BlackBerry Dynamics Xamarin Overview

Post by: David Reynolds, Principal Software Engineer at BlackBerry

For C# developers, the advent of the BlackBerry Dynamics Xamarin SDKs represents an exciting opportunity to develop your BlackBerry Dynamics IOS and Android apps using familiar tools and language.

Currently we provide Xamarin SDKs incorporating C# bindings for the latest released BlackBerry Dynamics SDKs for iOS and Android. Thus, the Xamarin SDKs will incorporate the latest functionality and improvements. Each SDK package includes a suite of sample apps covering different areas of functionality.

You can develop BlackBerry Dynamics apps on Visual Studio with the Xamarin plugin, or Xamarin Studio, on either Windows or Mac (see release notes for supported versions and further details). Development of iOS projects on a Windows machine with a Mac agent is possible although a workaround is currently required for FIPS module linking:

Place a copy of the “ld” script in a known location on the Mac host and change the -B argument from ${ProjectDir} in the “iOS Build” mtouch argument list to point to the absolute path of the folder containing the “ld” file on the Mac.

It is also possible to use the SDKs with Xamarin.Forms. Have a look at this post for an example of how this may be done.

If you’re stuck, a good starting point might be to take one of the sample app projects as either a basis for development or as a guide. Getting started guides are available from the community portal for both iOS and  Android. Other reference materials are available from the resources section of the developer portal. Training materials from our recent Dev Summit are currently available here.

It’s also possible that any questions may already have been answered in the community forums and, if not, you can always post your question.

Going forward, in addition to the BlackBerry Dynamics Xamarin IOS and Android SDKs, we will be introducing a Xamarin.Forms based Unified API SDK which will provide a common basis for iOS and Android development with a minimum of platform specific code. This is planned for early 2018.