Windows Phone 7.5 Data Cookbook: Over 30 recipes for storing, managing, and manipulating data in Windows Phone 7.5 Mango applications.

Ramesh Thalli

€18.99 per month

4.5 (6 Ratings)

Paperback Oct 2011 224 pages 1st Edition

Ramesh Thalli

€18.99 per month

4.5 (6 Ratings)

Paperback Oct 2011 224 pages 1st Edition

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Key benefits

Simple data binding recipes to advanced recipes for building scalable applications
Techniques for managing application data in Windows Phone mango apps
On-device data storage, cloud storage and API interaction.

Description

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango contains support for apps written in Silverlight or XNA. These apps can store data on the device, and also load and manipulate data from "the cloud" and other web services.This Windows Phone 7.5 Data Cookbook has a range of recipes to help you apply data handling concepts. You will be able to apply the knowledge gained from these recipes to build your own apps effectively. This Windows Phone 7.5 Data Cookbook starts with data binding concepts at the UI layer and then shows different ways of saving data locally and externally in databases. The book ends with a look at the popular MVVM software design pattern. The recipes contained in this book will make you an expert in the areas of data access and storage.

Who is this book for?

This book is for developers who want to build data-driven apps, or a line of business applications using the Windows Phone platform. It is also useful for developers on other mobile platforms looking to convert their apps to Windows Phone 7.5 Mango. Basic understanding of C#, XAML and Silverlight is required.

What you will learn

Create data binding to user interface elements with any data source
Create and save user settings to local isolated storage for later consumption.
Explore different on device database options such as commercial Perst, open source SQLite and Microsoft’s SQL CE.
Create and consume simple web services and understand LINQ features.
Scale the applications and work with WCF web services.
Understand REST and call different social media services like Twitter and RSS Feeds.
Create and understand MVVM model.

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Tamer Maher Dec 28, 2011

I `ve recently read "Windows Phone 7.5 Data Cookbook" . The book covers different database related alternatives in a chapter to chapter basis. You can read what you want without having to read the book from cover to cover. Chapters discuss different topics without being dependent on each other's.The book mainly targets experienced Windows Phone developers. The book aims at boosting your mobile database development skills. If you are not familiar with programming C#.net, Silverlight and other necessary development skills , then, you have to check some extra books too for the basics. But if you have been writing some Windows Phone applications and had some hard times with the database stuff, then you are in the right place.The book uses the latest updates in Windows Phone 7.1 SDK that enable developers write applications for the latest version Windows Phone 7.5The book discusses new stuff like Twitter , Atom and RSS, and mobile specific database connections using JSON, also the conventional powerful SQLite. and SQLCE . LINQ to SQL and ADO.net.There are some examples using REST and WCF and the new Model View View Model (MVVM ).The book uses a simple coding style, straight and to the point, without confusing the reader with complex code that doesn't add a value. After having hands on every topic separately, at the end of each chapter, you have a sum-up sample app where you combine all the knowledge you gained in the chapter in one single app to see how things fit together in the big picture.The book also uses examples that can be implemented in the real world, so you learn fast, improve your skills, and you don't have to reinvent the wheel.Although the book is great in discussing the different data alternatives, it should have made a comparison between the different alternatives and discussing pros and cons of each using different case studies showing when to use each alternative rather than another.Overall: that is a really good book.

Amazon Verified review

Steve G Dec 29, 2011

Having written a couple of WP7 applications I was looking for a book that was small, consist, and could take my applications to a whole new data centric level, and this is definitely what I found with Windows phone 7.5 Data Cookbook. I was also after a good reference guide. Don't let the 224 pages deceive you, each recipe in a chapter builds on the previous and each one provides a great example of what it's trying to teach you without getting too bogged down in "boiler plate code".As the synopsis says, I would highly recommend that the reader has some basic knowledge of c# and Silverlight before picking up this book as the book wastes very little time in explaining how to get up and running other than providing links to the required software download.At the end of each recipe the book clearly explains how each application works and also provides web links to msdn and other sites for additional learning. I thought this was a great idea as there is little point republishing what is already widely available on the internet and allows the reader to go off and develop their understand further if they so wish.One of the biggest things I liked about this book is the fact the author doesn't feel compelled to stick with just writing about windows Phone and gives the reader an understanding of numerous other technologies, including non-Microsoft products. For example Chapter 5 walks the reader through various different databases that can run on the phone from Microsoft examples to open source examples. Chapter 8 is dedicated to the MVVM pattern and the author gives the reader a good understanding of the MVVM Light framework and how to use it on the Windows Phone. Several chapters also make use of Linq and Entity framework, but they walk the reader through these subjects in a clear way that even if you haven't used the technologies before you will have a good understanding of what is going on.The book starts off with a great first chapter on data binding which is probably one of the single most important concepts of Silverlight/WP7 applications. The second chapter then dives into the various methods for storing user/application settings in the isolated storage. Chapters 3 to 7 include various different methods for pulling data down to the phone and querying it locally, from using XML files on remote servers to using OData and RESTful interfaces to WCF services and retrieval from SQL CE and SQL Lite databases. And finally Chapter 8 provides a brilliant walk through of using the MVVM pattern and then how existing open source frameworks such as MVVM Light can make the process quicker to develop.As each chapter covers a different subject area you can almost jump into a chapter and start reading and developing the examples from it. There is one exception to this and the author makes clever use of the Visual Studio templates to prevent the user having to constantly go back and develop the same piece of code over and over again. Having written the chapters with this approach, I can now easily reference parts of the book whilst writing my own applications.I would highly recommend this book to anyone starting out writing any Windows Phone application which is data centric. Read this book, it will not take very long, before writing any code!!

