What this book covers
Chapter 1, Crafting the Page Layout, dives into the most commonly used layouts in .NET MAUI, highlighting common misconceptions and pitfalls to avoid. You’ll explore dynamic layouts that adapt based on platform, device, and orientation. This chapter also deepens your understanding of element measuring and arranging, while guiding you through creating a custom layout panel from scratch.
Chapter 2, Mastering the MVVM Design Pattern, shares best practices for working with the MVVM pattern. You’ll learn how to decouple the UI from the view model, inject dependencies, and manage communication between view models. It also covers techniques to reduce boilerplate code and prevent UI freezes by leveraging asynchronous programming patterns.
Chapter 3, Advanced XAML and UI Techniques, explores advanced strategies for building responsive and reusable UI components. This chapter covers attached properties, behaviors, and views, while offering guidance on supporting themes and incorporating animations such as Lottie. You’ll also learn how to create custom-drawn controls based on your own logic.
Chapter 4, Connecting to a Database and Implementing CRUD Operations, walks you through building apps that load data from both local and remote databases. You’ll also learn how to modify data across different screens while adhering to mobile UX best practices. Each recipe builds on the previous one, introducing you to the repository and unit of work patterns, showing their power in real-world scenarios.
Chapter 5, Authentication and Authorization, focuses on user authentication, role-based access control, session management, Google OAuth, and biometric authentication. The chapter is centered around a self-hosted ASP.NET Core service, giving you complete control over your app’s business logic.
Chapter 6, Real-Life Scenarios: AI, SignalR, and More, covers practical AI integration strategies – whether using cloud-based models, hosting them on your own server, or deploying them on end user devices. You’ll also tackle real-time updates with SignalR, chunked file uploads, push notifications, and handling online/offline data synchronization to ensure your app works seamlessly even without an internet connection.
Chapter 7, Understanding Platform-Specific APIs and Custom Handlers, covers ways to tailor your app’s behavior based on platform-specific requirements. This chapter explains conditional compilation with preprocessor directives, creating cross-platform APIs with platform-specific implementations, and customizing native controls through handlers.
Chapter 8, Optimizing Performance, focuses on techniques to boost your app’s performance. You’ll learn why certain approaches improve speed and how to measure their impact. The chapter also delves into performance and memory profiling, equipping you with the tools to fine-tune your app’s performance on your own.
