect back the execution to Xamarin.Forms level handler using HybridWebView.InvokeAction(data).

Bingo, that completes the UWP or Windows Renderer!

Now that we’ve finished the setting up of our HybridWebView and its Native Renderer for Android, iOS and Windows, its time to consume it and taste it out! 😉

Let’s try it out!

Here’s we shall begin by consuming it in a XAML page in Xamarin.Forms!

<controls:HybridWebView
	x:Name="webViewElement"
	HorizontalOptions="FillAndExpand"
	VerticalOptions="FillAndExpand" />

github: /XFWebViewInteropDemo/HybridWebViewDemoPage.xaml

And then don’t forget to Subscribe to retrieve the data coming in from javascript inside our WebView using RegisterAction() method we created!

...
    // Subscribe for the data coming in from Javascript
    webViewElement.RegisterAction(DisplayDataFromJavascript);
}

private void DisplayDataFromJavascript(string data)
{
    Device.InvokeOnMainThreadAsync(() =>
    {
        ...
        // Do whatever you want with the data
        ...
    });
}
...

github: /XFWebViewInteropDemo/HybridWebViewDemoPage.xaml.cs

I’m just going to use the Main UI Thread’s help to execute any UI related stuff. And here’s a little demo HTML that I’m setting up in our Hyrbid WebView.

webViewElement.Source = new HtmlWebViewSource()
{
    Html =
        $@"<html>" +
        "<head>" +
            ...
            "<script type=\"text/javascript\">" +
                "function invokexamarinforms(){" +
                "    try{" +
                "        var inputvalue = 
document.getElementById(\"textInputElement\").value;" +
                "        invokeCSharpAction(inputvalue + '. This is from Javascript in the WebView!');" +
                "    }" +
                "    catch(err){" +
                "        alert(err);" +
                "    }" +
                "}" +
            "</script>" +
            ...
        "</head>" +

        "<body>" +
            "<div>" +
                "<input type=\"text\" id=\"textInputElement\" placeholder=\"type something here...\">" +
                "<button type=\"button\" onclick=\"invokexamarinforms()\">Send to Xamarin.Forms</button>" +
            "</div>" +
        "</body>" +

        "</html>"
};

github: /XFWebViewInteropDemo/HybridWebViewDemoPage.xaml.cs

As you can see I have a javascript function, invokexamarinforms() that will get invoked from a button call in the body. Once this method executes, it calls on the invokeCSharpAction() method that we defined in our Hybrid WebViews Native renderers.

In my javascript snippet I’m surrounding this call with a try catch in order to make sure the Native Renderer is properly implemented or not. Making sure this method is properly executes is a crucial step during debug if you run into any issues.

So let’s try out that sample code bits in action!

Time for some action! 😉

Hit that F5 yo! (well.. if you’re in Visual Studio! lol)

Side by side iOS, Android and UWP working like charm! 😉

As you can see in my simple Xamarin.Forms demo, I am demonstrating a simple C# .NET to Javascript call with data and Javascript to C# .NET call with data, a true bi-directional communication bridge!

Here we are typing some text in the Xamarin.Forms Entry element and sending it into the HTML inside the WebView. And then typing some text in the HTML Text Input element inside the WebView and click on HTML Button, and sending it to the Xamarin.Forms Label to be displayed, works like a charm!

I have shared the demo app code in my github as usual: github.com/XFWebViewInteropDemo

A little chat conversation between Javascript to C# and vise-versa! 😉

Yeah just a fun little demo I have added to the same repo in github! 😀

Extra tips!

Yep it’s that time, for some extra tips based on my experience with Xamarin.Forms Hybrid WebView! Although the extra tips that I already discussed in my previous article Talking to your WebView in Xamarin.Forms! still applies for this as well since we’re still extending from default Xamarin.Forms WebView, but apart from that…

Web Source, Embedded, Code HTML!? all same!

Doesn’t matter whatever the source of the HTML you’re setting in the Hybrid WebView, be it a web source directly from a URL, or loading an embedded HTML File, or even a code generated dynamic HTML content, it doesn’t make a difference.

The only thing that matters is the invokeCSharpAction() in your rendered HTML, so that the native renderers can pick it up and forward the execution to Xamarin.Forms .NET handlers!

Yes! extra parameters!

Even though I’m showcasing only a single parameter during this demo article, from javascript to C# .NET run time, you can easily extend this same implementation to pass any number of parameters as you wish! As I explained in the article make sure to define it in the following bits,

HybridWebView.InvokeAction(string data1, string data2)

Something to keep in mind is that you can only pass a single parameter into the invokeCSharpAction(data).  So in your javascript make sure to merge all the parameters into a single value and have a pipe delimiter (ex: |) like separator for them (ex: data1|data2) that you’re before to the invokeCSharpAction(data) method, which you will break it up on arrival in the native renderer and pass them up to the InvokeAction(data1, data2).

var dataBody = data;
var dataArray = dataBody.Split("|");
var data1 = dataArray[0];
var data2 = dataArray[1];

((HybridWebView)Element).InvokeAction(data1, data2);

Finally wire it all up, you’re good to go! 😉 I might share another article with some cool implementation with this in near future! 😀

Conclusion

You can easily build a communication bridge from C# .NET to javascript environment in Xamarin.Forms WebView! but the other way is not really possible out of the box!

That’s why we’re implementing this Hybrid WebView Control which allows us build a communication bridge from javascript to C# .NET environment directly during run time! 😉

So this concludes my bi-directional communication tunnel with HTML/Javascript inside your WebView in Xamarin.Forms yo!

Well that’s pretty much it!

Share the love! Cheers! 😀

Xamarin.Forms Native HttpClientHandler for HttpClient…

Let’s make sure our Xamarin.Forms apps are properly configured with Native HttpClientHandler for optimum performance and better network security..

If you’re using the HttpClient for making Web API calls outside your app, you probably using the HttpClientHandler to set up various kinds of configuration for the HttpClient instance.

Now this HttpClient and Native HttpClientHandler applies directly for both Xamarin Native and Xamarin.Forms apps…

Although in this article I’m focusing on Xamarin.Forms, the same configuration set up can be used for any Xamarin Native apps as well.  By default in Xamarin you can use either the Managed HttpClientHandler which is fully maintained by .NET mono run time or the Native HttpClientHandler that maps itself to the Native run time configuration.

Why Native HttpClientHandler?

Thanks to the awesomeness of the Xamarin and the powerful Xamarin.Forms ability to map itself efficiently to the Native device environment, provides you with this facility to use the device Native Network Layer’s configuration in your Apps as well.

• Using the Native HttpClientHandler provides you with a lot of advantages in terms of Network Communication Layer, which maps itself completely to the native properties and behaviors.
• It provides your App with the in built default System native Security such as Transport Layer Security, TLS 1.2 features. This is basically built in for both Android and iOS system devices by default, which then we can leverage automatically on to our Xamarin.Forms app as well during run time.
• This gives the user a peace of mind, in terms of the security of the network communication in the app while also giving the user the free of choice to let the app inherit itself the system configured security settings.
• Defaulting to the Native Network configuration we can make sure our app is fine tuned for Security and Performance on the device native level and you do not have to spend extra time managing those bits manually.
• Another great advantage is not needing to manually handle device Proxy Settings, allowing your Xamarin.Forms app to communicate through the device’s default network tunnel.

