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Creating HelloWorld Program in Xamarin.Android

By Nilanchala @nilan, On Sep 17, 2023 Xamarin 2.29K Views

This tutorial explains step by step approach to create and deploy a Xamarin.Android application. For the sake of simplicity our first ever Xamarin.Android application, will have very basic user interface.

1. Creating a Xamarin.Android Application

This example assumes you already have Xamarin.Android installed in your development system. If you are a windows user you can use Visual Studio 2010 Professional or MonoDev IDE for development.

Let us create a new Xamarin.Android solution. Xamarin.Android includes several project templates, including:

  1. Android Library Project – A reusable .NET library project for Android.
  2. Android Application – A basic starter project with a single activity.
  3. Android OpenGL Application – An OpenGL starter project.

We will use “Android Application template” for this example. Let’s create an application by doing the following:

Xamrin Android Application

2. Understanding Application Components

In the above section, we have just created a simple Xamarin.Android project. It automatically generates a project structure with different files and folders. The “HelloWorld” project includes three folders named Assets, Properties, and Resources.

  • Assets – Contains any type of file the application needs included in its package. Files included here are accessible at runtime via the Assets class.
  • Properties – Contains normal .NET assembly metadata.
  • Resources – Contains application resources such as strings and images, as well as declarative XML user interface definitions. These resources are accessible through the generated Resource class.

Xamrin Android Application Example
The project template also created a class called HelloWorld in the file MainActivity.cs. An Activity is a class that models a destination where a user can perform some action while using an app, typically via a user interface.

3. Creating HelloWorld program

In this example we will create a simple screen with a TextView and a Button. Clicking the button will show a toast message to user.

Main.axml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent"
    android:background="#ffe7e5e5">
    <TextView
        android:text="HelloWorld Example in Xamrin"
        android:textAppearance="?android:attr/textAppearanceLarge"
        android:layout_width="match_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:id="@+id/textView1"
        android:gravity="center_horizontal"
        android:layout_margin="10dp"
        android:textColor="#ff130c0c" />
    <Button
        android:id="@+id/myButton"
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:text="@string/hello"
        android:capitalize="characters"
        android:layout_margin="10dp"
        android:background="#ff0f37f5"
        android:textColor="#ffffffff"
        android:textSize="18dp"
        android:textStyle="bold"
        android:typeface="sans" />
</LinearLayout>

MainActivity.cs

using System;
using Android.App;
using Android.Content;
using Android.Runtime;
using Android.Views;
using Android.Widget;
using Android.OS;

namespace HelloWorld
{
	[Activity (Label = "HelloWorld!", MainLauncher = true)]
	public class MainActivity : Activity
	{
		protected override void OnCreate (Bundle bundle)
		{
			base.OnCreate (bundle);

			// Set your view layout layout resource file
			SetContentView (Resource.Layout.Main);

			// Initilize button from the layout resource
			Button button = FindViewById<Button> (Resource.Id.myButton);

			// and attach an event to it
			button.Click += delegate {
				//display toast message
				Toast.MakeText (Application, "Button Clicked!", ToastLength.Short).Show ();
			};
		}
	}
}

4. Output

Here is a screenshot that shows the application running in Samsung S4.

HelloWorld program in Xamarin

nilan avtar

Nilanchala

I'm a blogger, educator and a full stack developer. Mainly focused on Java, Spring and Micro-service architecture. I love to learn, code, make and break things.