November Meetup - 2016 - Sitecore User Group Sri Lanka

Its time for another Sitecore Meetup in Sri Lanka. "November Meetup - 2016"

This time, we are going to focus more on the basics of .NET development and UI/UX development. Though these topics are not directly related with Sitecore, those are great knowledge to have for any Sitecore developer.

Our presenters for this meetup is Pasan Samarakoon and Lakshman Palitha.

In the first session, Pasan will talk about new ASP.NET Core framework. Pasan is a Microsoft Certifield Developer with over 5 years of .NET development experience and currently works as a Senior Software Engineer (Sitecore) at Codehouse Ltd, one of the Sitecore Partners in Sri Lanka.

In the second session, Lakshman will talk about UI and UX development. Lakshman is a web developer with over 6 years of web design and development experience. He currently works as a Senior UI Developer at Codehouse Ltd.


Meetup Link : https://www.meetup.com/sugsrilanka/events/235421992/
Facebook Event : https://www.facebook.com/events/1690177041298296/

Sitecore Latest Release - Sitecore 8.2 - Sitecore User Group Sri Lanka

For the September Meetup of Sitecore User Group Sri Lanka (SUGSL), I did a presentation about the Sitecore latest release, which is Sitecore 8.2

This release was highly anticipated and includes lot of major improvements to existing tools and progrmming methodologies used as well as newly added tools.

You can find the Slides of the presentation below.

Look into Sitecore 8.2 - September Meetup 2016 - Sitecore User Group Sri Lanka from chaturanga ranatunga


Happy Sitecore!!

My First Experience with Sitecore Express Migration Tool with Sitecore 8.2

With the release of Sitecore 8.2 version, a new tool was also release. It is "Sitecore Express Migration Tool". As the name suggests, it facilitates upgrade of Sitecore versions.

Since this is new, I thought of give it a go.. with very basic installations..


Initial Websites
Source : Sitecore 7.2 rev. 151021 with Launch Sitecore Installe
Target: Sitecore 8.2 rev. 160729

Sitecore Express Migration Download and Documentation
https://dev.sitecore.net/Downloads/Express_Migration_Tool/10/Express_Migration_Tool_10_Initial_Release.aspx

Steps

Step 1: Specifying input parameters




Step 2 : Selecting which content to be migrated

Step 3 : Analyzing

Step 4 : Comparison results and Provide which items/files should be migrated

Step 5 : Migration & Summary

Nothing fancy.. just a walk-through of the steps off course...

Learning Resources - Sitecore Mobile SDK for Xamarin

Recently I was searching for more learning materials on Sitecore Mobile SDK for Xamarin and was able to found lot of information which I have not come across earlier..

So, I thought I will share those links with you, in case someone find it useful..

Mobile SDK Source and Nuget packages

Sitecore Mobile SDK for Xamarin - Xamarin Website
https://components.xamarin.com/gettingstarted/sitecore.mobile.sdk - Xamarin Website

https://github.com/Sitecore/sitecore-xamarin-pcl-sdk - Sitecore

dev.sitecore.net

https://dev.sitecore.net/Downloads/Sitecore_Mobile_SDK_for_Xamarin/1_0/Sitecore_Mobile_SDK_10_for_Xamarin.aspx

doc.sitecore.net

https://doc.sitecore.net/mobile_sdk_for_xamarin/managing_content_with_the_mobile_sdk

Advance Blog series by Sitecore MVP Goran

https://visionsincode.wordpress.com/2016/04/13/build-an-app-with-xamarin-forms-using-sitecore-mobile-sdk-for-xamarin-getting-started/

https://visionsincode.wordpress.com/2016/05/07/build-an-app-with-xamarin-forms-using-sitecore-mobile-sdk-for-xamarin-website-and-navigation-part-2/

https://visionsincode.wordpress.com/2016/06/22/build-an-app-with-xamarin-forms-using-sitecore-mobile-sdk-for-xamarin-putting-it-all-together/