Well that’s pretty much a good list of reasons to make sure to set up our Xamarin.Forms apps to use the Native HttpClientHandlers eh! 😉

So what are they?

So below are the Native HttpClientHandlers available in Xamarin run time for each Platform, which applies for Xamarin.Forms as well.

AndroidClientHandler -AndroidClientHandler is the new handler that delegates to native Java code and Android OS instead of implementing everything in managed code. This option has better performance and smaller executable size.

NSUrlSessionHandler -The NSURLSession-based handler is based on the native NSURLSession framework available in iOS 7 and newer. This options has better performance and smaller executable size, supports TLS 1.2 standard.

WinHttpHandler -WinHttpHandler is implemented as a thin wrapper on the WinHTTP interface of Windows and is only supported on Windows systems. Provides developers with more granular control over the application’s HTTP communication than the default HttpClientHandler class.

So here as you can see, using the device native HttpClientHandlers provides you with the best of performance and security for your app compared to opting to use the Managed HttpClientHandler where you have to manually handle those optimizations yourself.

Although I must make a note here, in Windows or UWP Xamarin apps the default set up is the .NET Managed HttpClientHandler because the underlying native environment is Windows itself. But opting to use WinHttpHandler provides arguably better advantage according to many documentation, and also it’s in the same .NET stack! 😉

What no to do?

So before we get into “the how?”, let’s first make sure the bits not to do in our app project!

– not use “Managed”

So when it comes to Xamarin.Forms, by default when you create your project in Visual Studio the Native project nodes Properties are set up to use the Native HttpClient Handlers already. You can see this in both Android and iOS Project settings,

• Android project node -> Properties -> Android Options -> Click “Advanced”
• iOS project node -> Properties -> iOS Build

Do not set it to option to “Managed” HttpClientHandler in either of those settings, which will opt you out of Native HttpClientHandler.

– not use “new HttpClientHanlder()” 

If the above Settings check success, the next thing to consider is not instantiating HttpClientHanlder on its own as below,

HttpClientHandler httpClientHandler = new HttpClientHandler();
...
// setting up httpClientHandler settings
...
...
HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient(httpClientHandler);

 

This is something you should not do, which will override your Native project property set up regarding the HttpClientHandler, and opt your HttpClient to use Managed HttpClientHandler instead, resulting you losing all the native goodness!

Next let’s see what to do?

What to do?

Here are the things you need to make sure to do instead.

– not using HttpClientHandler!?

Consider not using HttpClientHandler at all with your HttpClient, then you’re basically good to go, as long as you have set it up in your App Project Native settings. Not a joke though! lol 😛

Just use plain HttpClient instance out of the box! but make sure to do the following as well.

– set Native HttpClientHandler!

Go to the following settings in each of your Xamarin.Forms Native project nodes,

• Android project node -> Properties -> Android Options -> Click “Advanced”

• iOS project node -> Properties -> iOS Build

Make sure to set the Native Android and NSUrlSessionHandler those settings, to opt to use AndroidClientHandler and iOS NSUrlSessionHandler for your HttpClientHandler by default.

Well UWP or Windows project nodes doesn’t have such settings as it by defaults use .NET Managed HttpClientHandler.

A little demo!

Now if its all good, you should be able to see the following behaviors in action,

So this is a little Xamarin.Forms demo that I prepared to demonstrate the behaviors of Native HttpClientHandlers on Android, iOS and Windows UWP.

Here I’m demonstrating the Network access (blue color access granted and red color access blocked in run time) for a list of scenarios,

• Access trusted secure web endpoint: https://google.com
• Access untrusted insecure web endpoint: http://self-signed.badssl.com
• Access insecure plain HTTP web endpoint: http://http.badssl.com

Now you can see how each device Native environment handles those endpoint calls, basically only allowing access to trusted secure web endpoints in the native network tunnel to go through.

Well that was quite simple eh! but we all know the real life requirements wouldn’t be so simple, what if we need to use the HttpClientHandler in code?

Yes we need access to the Native HttpClientHandler in code!

So then let me walk you through handling an advance implementation of the native HttpClientHandler with more customization added in code! 😉 

How to? Advanced set up of Native HttpClientHandler!

Yes as you can see in the Project Settings, it doesn’t really give you much options to customize your Native HttpClientHandler settings, or even override some of its behaviors at all. In a real life scenarios you would definitely need some more access to your HttpClientHandler use in code.

Compared to the Managed .NET HttpClientHandler where you easily have access to all its properties and behaviors.

But it is crucial for us to stick to the Native HttpClientHandler, so the solution would be to implement an access to the Native HttpClientHandler in our Xamarin.Forms code.

– Under the hood!?

Thanks to the awesomeness of Xamarin we have full access to those Native HttpClientHandlers in code as well, so that we can use them as however as we like. Let’s take a look under the hood of these Native bits shall we,

Android:

iOS:

Windows:

Now you can see that all these Native Handlers are extending from either HttpClientHandler or the HttpMessageHandler,

Drilling down further into HttpClientHandler we can see that its extending itself from HttpMessageHandler.

– Using em in code!

Let’s start by using our AndroidClientHandler in code to be used with HttpClient instance.

var androidClientHandler = new AndroidClientHandler();
... 
// setting up native httpClientHandler settings
...
...
HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient((HttpMessageHandler)androidClientHandler);

 

And for iOS with the NSUrlSessionHandler.

var iosClientHandler = new NSUrlSessionHandler();
... 
// setting up native httpClientHandler settings
...
...
HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient((HttpMessageHandler)iosClientHandler);

 

Then for Windows or UWP, opt to our WinHttpHandler.

var uwpClientHandler = new WinHttpHandler();
... 
// setting up native httpClientHandler settings
...
...
HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient((HttpMessageHandler)uwpClientHandler);

On Windows or UWP make sure to install nuget package: System.Net.Http.WinHttpHandler to use WinHttpHandler which is a far better native option than default HttpClientHandler.

As you can see we’re casting them to HttpMessageHandler as a common ground object, since they all inherit from that base.

Now that we’ve got access to them in code, we can access all their properties and behaviors, and even override to customize them as we wish to.

– build the bridge to Xamarin.Forms!

Since the above bits are not directly accessible from Xamarin.Forms, we need to build the bridge that will allow us to access the Native HttpClientHandler instance in Xamarin.Forms environment directly.

Since I already created a common ground instance across all the native environments with the casting to HttpMessageHandler, this is much easier. Now there are plenty of ways leverage the access to this object up towards Xamarin.Forms layer, but here I’m going to showcase rather a simple implementation.

code on github repo: XFNativeHttpClientHandler/Services/HttpClientService.cs

Here I have a simple Service implementation in Xamarin.Forms where it maintains a Singleton object of itself, which contains a HttpClient object and HttpClientHandler object.

Given the HttpClientHandler is provided, I am instantiating my HttpClient() on demand during the run time as you can see below.

private HttpClientService()
{
    HttpClient = HttpClientHandler != null ?
        new HttpClient((HttpMessageHandler)HttpClientHandler) 
      : new HttpClient();
}

public static HttpClientService Instance
{
    get
    {
        lock (Padlock)
        {
            return _instance ?? 
                  (_instance = new HttpClientService());
        }
    }
}

 

So the setting up of the HttpClientHandler property happens in the each Native level’s execution start up point.

