Mono

Using C# to Develop for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad

Brian Long Consultancy & Training Services Ltd.
February 2012

Accompanying source files available through this download link

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Technical Resources

The MonoTouch documentation is at http://docs.xamarin.com/ios, with the API Reference at http://docs.xamarin.com/ios/api.

Tutorials (C# biased) can be found at http://docs.xamarin.com/ios/getting_started, Sample applications are at http://docs.xamarin.com/ios/samples and other articles at http://monotouch.info.

The iOS Reference Library is at http://developer.apple.com/library/ios.

Apple's Human Interface Guidelines tell you all about what is and what is not acceptable in an iOS application.

The only current book on MonoTouch with Xcode 4 is iOS Development using MonoTouch Cookbook by Dimitris Tavlikos. I haven't read the book so can't comment on it, but it has being up-to-date on its side:

 

There are several books available that came out in the timeframe of Xcode 3.x and earlier versions of MonoTouch. The principles in the books will still be sound, but some of the practicalities may have changed with the recent software changes.

 

 

 

SQLite SQL syntax is documented at http://www.sqlite.org/lang.html.

Conclusion

This article has shown how Mono and MonoTouch facilitate utilization of existing C# .NET programming knowledge to start building applications for iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad in a very capable manner. The MonoTouch SDK provides a convenient means of starting to write iPhone apps without having to learn an entirely new programming language.

Of course, an understanding of CocoaTouch (or at least CocoaTouch.Net) needs to be built up in order to do the job well, but working with a language you are familiar with helps ease the transition to a new UI framework.

Business logic can potentially be reused in applications running on iOS if partitioned sensibly, but clearly an entirely different UI needs to be developed for this type of application.

Comments

If you wish to make any comments on this article, your best options are to comment on the blog post that announced it, use the Contact Me form or email me at .

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About the author

Brian Long has spent the last 1.6 decades as a trainer, trouble-shooter and mentor focusing on the Delphi, C# and C++ languages, and the Win32, .NET and Mono platforms, recently adding iOS and Android onto the list. In his spare time, when not exploring the Chiltern Hills on his mountain-bike or pounding the pavement in his running shoes, Brian has been re-discovering and re-enjoying the idiosyncrasies and peccadilloes of Unix-based operating systems. Besides writing a Pascal problem-solving book in the mid-90s he has contributed chapters to several books, written countless magazine articles, spoken at many international developer conferences and acted as occasional Technical Editor for Sybex. Brian has a number of online articles that can be found at http://blong.com and a blog at http://blog.blong.com.

© 2012 Brian Long Consulting and Training Services Ltd. All Rights Reserved.

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