Amazon Verified review

ArchieCoder Dec 29, 2011

The Windows Phone 7.5 Data Cookbook covers 99% ways to deal with data with Windows Phone programming. The book does not lose time about C# programming. It goes directly about using data on a Windows Phone.For a beginner, the book can be easily read from start to the end, because the complexity increases gradually. For an intermediate or an expert, you can just pick the topic that you are interested; this is the best thing on a "recipe" style book.Some people might say that 224 pages are not enough to go deep on all technologies, but I can't say it is not a problem because the book contains a lot of website links if you want to go further on a specific topic.The author succeeded to describe complex technology like incorporating SQL database in Windows Phone applications with the help of step-by-step images.From Isolated Storage to Windows Communication Framework, the book contains a lot of recipes that you can get new ideas for your next Windows Phone application!This book is the perfect reference guide for topics related with data.

Amazon Verified review

P. Pedireddi Dec 30, 2011

I just bought this book. The book is written in such a way that developers with any experience level can easily grasp the contents. The chapters have been formatted very well. The example code provided is very helpful. This has lot of information. For this price of $40, it is definitely worth owning this book.

Amazon Verified review

Tim Dams Dec 09, 2011

The basic premises of the book is the same as the other Packt `Cookbooks': each chapter consists of several step-by-step tutorials (dubbed "recipes") , each time resulting in a mini-program with full functionality.The main application that is rebuilt each time is a simple task manager. Each chapter 3 or more recipes are shown, usually (re)building the main task application. After each chapter and recipe a short explanation and reference to online sources is given .The book is aimed at developers who have little to no WP7 experience, however a solid Silverlight understanding is a must (for any WP7 developer that is) to get the most from this book. The 8 chapters are logically ordered, each time increasing in complexity. The first 3 chapters (databinding, isolatedstorage and XML) explain topics of which an abundant amount of online tutorials exist. They didn't really add much additional value for people already familiar with the basics of WP7. Though it should be pointed out that even the first recipes always did something `cool' or new in addition to the core topic: most tutorials stop once the basic idea is explained. In chapter 2, for example, an image file is read and subsequently the image is then used as a background image for the app. It's a small addition, but it lifts this (and other) recipe to a new, more usable, real-world example instead of a basic tutorial.Chapter 4 and further on the other hand is where the fun stuff starts: OData, WCF, REST services, on-device databases (SQL Lite, SQL CE) and even a MVVM-quicky all pass along.Though the book covers a lot of stuff, it only counts a meager 207 pages: compared to Gill Cleeren's Silverlight 4 Data Services Cookbook, the biggest `loss' of pages is due to the lack of additional information being given. Basically each recipes can be followed but once you want to find out why this or that step actually works the book can't help anymore. It's also a shame that only the first few pages of code have the most important parts highlighted in bold fonts. By highlighting this code, it easy to quickly see in a big pile of XAML what the essential part is (even more once the boiler-plate code starts becoming repetitive). For some reason, the author stopped doing that after chapter 1.To conclude; the concept of independent recipes makes it ideal to pick any chapter (or recipe) and start building stuff, without any dependencies on previous chapters or recipes. The downside however is that this also results in lots of identical steps that need to be taken each recipe. For me, this book is ideal in a classroom environment: students can be given a weekly recipe to solve and expand without the need of having made previous recipes.If the idea of this cookbook is to whet one's appetite of what can be done with the new 7.5 Mango Phone, it certainly succeeds . If on the other hand you expect in-depth explanation of one or more related topics, skip this one.You can find a more in-depth, per chapter review of this book here: [...]

Amazon Verified review

Windows Phone 7.5 Data Cookbook: Over 30 recipes for storing, managing, and manipulating data in Windows Phone 7.5 Mango applications.

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