On Android: MainActivity.cs

protected override void OnCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
{
    ...
    
    var androidClientHandler = new HttpClientHandler();
    Services.HttpClientService.HttpClientHandler =               
                                     androidClientHandler;
    
    ...
}

 

On iOS: AppDelegate.cs

public override bool FinishedLaunching(UIApplication app, NSDictionary options)
{
    ...
    
    var iosClientHandler = new NSUrlSessionHandler();
    Services.HttpClientService.HttpClientHandler = iosClientHandler;

    ...
}

 

On Windows (UWP): MainPage.xaml.cs

public MainPage()
{
    ...

    var uwpClientHandler = new WinHttpHandler();
    Services.HttpClientService.HttpClientHandler = uwpClientHandler;

    ...
}

 

That’s it for the set up, then let’s use it in Xamarin.Forms code:

var result = await HttpClientService.Instance.
		HttpClient.GetAsync("https://google.com/");

 

Now this should provide you with a Xamarin.Forms Solution allowing you to be able to access all the Properties and Behaviors of Native HttpClientHandlers!

Yay! Access in Code!

So the whole point of access these Native HttpClientHandlers in code was to be able to customize their settings and behaviors according to our requirements eh! 😀

Go ahead and access those properties and behaviors that you wish to use…

Here’s me demonstrate a simple scenario, how to override HTTPS Certificate Validation while using our Native HttpClientHandlers!

Full gist: https://gist.github.com/UdaraAlwis/0787f74796d22c294b91be81ff162347

Things Keep in mind!

So when you’re accessing the Native HttpClientHandlers in code there are some things you need to absolutely keep in your mind, to make sure the performance and security is not compromised.

– Custom bits, only Native level!

All the custom configuration that you need to do should be done in Native Xamarin level code, accordingly to native properties and behaviors.

– One time init() only!

You should instantiate your Native HttpClientHandler instances from Native level only once, and they shouldn’t be altered later for consistency during run time across your app.

– HttpMessageHandler, keep it as it is!

Keep the HttpMessageHandler instance that we up-cast from the Native HttpClientHandler instances as it is after instantiation, to make sure you’re not overriding any native properties and behaviors that we set up or inherited prior.

– Release Build, watch out!

When you’re using the Xamarin Platform specific Project Settings, make sure those settings are propagated to Release mode as well. In .csproj file has separate configurations for Debug and Release build configurations, so make sure keep an eye out for those configuration during Release builds as well.

Conclusion

Whenever you need to use the HttpClientHandler along side HttpClient, in your Xamarin.Forms or Native Xamarin Apps, its best to use the Native HttpClientHandler. This can be easily configured in each Native Project Settings or we can even instantiate them in code to be used across our Xamarin.Forms app environment as I’ve explained in this article.

I have shared the demo app code in my github as usual: github.com/XFNativeHttpClientHandler

Well that’s it! 😉

Share the love! Cheers!

Prepping your Xamarin.Forms App for Penetration Testing!

Let’s make sure your Xamarin.Forms App is ready for Penetration Testing, or widely known as PEN Testing! Focused on the Network Communication Layer, so that we can have a peace of mind for ourselves without being annoyed by our QA and Security Analysis team! 😉 lol

In any Mobile App Development project, we need to thoroughly test our Mobile Apps for vulnerabilities and security of user data. That is why these penetration testing processes are very important, we need to make sure that we deliver a mobile application as hardened and safe guarded as possible for our Users.

Now this post is not about securing or hardening the security of your mobile app, but rather how to prepare your Xamarin.Forms built app for QA and PEN Testing procedures.

But why, Xamarin.Forms?

Xamarin.Forms does an incredible job at producing a almost native-like level Mobile Application at the end of development. But given the unique nature of Xamarin.Forms, the .NET framework that we work with, sometimes developers take it for granted, giving all the responsibility to the framework, and we miss some bits that we need to pay attention to in oppose to native mobile development.

We need to make sure our App is compatible with the QA and PEN Testing procedures. Most of the QA and PEN testing revolves around the Native Mobile App environment. But sometimes those typical native mobile app testing processes aren’t compatible with what we work on out of the box of default .NET builds of Xamarin.Forms!

PEN Testing of a Mobile App…

Now there are many different kinds of QA procedures and PEN Test cases, such as local DB analysis, MiTM packet analysis, etc. In order to support those different PEN Test procedures, some times we need to provide separate builds with different configurations of your app to our PEN Test team. Such as disabling SSL Pinning in the app so that they can execute MiTM packet analysis testing on our app, and there could be many different scenarios as such.

So I’m going to share with you some of the important key points that you need to make sure you have configured in your Xamarin.Forms project, specifically in your Network Communication Layer and for some of those custom builds that you might have to provide for the PEN Testing process.

HttpClient Handler setup..

While Xamarin does provide a full fledged Managed HttpClient and Handler, it is best to set up the HattpClient’s handlers to the device native handlers. This will make sure better performance and better native system level security for your app.

On your Xamarin.Forms project solution, go to the Android project node -> Properties -> Android Options -> Click “Advanced” button and take a look at HttpClient implementation and SSL/TLS implementation.

Make sure to set them up as above using the native Android handler, and Default (Native TLS 1.2+) Transport Layer Security for all the web calls. This will make sure all our web endpoint calls will be handled by those configurations which are best suited for performance and security of the native android system.

Then for the iOS, On your Xamarin.Forms project solution, go to the iOS project node -> Properties -> iOS Build and take a look at HttpClient implementation.

Make sure its set to NSUrlSession handler, which will provide your iOS app with native iOS level security and better performance for web endpoint calls. Also this means your app won’t support devices before iOS version 7, so better check your app requirements as well.

HttpClient setup in Xamarin.Forms!

It is very crucial that you imperilment the use of HttpClient in your Xamarin.Forms app properly with performance and security in mind. It would be best to register the instance of HttpClient as a Singleton, and refer to that singular instance for all your web endpoint calls. This will not only make it easy for debugging, also easy for configuring your API/Web endpoint execution layer’s implementation.

And set up a HttpClientHandler to be passed into your HttpClient instance during the instantiation, so that we can include all the custom configuration easily.

Unless its a must, make sure to use the Native HttpClientHandlers for your HttpClient, which will increase the performance and native security features for your app.

• Android: AndroidClientHandler
• iOS: NSUrlSessionHandler
• UWP: WinHttpHandler

Instead using the .NET Managed HttpClientHandler, use the above instances mapped up to your Xamarin.Forms shared environment. Here’s something that might be useful: Xamarin and the HttpClient For iOS, Android and Windows

Do not re-instantiate the same HttpClientHandler nor HttpClient instance during run time and keep those different configuration separately for each HttpClient by registering multiple types with a pre-defined use case. Such as AuthClient for handling authentication and ApiClient for normal endpoint calls.

Although there are third party HttpClient libraries such as ModernHttpClient, that provide better features for these specific scenarios, so you could even try one of them! 😉

Disable SSL Certificate Validation..

