Value converters

Value converters form an important concept in data binding because they allow you to customize the appearance of a data property at the time of binding. If you have done any Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) or Windows app development, you will probably be familiar with how value converters work. Xamarin.Forms provides an almost identical value converter interface as part of its API.

One of the biggest benefits of a value converter is that it prevents you from having to add a bunch of getter properties to your data model to adjust how things are displayed. For example, imagine you have a status property on your model, and you want to change the font color of the status when it is displayed based on its value. You could add a getter property to your model that returns a color based on the current value of the status property. This approach works, but it clutters the model and also potentially leaks platform-specific and UI logic into the model, which should typically...