Working with Portable Class Libraries

A Portable Class Library (PCL) is a C# library project that can be supported on multiple platforms, including iOS, Android, Windows, Windows Store apps, Windows Phone, Silverlight, and Xbox 360. PCLs have been an effort by Microsoft to simplify development across different versions of the .NET framework. Xamarin has also added support for iOS and Android for PCLs. Many popular cross-platform frameworks and open source libraries are starting to develop PCL versions such as Json.NET and MVVMCross.

Using PCLs in Xamarin

Let's create our first portable class library:

  1. Open Xamarin Studio and start a new solution.
  2. Select a new Portable Library project under the general C# section.
  3. Name the project ProductSearch.Core ...

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