In case if you needed to disable HTTPS / SSL Certificate validation for your PEN Test procedures such as Man-in-The-Middle packet trace analysis, then we can easily disable this by overriding the Certificate validation execution in the HttpClientHandler and assigning that to HttpClient.

var handler = new HttpClientHandler();
handler.ServerCertificateCustomValidationCallback =
	(message, certificate, chain, sslPolicyErrors) => true;

HttpClient = new HttpClient(handler);

 

The above applies of course if you have set up Managed HttpClientHandler in your Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.iOS settings instead of using the native handlers.

If you have set up your projects with Native HttpClientHandler then you can easily disable HTTPS Certificate validation by following ways.

For Android, create a Custom derived implementation of AndroidClientHandler as follows,

public class CustomAndroidClientHandler : AndroidClientHandler
{
	protected override async Task<HttpResponseMessage> SendAsync(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken)
	{
		request.Version = new System.Version(2, 0);
		return await base.SendAsync(request, cancellationToken);
	}

	protected override SSLSocketFactory ConfigureCustomSSLSocketFactory(HttpsURLConnection connection)
	{
		return SSLCertificateSocketFactory.GetInsecure(0, null);
	}

	protected override IHostnameVerifier GetSSLHostnameVerifier(HttpsURLConnection connection)
	{
		return new BypassHostnameVerifier();
	}
}

internal class BypassHostnameVerifier : Java.Lang.Object, IHostnameVerifier
{
	public bool Verify(string hostname, ISSLSession session)
	{
		return true;
	}
}

Based on: https://nicksnettravels.builttoroam.com/android-certificates/

for iOS, subscribe to TrustOverride and return true to override certificate validation.

var iosClientHandler = new NSUrlSessionHandler();
iosClientHandler.TrustOverride += (sender, trust) =>
{
	return true;
};

 

For UWP: subscribe to ServerCertificateValidationCallback and return true to override certificate validation.

var uwpClientHandler = new WinHttpHandler() 
{ 
	ServerCertificateValidationCallback = 
		(message, certificate2, arg3, arg4) =>
		{
			return true;
		}
};

 

As you can see in all the snippets above we’re overriding HTTPS Certificate Validation process manually. Now this is not a build to be pushed for Production, make sure to produce this build as a Test only build for PEN testing. So I would suggest keep this configuration in a separate branch build and opt back to the main branch for production release.

Enable Self-Signed SSL Certificates..

Instead of disabling entire SSL Certificate validation process, we could narrow down the override to a certain SSL Certificates, such as a Self-Signed Certificate endpoints that our PEN Testers might be using.

Although there are many ways to do this, basically we include the given self-signed certificate data in the app’s configuration, or override the validation with it’s key. I would recommend going into the following tutorials for it hence it covers a wide aspect of it for both iOS and Android.

Self Signed iOS Certifcates and Certificate Pinning in a Xamarin.Forms application

Self Signed Android Certificates and Certificate Pinning in Xamarin.Forms

So kudos to nicksnettravels blog! 😉 They’ve got great stuff in there!

Enable non-HTTPS!

As you know by default Android (since Android P) and iOS platforms doesn’t allow insecure non-HTTPS calls to be made from our apps,

• Android P: Protecting users with TLS by default in Android P
• iOS: Preventing Insecure Network Connections

Now we might have to disable this during development until the back end server is TSL enabled or even for a PEN test case with a custom build.

Let’s disable this on Android by using android:networkSecurityConfig in your AndroidManifest.xml with a reference to the @xml/network_security_config which we’ll create next.

<manifest ... >
    <application
        android:networkSecurityConfig="@xml/network_security_config"
        ... >
        <!-- Place child elements of <application> element here. -->
    </application>
</manifest>

 

Add a new folder called “xml” in your Resources folder and add a new xml file with the name network_security_config.xml this will hold the key to disable or enable HTTPS connections restriction as you wish.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<network-security-config>
  <domain-config cleartextTrafficPermitted="true" />
</network-security-config>

 

You can set cleartextTrafficPermitted to false later during production build.

And on iOS add the following configuration in the info.plist file.

<key>NSAppTransportSecurity</key>
<dict>
    <key>NSAllowsArbitraryLoads</key>
    <true/>
</dict>

 

Oh once again, make sure to disable this during PROD builds!

System Proxy Settings support!

Something to keep in mind is that you don’t need to worry about System Proxy settings as long as you’re using the Native HttpClientHandlers as they would by default use the system preferences under the hood, but if you’re using Managed .NET HttpClientHandlers then you need to handle the System native Proxy Settings.

You can do this by creating a Platform specific Service that will extract the System Proxy Settings, and you can use that when you’re instantiating HttpClientHanlder. This article provides a great example for it: HttpClient and Proxy

Is all good? 😉

Now before you ship out your build for the PEN test you can make sure everything is in place according to your specific requirements.

BadSSL (https://badssl.com/) is a great web tool to check whether your app is able to access non-https endpoints or self-signed certificate endpoints and so on based on your PEN Test requirement. You can call upon those test endpoints directly from your app to make sure they’re accessible or not.

Network monitoring tools like Fiddler and Charles Proxy, allows you to set up dummy local proxy servers that you can test with in order to make sure your app supports proxy communication or in that case App’s compatibility with using System proxy settings. You could even monitor the data streams going in and out of the app, and see if they’re properly secured with encryption.

So for this demo I prepared a little sample app which showcases the use of non-HTTPS, Self-Signed endpoints access, and Proxy settings reading capabilities. Check out below Android, iOS and UWP run times…

As you can see it’s able to go through all the defined scenarios I mentioned before. For this demo app I’m using all Native HttpClientHandlers, so I’m using the exact code snippets I’ve shared in this blog post. Now let me try to emulate some failure scenarios where its missing some configuration I shared in this post.

Full demo code: github.com/UdaraAlwis/XFPenTestPrepDemo

   

1st I’m emulating the instance where Self-Signed HTTPS endpoints unauthorized to execute as well as Non-HTTPS endpoints blocked by default System Security layer. 2nd one shows where the Self-Signed HTTPS is diabled but non-HTTPS endpoints allowed and so on to the 3rd scenario.

Well that’s it. Hope this helps you to configure your app properly with security in mind and provide builds for the PEN Test processes according to the requirements. 🙂

Share the love! Cheers! 😀

Stunning app Themes in Xamarin.Forms Shell projects!

Wanna build some awesome themes into your Xamarin.Forms Shell project? Change the App themes during the run time dynamically? Save the theme properties in User Settings? Then you’re at the right place! 😉

Themes in Xamarin.Forms Apps…

Given Xamarin.Forms is such an incredible cross platform mobile framework, it provides a lot of awesome features out of the box, but unfortunately it doesn’t straight away provide App Theme feature in your face. 😛  but…

It’s got all the bells and whistles you need to implement an awesome App Theme set up with ease, in combination of awesome Dynamic Binding, Static Binding and Style Properties giving you full control of how to handle implementing Themed Styles into your app. You just gotta put together all those bits and you can easily build App Themes functionality into the app.

This is actually quite powerful given the cross platform nature of Xamarin.Forms! Now there are plenty of documentation, articles and sample demos regarding this, so I’m not going to be repeating on that topic, but if you’re interested try out this office doc article from Microsoft: Theming a Xamarin.Forms Application Now that gives a very good step by step explanation on the topic for anyone to easily get started, but anyhow focusing back on this article…

Enters, Xamarin.Forms Shell Apps…

Then enters the recently introduced Xamarin.Forms Shell, a new paradigm of Xamarin.Forms App development. Now when I got started with this new awesomeness, I couldn’t find any direct articles or samples on how to implement App Themes in a Xamarin.Forms Shell projects.

