t0m1sacat/monotouch.alalertbanner-1

Xamarin.iOS bindings for the ALAlertBanner library

ALALertBanner iOS Binding

This is a Xamarin iOS binding for the ALAlertBanner native library.

Everyday usage

Basic code to create a basic alert banner:

using MonoTouch.ALAlertBanner;

var banner = ALAlertBanner.ALAlertBanner.AlertBannerForView(...);
banner.Show();

Native code source

Use the xamarin branch of this fork of ALAlertBanner from GitHub.

Updating the binding: no interface changes

When the ALAlertBanner library is updated but there are no changes to its public header files (in other words only the implementation code has changed), then you just need to rebuild and update the static library file included in this binding project.

Go to your working copy of the native ALAlertBanner git repository and find the directory containing Makefile. Run make clean && make all. This must be done on a Mac OS X machine with the Xcode command line tools install. See the “Requirements” and “Creating a static library” sections of the Binding Objective-C Walkthrough document.

The make command will create a new libALAlertBannerSDK.a file in the current directory. It’s a “fat binary” static library containing native code for both Intel (iOS Simulator) and ARM (iOS device) platforms. Copy this file to the MonoTouch.ALAlertBanner project directory.

Updating the binding: interface changes

When there are changes to the public header files of the ALAlertBanner library, additional steps are needed to update the generated C# code in the bindings project. These steps are based on the Binding Objective-C Walkthrough document.

“Public header files” refers to the following two files: ALAlertBanner.h and ALAlertBannerManager.h.

1. Update libALAlertBannerSDK.a according to the instructions in the previous section
2. Install Objective Sharpie if you have not already (see the Requirements section of the walkthrough)
3. Run Objective Sharpie
   • Select iOS 7.0 as the Target SDK
   • Tap the [+] button under Select Header Files and choose the following two files: ALAlertBanner.h and ALAlertBannerManager.h
   • Enter MonoTouch.ALAlertBanner for the C# Namespace
   • Tap the Generate button
   • Choose a location to save the generated file. Either overwrite ApiDefinition.cs in this bindings project, or save to a temporary location and use a diff tool to merge the changes
4. Clean up the generated code: see below
5. Build and test using the BindingsTest project, and commit changes

Cleaning up generated code

Due to limitations of the tool, the code generated by Objective Sharpie needs some manual cleanup before it’s usable. That is why codegen is a manual step done occasionally and the generated code files are kept in source control.

Use the existing ApiDefinition.cs file as a guide, and the Binding Objective-C Walkthrough for instructions on basic cleanup tasks.

Ensure that the following is done:

• Move enum declarations to StructsAndEnums.cs, cleaning up the bad syntax generated by the tool
• Correct using statements (e.g. MonoTouch.ObjCRuntime, MonoTouch.Foundation, and MonoTouch.UIKit) are required
• Comment out the overload of AlertBannerForView that takes a Delegate object (or figure out how to make it compile)
• Remove Verify attributes. We are currently keeping array properties declared as NSObject []