Blogs by Sitecore MVP Chaturanga (Me - SitecoreFootstep :-D )

https://sitecorefootsteps.blogspot.com/2016/08/how-to-structure-your-xamarin-solution.html

https://sitecorefootsteps.blogspot.com/2016/06/how-to-setup-and-test-whitelabel-ios.html

https://sitecorefootsteps.blogspot.com/2016/06/issue-while-trying-to-add-sitecore.html

SUGCON-EUROPE 2016 by Sitecore Footsteps Eye

I recently participated for Sitecore User Group Conference Europe 2016 which was held in Copenhagen, Denmark. 

It was a great event with lot of knolwedge shared and great Sitecore community participation.

I traveled from Colombo, Sri Lanka and reach Copenhagen on Saturday (23rd April).

On Sunday, met lot of Sitecore Commuinty experts/MVPs/friends and had a boat ride to see Copenhagen.

Event started Monday (25th April) with lot of Sitecore community participating not only from the Europe, but globally.

Unicorn by Kam Figy

Sitecore MVP Awards

Met an Old Friend - Jon Kasimir from IFS

Sitecore MVP Awards Ceramony

Sitecore Marketing Summit - Copenhagen

Awards for SUGCON-EU Organisers by Pieter

Sitecore Technology MVP 2016 Award

All the Presents & Memories from SUGCON-EU 2016

The End !

How to Structure Your Xamarin Solution by Adhering to Common .NET Practices - Colombo Xamarin Meetup Presentation

Last month (July 2016) I presented at the Colombo Xamarin Meetup in Sri Lanka, which was the 3rd meetup of the group.

My topic for the meetup presentation was "How to Structure Your Xamarin Solution by Adhering to Common .NET Practices", where we discussed how to use Repository Pattern, Dependency Injection and How to called third party services from apps.

I took the approach of initially having a very simple application with all the code in the code behind file. Then, I showed how step by step you can convert this simple application to use Repository Patter and also apply Dependency Injection (using Autofac DI Container) to minimize the tight coupling of code layers.

Also, we discussed drawbacks of Xamarin Forms default DependencyService approach to implemented platform specific code and how we can use Depencency Injection container (using Autofac) to achieve same functinoality with minimun coupling.

Finally we discussed how we can call third party service API from Xamarin Forms application by taking Sitecore Mobile SDK for Xamarin.

Following are the slide which was used for the presentation

How to Structure Your Xamarin Solution by Adhering to Common .NET Practices - Xamarin Meetup Presentation from chaturanga ranatunga

You can find the code that I used for the presentation by following GitHub link

https://github.com/chaturangar/xamarin-footsteps/tree/master/organize-solution

Happy Xamarin! :-)

Xamarin.Forms InitializeContext Does Not Exists In The Current Context Error Due to Title Property in ContentPage tag

I am new to Xamarin.. As a first app with Xamarin I started to develop an cross-platform mobile application to one of my friends project.
After creating a new Xamarin Forms project in Visual Studio and started to add new pages by looking at examples in Xamarin developer website.

But, after some time, I started to receive an issue in my Visual Studio project. The error was, it starts to give "The name 'initializeContext' does not exists in the current context" error.. it comes suddenly and stays..

I tried clean and rebuild the VS project. Also, remove Xamarin.Forms NuGet package folder and restored it. But, anything didn't solve my issue.


But, After looking into xaml pages I remember that I added "Title" property to "ContentPage" nodes..

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<ContentPage xmlns="http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms"             xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml"             x:Class="MyFirst.Mobile.App.Pages.HomePage"             Title="Home">

I just tried to remove that property and that is.. Everything started to work again...


Even thought I can see this "Title" property in Xamarin Developer website examples, it sometimes started to return some unexpected results...


So, I hope if this helps someone who faces this same issue in future...

Happy Xamaring... :-)