So I had to figure it out myself, and that’s why I thought of sharing my experience with you guys. Now now, don’t get me wrong, since we’re still in the same context of Xamarin.Forms, the App Theming strategy is still the same as the official doc I shared about, but I may have found a better way and a bit of improvements on top of that. 😉

So let’s get started… Stunning app Themes in Xamarin.Forms Shell projects!

How to? in a nutshell!

Basically in a nutshell we’re going to define a set of Themes with Color Properties inside them that holds Color values unique to each Theme. Then we will build all a complete collection of Styles targeting all the components in our app such as Button, Labels and so on. Now in this case we need to stick to Dynamic Binding since we’re going to be switching between Themes during run time, so use of Xamarin.Forms DynamicResource binding all the way ah! 😉

Next we make sure all our UI elements are bounded to those Styles that we created before and still making sure to stick to Dynamic Binding. Now that we have established the binding chain from Theme Properties to Styles to UI Elements, we need to set up the default Theme to load in the ApplicationResources XAML node.

Once all that’s set up we shall be implementing a simple mechanism  to save the User’s App Theme preferences, with features such as Saving and Reloading those preferences on demand.

And that’s it! 😀

Sneak Peak!

Here’s a little sneaky peaky demo magic on Android and iOS.. 😉

If you’d like a sneak peak into the code before I get into the code details, you can find the whole demo project here in my github repo: https://github.com/UdaraAlwis/XFShellAdvThemeing

So in my demo code, I have used the default out of the box Xamarin.Forms Shell project template you get in Visual Studio 2019 latest update, so that you can easily familiarize yourself with the code and adopt the same implementation in your own code.

Set up of the project!

Let’s get started with the set up of the Project, but first should take a look into the structure we’re going to be implementing, where we need to first focus on the following aspects.

• List of Themes for the App
• List of properties in a given Theme
• Styles built using the properties of Themes
• Helper extension to change App Theme
• Saving the User’s App Theme preferences

Now keeping those main aspects in mine, I’m going to assume that you have already set up your basic Xamarin.Forms Shell app project. I’m going to name my little demo as XFShellAdvThemeing, denoting Xamarin.Forms Shell Advanced Theme-ing! 😉

Alright there goes our Xamarin.Forms Shell App project, with strong base of MVVM baked in! You may have noticed I have added “Themes” folder, which will hold the App Themes that we’re going to create. And then a “Helpers” which will hold a simple extension method that we’re going to built for switching the App Theme selection by the user during run time.

Building the App Themes…

Time to define the App Themes, so first of all we need to be specific about what properties we are going to be using to each Theme, be it colors, fonts, images and so on, you need to be specific, and make sure all the Theme definitions follow the exact same format.

on github: /XFShellAdvThemeing/Models/Theme.cs

Here I have defined the list of Themes that I’m going to include in my App, and as for having the type of Enum, is for to be used later in the code to populate the data to the User. So make sure to add a record here every time you add a new Theme to your app.

This step is very crucial because you shouldn’t neglect this and try to change the app theme properties half way into the app development. If you’re working with a team,

…you need to define with the team designers together how the Themes of the app should behave, and what elements should be controlled over them.

For this demo I’m going to define the following list of properties inside each Theme.

• Main Colors:
  • Primary Color
  • Accent Color
  • Secondary Color
• Page Colors:
  • Page Background Color
  • Navigation Bar Color
• Text Colors
  • Primary Text Color
  • Secondary Text Color
  • Tertiary Text Color

As you can see I have taken into consideration of having 3 set of main Colors, and as a back up since I’m going to be using native Navigation bar, a property to control its colors and the Page background as they render next to each other. Then finally the Colors for the Text inside the app.

Its very crucial you develop this kind of design centric thinking when you’re developing any mobile app…

So let’s create our beautiful little XAML snippets inside the Themes folder that are going to hold all the properties of each App Theme.

Just simply add a XAML page into the Themes folder and rename the parent node to ResourceDictionary of type and update the same in the code behind as well.

on github: /XFShellAdvThemeing/Themes/DarkTheme.xaml

There my first theme, LightTheme which holds the color values I need to customize in my app for Theme-ing! 😉 Feel free to add as many themes as you like following the same structure.

Defining the Styles…

Now these bits are the middle man between your UI elements and the Theme definitions. As I explained before we are going to create Styles targeting all the types of UI Elements that we’re using in the app, so that we can “Style” them with those! 😉 get it!? lol

on github: /XFShellAdvThemeing/App.xaml

You can define these Styles as a Global App resources or in Page levels as you wish, but I have added them into my App.xaml for this demo, such as Styles targeting Buttons, Labels, etc.

As you can see we are using DynamicResource binding to hold on to the Theme property values, so that we can update our Style property values dynamically in run time.

Now you might wonder why I have referenced Themes/LightTheme.xaml in the  global Resource Dictionary, well… that is to set the default theme as the Light App Theme that I just defined above. You can keep it as it is or watch me switch the App Theme dynamically during run time below… 😉

You also need to directly reference your Shell bound UI Elements using the Theme properties we defined earlier. Here I have added to to the same App.xaml global scope instead of keeping it in the AppShell.xaml scope, just for organizing the styles in one place.

Switching App Theme Dynamically…

Now of course we need to allow our App to be able to switch the Theme dynamically during run time according to User’s choice or some configuration built in. We can easily do this in Xamarin.Forms, using MergedDictionaries property by removing the existing Theme in memory Resources and switching to our choice of Theme Resources.

I have created a simple Helper extension, with the method SetAppTheme() which accepts the type of Them Enum value you need to use and returns the boolean result.

on github: /XFShellAdvThemeing/Helpers/ThemeHelper.cs

Like I said before this is where out little Helper extension comes into play, so just add this little snippet into your Helpers folder.

Based on the Theme Enum identifier value, we will be instantiating the Theme object, assigning it to the Resources in memory as you see above.

Now that’s all cool and stuff, but how about persisting this preferred theme selection?

Saving to User Preferences!

This can easily be done with the help of Xamarin.Essentials, which allows us to save Application context key values pairs using the Preferences API. Now I believe in Visual Studio when you create a new Xamarin.Forms Shell project by default it comes pre-installed with Xamarin.Essentials, otherwise make sure to add it to your project from nuget.

We are going to save the Selected App Theme settings with the key name “CurrentAppTheme” as below.

on github: /XFShellAdvThemeing/Views/ThemeSelectionPage.xaml.cs

And make sure to load it back to the app during the App’s launch event and call up on our little magic extension ThemeHelper.SetAppTheme() as shown here..

on github: /XFShellAdvThemeing/App.xaml.cs

You need to call that in the App() constructor invoke, so that we can load the saved App Theme settings instead of loading the default one that we set up in App.xaml resources.

 

Bingo! nice little App Theme Selection Page to our Xamarin.Forms Shell App! 🙂

Time for some action!

Here it is side by side iOS and Android,

 

Themes with more than Colors?

Now our App Themes aren’t always going to be as simple as a bunch of Color properties right?! It could even contain Fonts, Text Sizes, Images, Icons and so on. But if you’re wondering if that’s even possible in Xamarin.Forms, yes absolutely you can!

