Using RESX files in PCL for Xamarin and Windows projects

11 Mar 2016 | Localization Xamarin
I've been working on a project which is targeted for Xamarin.Android, Xamarin.iOS and Windows 8.1 (non-Silverlight). They are all sharing the same PCL projects for ViewModels, Services etc. Hence, I thought this was an ideal place to chuck in application strings. Don't get me wrong, it still is! However, there are some things you need to know in order to get it to work nicely with the Windows 8.1 project.

Windows 8 introduced new RESW files, which structurally are similar to RESX files. However, instead of needing to have all sorts of helpers etc. to bind localized text strings and now dimensions etc. to properties of FrameworkElements, that is now done by convention. Which is really neat. However, this is of course only for Windows 8.
How this looks in practice is that your key for some resource could be something like: Welcome.Text and the value could be something like Hello, World!
In your XAML file you could then have something like <TextBlock x:Uid="Welcome" Text="Design Time Text" /> and then the Text property would automatically be set to the one in the RESW file. Neat!

Now all this RESW stuff is cool and all. However, if you are either too lazy to migrate to RESW or if you want to use RESX files because they work nicely with Xamarin projects then it is not all that nice in the Windows 8 world.

In Debug using the RESX approach, it switched automagically to the correct language. However, as many other posts around the Internet described, this was not the case on a device when having created a Store package. It would always default to the neutral or default language.

Several sources say this blog post is the solution to the problem in my case nothing actually happened. It describes how to use your own implementation of ResourceManager and having a break-point in the GetString method I saw the CultureInfo always was null. However, the Default one was actually correct. Nevertheless the incorrect language was taken from my RESX files when deploying a Store package.

After having spent way too much time on figuring this issue out I fell over this blog post, which points out a key to still be able to use RESX files in a Windows 8.1 project and Xamarin projects at the same time with it being shared in a PCL.

The steps are quite simple.


  1. In the PCL where you have your RESX file(s) add the following to the csproj file: <SupportedCultures></SupportedCultures> this should simply contain the language codes semi-colon separated like so: <SupportedCultures>en;da;de</SupportedCultures>
  2. In your Windows 8.1 project. Create a strings folder with each of the supported language codes as subfolders.
  3. Create a RESW file in each of those language code subfolders.
The result should look something like

That is it. Now your Windows 8.1 project should be able to pick up all the languages you have specified and you can get the correct strings from your RESX files.



Here is how I use it.

In my PCL I have a small helper for Windows 8.1 which looks like:

I have registered that helper in my App.xaml file like so:

Then I can use it like this in my Windows 8.1 app XAML pages and templates:


Given that Welcome is a key in the RESX files.


On iOS I create my views in C# code pretty much by hand. Hence I simply use the RESX files directly. So if we say my RESX file is called ApplicationStrings.resx then usage looks like:



On Android I use RESX localization plugin for MvvmCross, where Stefan Schoeb has a very nice description on how to use it. I don't use it for iOS since it is just easier to directly get the strings. Less code 😁

New MvvmCross plugin + new iOS view ports

21 Oct 2015 | Xamarin.iOS MvvmCross Xamarin
It has been a busy couple of weeks and the result of this is now available to all of you.

ALRadialMenu

Last week I released a new NuGet package called ALRadialMenu, which is a port from Swift to C# of Alex Littlejohn's ALRadialMenu. It is simply a menu which spawns N amounts of UIButton's in a circle around the point you want it to. It is highly configurable.


You can find the source code and instructions in the GitHub repository.

SGTabbedPager

I also released a new NuGet package called SGTabbedPager, which is mimicking a ViewPager and ViewPagerIndicator on iOS. This is a port from Swift to C# as well.


Source code and instructions are on GitHub

DeviceInfo MvvmCross plugin

This week I created a Device Information plugin for MvvmCross. I know there are some other plugins. However, not all of them covered exactly what I needed. The plan is to expand it with more device information, such as batter, storage, connectivity etc. Ideas are welcome and can be submitted as a GitHub issue on the repository.

This plugin can be found on NuGet too as Cheesebaron.MvxPlugins.DeviceInfo and targets Android, iOS and Windows 8 + Windows Phone 8.1 (universal). It should also work in the new Windows 10 UWP apps, although not tested.

Removing shadow from NavigationBar and TabBar on iOS

16 Oct 2015 | Xamarin.iOS
I am making an app where I don't want to display the shadow underneath the NavigationBar and the top gradient on a TabBar.

For some reason the Apple SDK does not provide a simple boolean Property where you can just disable it. A lot of solutions on StackOverflow requires you to set a background image and a shadow image to remove it entirely.

Digging through solutions a bit I found that these two ways seem to work pretty well.

So for the NavigationBar, what you do is traverse through all subviews to find the UIImageView which is the shadow and simple remove that from showing up. This is done as follows.


For the TabBar it is slightly different. It has a member variable, which is private, so you cannot get hold of it directly. However, using the SetValueForKey() method, which all NSObject's have, you can set that variable to true.

See the difference?


Getting rid of "No -tsa or -tsacert is provided" when signing APKs

09 Jun 2015 | Xamarin.Android
Since JDK 1.7u51 Oracle introduced some extra strictness to the jarsigner, which is fine. Although, a lot of you might have seen some warnings when Xamarin.Android signs your APK, something in the lines of:

Warning:
No -tsa or -tsacert is provided and this jar is not time stamped. Without a timestamp, users may not be able to validate this jar after the signer certificate's expiration date (2xxx-xx-xx) or after any future revocation date.
I am using a property group like this in my csproj file, which defines where my keystore is and which passwords it has, for convenience:

I could not find any options to add parameters to the jarsigner command, but I did notice, that the alias always came in the end of the jarsigner command in the output window. So my small workaround is to simply append the alias with -tsa http://timestamp.digicert.com, which removes the warning (yay!)
So now the property group looks like:


Although, I have recently put up APK files on the Play Store without this hack to remove the warnings and they were accepted just fine. So I guess... do whatever you want ;)

Enabling unknown sources on Phillips PUS7909 series Android smart TV

06 Jun 2015 | Android
I recently bought a TV, mainly to watch the upcoming Le Mans race, but also the occasional movie and such. To my surprise, though, the Play Store application only shows very few applications, and you cannot install own APK's on the TV and the Security Settings menu is hidden along with the Developer Settings menu.

So in order to get into those you need a little bit of terminal-fu and a Terminal application. The latter you can get from the Play Store, just grab "Terminal Emulator for Android", which should install without problems.

To get to the menu where you can enable Unknown Sources so your can install 3rd party apps write:


This will bring up the Security Settings menu, where you can enable Unknown Sources. This allowed me to install apps such as YouSee Film & TV and other apps, which are not available in the Play Store on this device.

To allow more applications being installed on the device, you can open the Developer Options and enable more applications from play store at the bottom. What it essentially does is to tell Play Store that the TV has a touch screen, which is what limits what is shown. To do so write the following in the terminal:

Many apps only work with touch screens, which is why this is disabled, because it makes it super cumbersome to navigate the application. Even with the air pointer thingie built into the remote, which is super hard to get to point properly. What I did though, was to plug in a USB mouse for those apps which are super hard to use.