Simple mvvmcross monotouch with xib support (and monomac)

Question

I tried the simpledroid with INotifyPropertyChanged and ICommand successfully. I want to do the same with monotouch and xib designer,but without TouchDialog. Is there a way to implement without inheriting from mvx class as in monodroid? Is it possible to do the same with MonoMac without Dialog as Portable Library in MonoMac or XaMac in supported now?

Answer 1

I understand what is your goal.

I think you want to start learning MvvmCross for Monotouch with a basic application example as you probably did with SimpleDroid. I tried to do the same without success.

Why ? Because SimpleDialogTouch is an "Advanced" example in my opinion. When you learn Monotouch, you use xib to design your view. But the sample tells you to learn a new tool "Monotouch Dialog" which is a way to display controls programmatically.

You get those errors because the sample implements the ViewModel only for Dialog and not for xib or classic binding.

Finally, you will have to dig into MvvmCross to build your own SimpleTouch implementation. The problem is that you don't have a lot of documentation, but Stuart is the best supporter for a beginner or you can switch to advanced Mvx features if you don't need to understand the underground of MvvmCross. There are a lot of samples, tutorials and posts to tweak Mvx.

Hope that helps.

Answer 2

Is there a way to implement without inheriting from mvx class as in monodroid?

I don't believe this is supported in the current source.

There is an effort underway to separate out the databinding code in MvvmCross so it can be used more easily with other frameworks - e.g. we might try porting MvvmLight across too. This is where my effort is currently focused.

If you need this now, then I think you could fairly easily create this simple binding yourself if you wanted to - but you'd have to take a look at what the SimpleDialog version does - it's not too big a code to copy across to the XIB version - https://github.com/slodge/MvvmCross/blob/vnext/Cirrious/Cirrious.MvvmCross.Dialog.Touch/Simple/MvxSimpleTouchDialogViewController.cs

But... why not just implement a proper portable MvxViewModel instead?

Is it possible to do the same with MonoMac without Dialog as Portable Library in MonoMac or XaMac in supported now?

Portable libraries are not supported in any release from Xamarin yet - there is an unofficial installer that Jeff very kindly provided - but it's not a release...

For MvvmCross MonoMac/XaMac support, there is one non-PCL version from @deapsquatter around, but I don't believe this has data-binding yet.

I will be working on a PCL and data-binding release for MonoMac or XaMac - but it's on a spare time basis - no-one's come forward with a customer project to fund that work yet. If you or anyone wants to assist with this port, then you are very welcome... but it will be quite technical work - there are changes I intend to make 'under the covers' - so the easiest place for others to help will probably be in later work - adding more views, more bindings, doing QA, making samples, etc.

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Note: "Simple" bindings are not the future for MvvmCross and may get dropped from a future release. However, this will only happen after I've separated out the Binding code so that it can be used with other libraries - the first of which will probably be a simple binding example.

I personally don't see much difference or advantage in using these so-called Simple bindings... but maybe I'm missing something...