It’s basically no different than defining a Color property in your Theme.xaml file, just add the XAML node to the file and you’re good to go!

Make sure to give it a Key name value though, and reference it in your Styles as usual where applicable.

You can follow the same pattern for any kind of Theme property you want to add and basically you’re good to go! 😉

Github Repo: github.com/UdaraAlwis/XFShellAdvThemeing

Any property that you can reference usually from your XAML, you can easily include them in your App Theme and link the binding through Styles to your UI elements straight away.

Some Tips!

Here are some tips and tricks that might come in handy for you, during the whole shabang of “Theme-ing” your Xamarin.Forms Shell app projects.

More Unification! Less Repetition!

Make sure to avoid adding repetitive theme properties into the Theme XAML definitions, by unifying the Colors, Fonts, Icons you use in your app. As an example if you define a Text Color property in your Theme, make sure to use that only for Text Coloring Elements and Styles, try not to use them for other aspects.

So you can easily manage those properties in future and they’d be easy to understand for anyone to extend the properties. This is quite crucial when you maintain massive App Projects, and it wouldn’t affect the capability to grow the App code altogether.

Stubborn Native Elements?! Yikes!

Now as you probably know or don’t Xamarin.Forms doesn’t let you change the color values of your App’s few very native elements during run time. Such as,

– iOS/Android System Status Bar Colors

– Android UI Elements that contains horizontal bar such as Entry, Picker, etc. (Unless you’re using Xamarin.Forms Material Visual)

They require native Android/iOS level access to change during run time. So you need to have Custom Renderers or Native Bound Services that can be communicated through Xamarin.Forms layer during run time. Well that’s a blog post for another time! 😉

So here’s how it could be easily solved as you can see below,

My suggestion would be to maintain values of those UI elements as compatible as possible that could be matched with the Theme Colors you currently use. Such as light Gray, White or Black mostly.

You can easily set them up from Resources/values/styles.xml in your Android project.

And on iOS project’s Info.plist configuration.

And that’s pretty much it!

Share the love! 😀 Cheers!

Using SMS Retriever API in Xamarin Android!

Let’s use the SMS Retriever API in Xamarin Android, and possibly avoid the troubles of new Google Play Store SMS/Call Log access restrictions! 😉 Is your Android App ready for the new Google Play Store permission policy?

SMS Retriever API, in a nutshell…

Android SMS Retriever API allows you to access the SMS Messages in the phone without having to request SMS read access permission, thus giving a complete peace of mind for the user. 🙂 Allowing specific SMS messages to be read from the Inbox, which are specifically targeted to be delivered for the  app we’re requesting from. This is the perfect solution for One Time Password (OTP) mobile number verification implementation in our Android apps.

Furthermore from Google Docs: https://developers.google.com/identity/sms-retriever/

Now that the introduction is out of the way… Let’s get started!

How it works, in short…

NO! I’m not gonna get into detailed explanation, but in simplest terms we are going to have an object called SmsRetrieverClient that’s going to wait for an incoming SMS message with the matching hash key to the app we are using. This active waiting is going to execute for 5 minutes and automatically dispose itself.

When the certain SMS arrived at the inbox during the 5 minute waiting , the SmsRetrieverClient then sends a broadcast to the app with the captured message content, for any listening broadcast receivers registered in the app.  From there we pick up the message inside our broadcast receiver and we process it or do whatever the heck we want with it. 😛

But in case if the SMS wasn’t received by the phone it would still execute the broadcast but with a time out failure code, so that we know the 5 minutes waiting exceeded and the SMS wasn’t received or read.

So there’s mainly 2 components to it, SmsRetrieverClient object, and the Broadcast Receiver object. Not to mention the App Hash key, which is also very crucial element here, you need to make sure the SMS that’s sent to the device has the App hash key that’s derived from the signing keystore of the app’s running instance.

In Xamarin…

Yes this is completely available in Xamarin Android as well, right out of the box! Just a matter of figuring out the right namespaces and method calls comparing to the official Google Android Docs! 🙂

Although I’m quite surprised I could not find any official Documentation from Xamarin regarding this important API. Thus here I am filling that void! 😀

Let’s get started!

Add em Nuget!

To use SMS Retriever API in Xamarin we need to install Xamarin.GooglePlayServices.Auth nuget package to our Android project.

Just pick the latest version as you prefer and hit install.

Activate the SMSRetrieverClient…

Then we need to implement the executing of the activation of SMSRetrieverClient that is the client object that’s going to actively watch out for any incoming SMS messages with the hash key that is similar to the app we are requesting it from.

You could initiate the SMSRetrieverClient inside a button click event or invoke it from a Service instance method, choice is up to you. 🙂

private void btnStartSMSRetreiver_OnClick(object sender, EventArgs eventArgs)
{
	// Get an instance of SmsRetrieverClient, used to start listening for a matching SMS message.
	SmsRetrieverClient _client = SmsRetriever.GetClient(this.ApplicationContext);
	// Starts SmsRetriever, which waits for ONE matching SMS message until timeout
	// (5 minutes). The matching SMS message will be sent via a Broadcast Intent with
	// action SmsRetriever#SMS_RETRIEVED_ACTION.
	_client.StartSmsRetriever();
}

As you can see we’re instantiating the SmsRetrieverClient using the Application Context, and calling the StartSmsRetriever() method to activate listening to the incoming SMS messages with matching app hash key included.

A little cherry on top…

Here are some extra bits you could adopt if needed regarding the SmsRetrieverClient. You could get the return result of the SmsRetrieverClient initiation as follows…

...

	var task = _client.StartSmsRetriever();

	// You could also Listen for success/failure of StartSmsRetriever initiation
	task.AddOnSuccessListener(new SuccessListener());
	task.AddOnFailureListener(new FailureListener());
}

...

internal class SuccessListener : Java.Lang.Object, IOnSuccessListener
{
	public void OnSuccess(Object result)
	{
		// do as you wish on Success init
	}
}

internal class FailureListener : Java.Lang.Throwable, IOnFailureListener
{
	public void OnFailure(Exception e)
	{
		// do as you wish on Failure init
	}
}

And even await for the init result asynchronously as follows…

...
var task = await _client.StartSmsRetriever();
...

But don’t forget to switch the caller method to an async method! 😉

Well that’s just some cherry on top features if you ever wanted to try!

Next the BroadcastReceiver…

So here’s the other piece of the puzzle, the BroadcastReceiver that will be listening to the broadcasts of the above SmsRetreieverClient.

SMS Retriever API has provided us with an intent filter SmsRetriever.SmsRetrievedAction which we will use to register our BroadcastReceiver, which we’re going name as SMSBroadcastReceiver, and implement as following…

[BroadcastReceiver(Enabled = true)]
[IntentFilter(new[] { SmsRetriever.SmsRetrievedAction })]
public class SMSBroadcastReceiver : BroadcastReceiver
{
	public override void OnReceive(Context context, Intent intent)
	{
		if (intent.Action != SmsRetriever.SmsRetrievedAction)
			return;

		var extrasBundleundle = intent.Extras;
		if (extrasBundleundle == null) return;
		var status = (Statuses)extrasBundleundle.Get(SmsRetriever.ExtraStatus);
		switch (status.StatusCode)
		{
			case CommonStatusCodes.Success:
				// Get SMS message contents
				var messageContent = (string)extrasBundleundle.Get(SmsRetriever.ExtraSmsMessage);
				// Extract one-time code from the message and complete verification
				// by sending the code back to your server.
				ShowResultOnUI("SMS retrieved: " + messageContent);
				break;

			case CommonStatusCodes.Timeout:
				// Waiting for SMS timed out (5 minutes)
				// Handle the error ...
				ShowResultOnUI("Timed Out Error! SMS retrieval failed!");
				break;
		}
	}
}

So once the SmsRetrieverClient does its job, either success or failure it will hit our Broadcast Receiver above and pass in the results, with Status code and Content of the Message if success, which will be included in the Extra Bundle as you can see above.

