Based on Visual Studio user experience, one would think running unit tests for Windows Store apps is not all that different from running standard .NET framework unit tests using MSTest testing framework. When you try running them on a build server, it turns out there are a lot of differences.
On most platforms MvvmLight includes a helper class to invoke commands from events. In WinRT it is suspiciously missing. Fortunately, since Windows (Phone) 8.1 you can find a replacement for it in the Behaviors SDK extension.
Windows Store apps store their settings in a registry hive file named settings.dat. Even after loading it into registry the values inside it are non-standard which makes them difficult to read and edit. The post dives into their serialization format and guides the reader through developing a PowerShell function for editing the values.
Navigation in Windows Store apps is strongly based on the browser model, i.e. the application is keeping a back stack of previously shown pages which will be traversed again when navigating back. but there are some cases in which you don't want the user to navigate back to a specific page in the history. There's no such built-in functionality available in MvvmCross, but it's really simple to add it with the right approach.
XAML has first class syntax support for binding to indexed properties, such as Dictionary. Real properties still have their advantages over indexed ones, such as full support for implementing INotifyPropertyChanged. For Dictionary properties this can only be done for all items in the collection at once. Unfortunately, in Windows Store applications this causes problems when there are bindings to keys that are not present in the new Dictionary.
On Wednesday I had my only session at the spring NT conference in Bled this year. I was speaking about the new stuff for developers in Windows 8.1 Update. After a short mention of the universal project, I focused on the changes available only to sideloaded enterprise applications.
Last Tuesday the local Microsoft DPE team organized a free event for developers thinking about taking part in the regional Windows 8.1 Developers Contest. It was planned as an effective course for developers not having previous experience with development of Windows Store apps. I presented two sessions at the event.
MvvmCross is a MVVM framework for XAML platforms, similar to Caliburn Micro and MvvmLight. Unlike its competition it very much focuses on portability and code reuse across all supported XAML platforms (WPF, Windows Phone and Windows Store), and the Xamarin platforms as well (Xamarin.iOS, Xamarin.Android and Xamarin.Mac). Therefore it has its own approach to creating converters, allowing them to be implemented in a portable class library and reused on all supported platforms.
Writing unit tests for code that needs to be run on the UI thread can be quite a challenge in WinRT. TestMethodAttribute supports asynchronous test methods but doesn't run them on UI thread. UITestMethodAttribute runs test methods on UI thread but doesn't support asynchronous methods. Still, I managed to make the test method asynchronous and run it on the UI thread.
Since I usually write my unit tests in NUnit, I got into the habit of using parameterized tests when testing methods for which I need to check the result for many different input values. Unfortunately using NUnit is not an option with Windows Store apps. Only MSTest is supported, providing data-driven unit tests for such cases.
I would recommend this book to anyone with no or minimal knowledge about Windows Store apps, who's interested in developing them using HTML5 and JavaScript, even if he isn't already proficient in them.
On Thursday the first day of NT conference 2014 took place in Ljubljana. I had 2 sessions on the client application development track. I opened up the track talking about what's new for Windows Store application development in Windows 8.1. In my next session I focused on development of occasionally connected applications for Windows Store.
Since Word introduced Office Open XML (docx) file format, it became much easier to programmatically generate documents from applications without requiring Word to be installed on the machine for Word Automation to work. Unfortunately Open XML SDK doesn't work with Windows Store applications. The only alternative available for Windows Store apps at the moment seems to be DocIO from Syncfusion.
One of the challenges of using MVVM pattern with different UI frameworks that always comes up is how to bind events that are not exposed as commands to the view model. Windows Store apps are no exception to that. In this blog post I'll try to give an overview of the available possibilities one can choose from based on individual requirements and personal preferences.
In the world of connected applications programmatic HTTP requests are more and more common. In Windows Store applications HttpClient class serves most purposes as long as communication is targeted at services or at least the results are processed programmatically and don't need to be shown directly to the user.
Recently I encountered strange and inconsistent behavior in exceptions being thrown by different file operations in WinRT.
Task-based asynchronous pattern has many advantages over other asynchronous patterns introduced in the past, most of them boiling down to the fact that it's really easy to get into and start using it. Like any other technology, it does have its pitfalls and there are many details to know about once you get into more advanced scenarios.
At NT conference 2013 I opened the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Developer Tales from the Tranches PreCon track with a session on Building Connected Apps. I addressed all aspects of network communications, focusing on available APIs but also spending some time on the expectations for mobile applications in respect to network usage.
On the final day of NT Conference 2013 I had my last session. This time I was speaking about my experiences with building LOB (line of business) applications for Windows Store.
Today our local Microsoft DPE team organized ReBuild, a one day recap of the recent Build conference which was taking place in Redmond a little over a month ago. I had the last session of the day and focused on Windows Store apps: what they were and how to develop them.
This weekend a worldwide hackathon for Windows is taking place in over 100 locations. Among them is Ljubljana where the event started with my 3 hour Windows Store app development workshop.
The 5th Bleeding Edge conference was taking place in Laško. For my session I decided to take a different approach to the development of Windows Store apps: instead of talking about the design or the available APIs in WinRT, I focused on architectural best practices when using C#, XAML and the MVVM pattern.
If you've tried accessing an OData feed from a Windows Store apps you've already come across WCF Data Services Tools for Windows Store Apps. It's a downloadable package which extends the Add Service Reference functionality in Visual Studio 2012 to support OData feeds. Without it OData feeds can't be added as services references to a Windows Store app project.
Tapping a textbox in a Windows Store app automatically show the virtual keyboard. If this keyboard would cover the tapped control, it scrolls the page just enough to make it completely visible. Most of the time this behavior works like a charm but there are times when the app would work even better if it could be modified.
Yesterday two local development user groups organized a common Visual Studio 2012 Community Launch event. I was one of the four MVPs speaking there. Each one of use prepared a talk on his favorite feature. My topic where Portable Class Libraries.
One of the important aspects of Windows Store application development is the application lifecycle. While at first it might seem a minor detail that can be taken care of late in the application development process, it can affect the application architecture quite profoundly. Therefore it's a good idea to address it soon enough to avoid unplanned refactoring when the application is almost complete.
The lifecycle of Metro style apps requires them to save their state when they are being suspended by the OS to prevent the potential loss of their state if they are restarted instead of resumed because they were inactive for two long.
My second talk at NT konferenca 2012 was all about helping you get started with developing Metro style application for Windows 8 in C#. I've already put the slides in my OneDrive.
File IO in .NET for Metro style apps (aka .NET Core) can be a challenge for seasoned .NET developers. The classes in Windows.Storage namespace are different from both System.IO.IsolatedStorage and System.IO and require some getting used to. On top of that even the remaining classes in System.IO are missing some of properties and methods. One such method is Stream.Close().
Since Metro applications are running in a sandboxed environment they only have limited file handling capabilities. The private storage area for each application is conceptually very similar to isolated storage, only with its own API. This still doesn't solve the problem of opening a file in a standard format (PDF for instance) with the associated application.
Probably the most interesting error I had to troubleshoot since I started developing my first Windows Metro application happened to me after doing some restructuring and cleaning up of the existing code base.
This year's Bleeding Edge conference was taking place this week in the beautiful surroundings of Gozd Martuljek. The second day was dedicated to community driven redelivery of Build. As the last session of the day I had a talk on the aspects of reusing existing .NET framework code in Metro applications for Windows 8.