Creating a Prism.DryIoc.Forms application from scratch

I must have created my last Prism.DryIoc.Forms application using a project template but this time created a standard Xamarin.Forms application and then realised I wanted/meant to use DryIoc.

So here’s the steps to turn my “standard” Xamarin.Forms application into a Prism.DryIoc.Forms application.

  • Add the Prism.DryIoc.Forms nuget package to your application
  • Delete the MainPage.xaml files generated by Xamarin.Forms
  • Change the App.xaml to use PrismApplication i.e. 
    <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<prism:PrismApplication 
   xmlns="http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms"
   xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml"
   xmlns:prism="clr-namespace:Prism.DryIoc;assembly=Prism.DryIoc.Forms"
   x:Class="MyDemo.App">
    <Application.Resources>

    </Application.Resources>
</prism:PrismApplication>
  • Change the App.xaml.cs to derive from PrismApplication, for example 
    public partial class App : PrismApplication
  • Remove/replace the App constructor with the following 
    public App() :
   this(null) { }

public App(IPlatformInitializer initializer) :
   base(initializer) { }
  • Now override the OnInitialized method and put the IntitializeComponent call within this, i.e. 
    protected override async void OnInitialized()
{
   InitializeComponent();
}
  • Add folders to the solution named ViewModels and Views
  • Within the Views folder add a MainPage.xaml Xamarin.Forms ContentPage (or page type as required)
  • To register our MainPage and the NavigationPage go back to the App.xaml.cs and add the following method 
    protected override void RegisterTypes(IContainerRegistry containerRegistry)
{
   containerRegistry.RegisterForNavigation<NavigationPage>();
   containerRegistry.RegisterForNavigation<MainPage>();
}
  • Finally, in the App.xaml.cs within the OnIntialized method we’ll navigate to the new page. As the NavigateAsync returns a Task, we can await it so we’ll add async to the OnInitialized method – here’s what that will look like 
    protected override async void OnInitialized()
{
   InitializeComponent();

   await NavigationService.NavigateAsync("NavigationPage/MainPage");
}

Now place any further page’s within the Views folder and add to the RegisterTypes method (if required) and add any view models to the ViewModels folder deriving from BindableBase (if you want to use the Prism MVVM base class).