Once we receive the results, its up to you to do whatever you want with it, as you can see in the code itself! 😉

That’s pretty much it! simple and straightforward eh! 😀 But I wouldn’t end there without mentioning some important other bits that you need to make sure to get it right!

Other important bits…

Here are some helpful tips for you to troubleshoot any issues you’re having with getting the SMS Retriever API to function as it should.

SMS format..

You need to make sure you’re sending the correct SMS format as mentioned in the Google Android Documentation.

<#> Your ExampleApp code is: 123ABC78
FA+9qCX9VSu

It should be same format as above, although you could make some alterations to the message content, but the structure should be same. Start with “<#>” followed by the content of the SMS and ending with the App Hash key. You can learn more about it from their documentation: SMS Retriever API: Construct a verification message

Please, get your App Hash Key right!

I’ve seen people get this wrong all the time. It is such an easy simple process but a delicate one. So if you can’t get your implementation of SMS Retriever API to function properly, you should definitely take a look at your app hash key, whether you’ve generated the correct key and using the properly in the SMS content.

Given Xamarin Android development, there’s no official documentation provided by Xamarin yet, that’s why I have written a step by step blog article to how to easily generate the accurate App hash key, give it a try if it could be of any help…

You can check it out here: App Hash Key Helper extension for Xamarin Android apps!

Let’s see it in action! 😀

Let’s fire it up and see the beauty of Android SMS Retriever API in Xamarin!

• 

• 

Look at the beauty eh! 😀 No SMS Read permission required 😉 way to give some peace of mind for your users for a simple functionalities such as OTP or Phone number verification!

You can try out my full blown demo in my github repo:

https://github.com/UdaraAlwis/XAndroidSMSRetrieverAPIDemo

It’s got all the bits I talked about above fully functional 🙂

in Xamarin.Forms Android?

Even if you’re using Xamarin.Forms the same implementation above can be applied easily. Just simply create a platform specific service to invoke the SMSRetrieverAPIClient on Android and call it from Xamarin.Forms at run time, then from the BroadcastReceiver just return back the results by using Xamarin.Forms MessagingCenter… 😉

Simple eh! 😀

There you have it fellas!

Cheers! Share the love! 😀 ❤

App Hash Key Helper extension for Xamarin Android apps!

Remember my last post “Generating App Hash key for SMS Retriever API for (Xamarin incl.)…” where I shared with you guys how to successfully  generating the App hash key in both MacOs and Windows environments without any hassle?

Now this is the improved alternative of it! making the whole process much easier specially for Xamarin Android development!

Previously…

So earlier we looked at how we could generate the App Hash key straight away from MacOS Terminal or on Windows with the keystore hex generation followed by the Xamarin Android helper method execution to retrieve the app hash key!

That specific helper method I had extracted partially from the Google’s official documentation sample regarding the SMS Retriever API, which I couldn’t completely port to Xamarin Android at that time while I was working on my private project.

But later I took a proper look at it and figured out how to completely port it to Xamarin Android, with a few minutes of back and forth between the Java code and C# Xamarin namespaces! 😀

Easier and Faster method!

Now with the fully ported code, as an extension helper class, we could easily generate the Hash key for our Xamarin Android app either on Windows or Mac using Visual Studio, without having to use any external Terminal or Command prompt.

but you need to follow some pre-requisites to get it to properly work..

Let’s get started!

Get your pre-requisites right!

You need to make sure you’re using the correct Keystore file to sign your APK during build, therefore navigate to your Xamarin Android project properties and set the correct Keystore file path and configuration.

In Visual Studio on Windows:

In Visual Studio on Mac:

That’s done!

Finally make sure you have given the proper app package name or app id to your app in the same project properties. ex: com.testapp.xyz

Why you ask? Since we’re directly generating the app hash code from the project itself, we need to make sure during the compilation the app, the final APK is signed using the keystore we are hoping to use in production. So we can retrieved the signed hash hex from the app Context at run time and the app id to generate the app hash code. 🙂

Then let’s begin the AppHashKeyHelper implementation… 😉

Let the implementation begin…

Let the implementation begin! lol 😀 So here is the complete ported helper class for generating the app hash key for your Xamarin Android app!

Simply copy the whole code to anywhere in your Xamarin Android project, and you could straight away call it from anywhere in the app to generate the app hash key!

	using System;
	using System.Linq;
	using System.Text;
	using Android.Content;
	using Android.Content.PM;
	using Android.Util;
	using Java.Security;
	using Java.Util;
	namespace WhateverNameSpace.Droid.Util
	{
	/// <summary>
	/// This is a helper class to generate your message hash to be included in your SMS message.
	///
	/// Without the correct hash, your app won't recieve the message callback. This only needs to be
	/// generated once per app and stored.Then you can remove this helper class from your code.
	///
	/// Ported to Xamarin C# from the AppSignatureHelper.java offcial Android sample
	/// – Udara Alwis
	/// </summary>
	public class AppHashKeyHelper
	{
	private static string HASH_TYPE = "SHA-256";
	private static int NUM_HASHED_BYTES = 9;
	private static int NUM_BASE64_CHAR = 11;
	/// <summary>
	/// Retrieve the app signed package signature
	/// known as signed keystore file hex string
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name="context"></param>
	/// <returns></returns>
	private static string GetPackageSignature(Context context)
	{
	PackageManager packageManager = context.PackageManager;
	var signatures = packageManager.GetPackageInfo(context.PackageName, PackageInfoFlags.Signatures).Signatures;
	return signatures.First().ToCharsString();
	}
	/// <summary>
	/// Gets the app hash key.
	/// </summary>
	/// <returns>The app hash key.</returns>
	/// <param name="context">Android app Context.</param>
	public static string GetAppHashKey(Context context)
	{
	string keystoreHexSignature = GetPackageSignature(context);
	String appInfo = context.PackageName + " " + keystoreHexSignature;
	try
	{
	MessageDigest messageDigest = MessageDigest.GetInstance(HASH_TYPE);
	messageDigest.Update(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(appInfo));
	byte[] hashSignature = messageDigest.Digest();
	hashSignature = Arrays.CopyOfRange(hashSignature, 0, NUM_HASHED_BYTES);
	String base64Hash = Android.Util.Base64.EncodeToString(hashSignature, Base64Flags.NoPadding | Base64Flags.NoWrap);
	base64Hash = base64Hash.Substring(0, NUM_BASE64_CHAR);
	return base64Hash;
	}
	catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e)
	{
	return null;
	}
	}
	}
	}

view raw

AppHashKeyHelper.cs

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

We’re simply passing in the Android App Context, which will then first retrieve the signed kestore hash string from the Package Manager.

