Xamarin Forms + Parse: PCL vs Shared Asset Project

Question

I been set the mission to look at Xamarin and its cross plaform / code resuse ability, I come from a iOS/Android background.

I want to aim for the holy grail of one universal front end (basic) and one reusable service layer.

I created my first project as a Xamarin Forms PLC, hit the issue it can not support compiler directives, which seem to be something your going to need. Also I was unable to add Parse package to the PLC. You need to reference it per platform / write code per platform?

I have now created Shared Asset Project, the default setup (new project). This does not allow me to add parse to the shared layer. Some of the examples I see add a new project called service, what type of project is this?

So, my question is, forgetting how many members are in a dev team, which one (PCL, SAP) lets me have a universal backend (parse).

Answer 1

I found a Github sample project that could help you. It can be found here: Sample Parse Project The link to the xamarin component can be found here: Parse component This Xamarin Component should be able to be added into your project and it should get you started immediately. Also when you add the component to you project you should be able to view sample projects that come along with it.

I would start with the sample project and see what I can do with it, but it should become a lot easier by just adding the Parse component in. This would make it so you could probably use either type of project with some Dependency Injection.