Then we retrieve the app package name from the Context itself, and move ahead with the usual encrypted key generation.

I would recommend calling this from your MainActivity itself, since this is just a one time execution in your local debug environment.

There you go! Simple as that! 😀

Now once again, keeping in mind to make sure to remove the above helper class call from your project code, before you submit your final APK to the Play Store, since google does not recommend generating the App’s hash key during user run time. Just simply retrive your hash key and remove the code, and then set it up in your SMS API gateway execution.

Thats it! 😀

Cheers!

Share the love! 😀 ❤

Generating App Hash key for SMS Retriever API for (Xamarin incl.)…

Trying to generate your app’s Hash Key for the implementation of new Android SMS Retriever API? Still couldn’t get it to work? Well the problem could be in the actual generation process of the has string!

And here are some ways you could actually make sure to generate the valid hash string to get the functionality working.

Specially if you’re developing on Windows, or better working on a Xamarin Android app? I’ve got some goodies to make it work as well! 😉

App Hash string for SMS Retriever API

Anyhow, to use the SMS Retriever API we need generate our App’s unique Hash string which is a combination of app’s package name and your app’s public key certificate. Once the SMS is received into the Inbox the SMS Retriever API looks for any matching hash key in the message corresponding to the app that requested to read the SMS, if it finds a perfect match it will kick in the execution of retrieving the SMS string, otherwise it will time out. So without the accurate app hash key the SMS Retriever API will not kick in at all. That is why it is very crucial we generate the correct app hash key for our app using the App package name and keystore hash.

Troublesome!

Although according to the official Google Documentation, it should be easy and straight forward, but it is not, specially if you’re using a Windows Dev Environment, which could be troublesome at times. To add some topping on to that, if you’re working on a Xamarin Android project in Windows, you’re in deep troublesome waters, since even Google Docs only provides samples for the Android Java implementation.

Then the sample command that Google Docs provide doesn’t really throw any error if anything goes wrong during, wrong parameter, or a wrong keyword, during hash string generation, it simply returns a false hash string, which makes things worse!

This is actually something I experienced while I was developing one of our Xamarin Android applications. Oh yes! that’s even more annoying since there’s no official documentation or Xamarin sample of the implementation code regarding that API. 😦

Hence Google’s doc command failed me I had to play around with the parameters we’re passing in to the command, re-arrange and modify to get it to work. But anyhow with a walk in the midst of the dark forest of troubleshooting, I figured out how to properly generate the App Hash key!

Get your pre-requisites right!

First of all prepare your keystore file path, keystore alias name and keystore password, and double check those values are being properly set. This is where most of them goes wrong. Then the obvious requirement, make sure you have Androd

Method 1: On MacOS Terminal

So this is the easiest and most straight forward way to generate the hash string, by simply executing the below command on a MacOS Terminal.

keytool -exportcert -alias <keystore alias name> -keystore <keystore file with extension> | xxd -p | tr -d "[:space:]" | echo -n <your app id> `cat` | sha256sum | tr -d "[:space:]-" | xxd -r -p | base64 | cut -c1-11

• Replace the <keystore alias name> with your keystore alias name, ex: mykeystorename
• Replace the <keystore file with extension> with the full path to your keystore file, ex: /Users/username/Desktop/mykeystorefile.keystore
• Replace the <your app id> with your app id: com.mytest.app

If everything went well, next line Terminal will immediately prompt you to enter the keystore password, which will generate the accurate app hash key!

Yep simple as that! 😀

Now you might wonder how I shared the above screenshot so bravely without worrying about the security, oh well its just using the default Xamarin Android keystore generated by VS for Mac with its default settings and a fake app id! 😛

Troublesome? Get Utils installed!

Unless you got some missing utils in your mac developer machine, such as the following error: sha256sum: command not found, which indicates missing coreutils in your Mac. Therefore you need to fist install Homebrew if you don’t have already.

Install Homebrew: https://brew.sh/

Restart Terminal and run the below command!

brew install coreutils

Restart Terminal and re-run the has generation command! 🙂

Method 2: On Windows CMD Prompt

Now on Windows its going to be a little bit of more work specially most of the command parameters which are used in unix cannot be executed straight up in Windows Command Prompt.

So in hope of avoiding at least a little bit of pain I would recommend using the Visual Studio Command Prompt or the Android ADB Command Prompt in your Windows PC. Specially since the java keytool path should already be configured in the Path property there.

Step 1: Generate the hex string from keystore file

keytool -alias <keystore alias name> -exportcert -keystore "<keystore file with extension>" -storepass "<keystore password>" | xxd -p

Now the parameters that you need to replace are the same as we did on MacOS command, but as you can see keystore file path and password are provided within brackets or quotations. So make sure to add that detail.

If everything went well, it will return you the hex string from your keystore file!

Now that’s me trying out the default debug keystore file in Windows. If everything executes properly, it should return a super long hex string as shown above, actually even much longer than that lol, I just cropped it out 😛

Copy that hex string and keep it, we are gonna use it in the next step.

Step 2: Implement the Hash key generate code script

Next we’re going to port the Google Doc’s Android Java implementation of the Hash key generation execution to Xamarin Android C# code snippet, thanks to my few minutes of trail and error efforts 😛

	// move to the class global level
	using Android.Util;
	using Java.Security;
	using Java.Util;
	using System.Text;
	// move to the class global level
	private static string HASH_TYPE = "SHA-256";
	private static int NUM_HASHED_BYTES = 9;
	private static int NUM_BASE64_CHAR = 11;
	/// <summary>
	/// Generate App hash key using package
	/// name and keystore hex signature
	/// </summary>
	/// <param name="packageName"></param>
	/// <param name="keystoreHexSignature"></param>
	/// <returns></returns>
	public static string GetAppHashKey
	(String packageName, String keystoreHexSignature)
	{
	string appInfo = packageName + " " + keystoreHexSignature;
	try
	{
	MessageDigest messageDigest = MessageDigest.GetInstance(HASH_TYPE);
	messageDigest.Update(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(appInfo));
	byte[] hashSignature = messageDigest.Digest();
	hashSignature = Arrays.CopyOfRange (hashSignature, 0, NUM_HASHED_BYTES);
	string base64Hash = Android.Util.Base64.EncodeToString
	(hashSignature, Base64Flags.NoPadding | Base64Flags.NoWrap);
	base64Hash = base64Hash.Substring(0, NUM_BASE64_CHAR);
	return base64Hash;
	}
	catch (NoSuchAlgorithmException e)
	{
	return null;
	}
	}

view raw

AppHashKeyGenerator.cs

hosted with ❤ by GitHub

Simply copy that snippet into a Xamarin Android project with the specific imports mentioned at the top of the snippet. You could use this as a little helper extension method to generate the app hash key by passing in the app package name and keystore hash value that we generated in the step 1, as mentioned in the parameters.

That should work like a charm! 😀

Although keep in mind once you generate the app hash string, you should remove the keystore hex and package name hex from the code before you submit it to the app store. Google does not recommend those sensitive information inside the code as magic strings due to obvious security reasons.

Now the above code snippet can be used in either Visual Studio on Windows or Mac as long as you got the keystore hex string. 😉

TADAAA! 😀 That’s it!

You’re welcome!

Share the love! 😉 ❤