Forum› Xamarin.Forms
XAML Intellisense?
PaulRamsperger
USMember, University ✭
USMember, University ✭
It appears there is no intellisense when editing a Xamarin.Forms XAML file or did something go wrong with my install?
If there is none, is there an XSD that could be used when editing the file in the XML Text editor?
1
Best Answer
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TheRealJasonSmith
USXamarin Team Xamurai
I suspect we will need help from MS to make it happen. Sorry
The way their tooling works just isn't really compatible with the PCL framework.5
Answers
I'm having the exact same issue. There is no intellisense at all when trying to create a Xamarin.Form. Should there be designer support for this as well as selecting "View Designer" does not do anything.
I too am having this issue -- the designer does not work and there is no Intellisense. Note: I am using Visual Studio 2013 Update 2
Are you using ReSharper? There's currently a bug in ReSharper's version of IntelliSense that causes this. Note that you can disable ReSharper's IntelliSense without disabling all of it and without losing smart completion elsewhere.
There is no designer, this option will just have Visual Studio trying to open the .xaml file with its own WPF/WP/WinRT designer which won't work.
Any thoughts on adding support for the designer? It would make a HUGE value add as it would allow more designers to work on the UI for mobile apps.
I am using resharper -- what do I need to disable to get this to work?
I am not using Resharper. Here is the Visual Studio About information:
Microsoft Visual Studio Professional 2013
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ASP.NET and Web Tools 2013.2.50425
Microsoft Web Developer Tools contains the following components:
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Browser Link: A communication channel between Visual Studio and browsers
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Xamarin 3.0.54.0 (d3cf238e3845e930e312b6ec9b4c6c5437c33067)
Visual Studio extension to enable development for Xamarin.iOS and Xamarin.Android
Xamarin.Android 4.12.4.20 (b5dc5ce91305e19de51d71a1122c109719c4bc34)
Visual Studio plugin to enable development for Xamarin.Android.
Xamarin.iOS 3.0.54.0 (d3cf238e3845e930e312b6ec9b4c6c5437c33067)
Visual Studio extension to enable development for Xamarin.iOS
XtraReports package 1.0
XtraReports package
ReSharper's IntelliSense should be enough. ReSharper -> Options -> IntelliSense -> General -> Select Visual Studio.
Tried that -- no luck (Even restarted VS)
I'm running visual studio pro, update 2 and I have no plugins other than xamarin installed. Any other things I could try to get intellisense to work?
I've completely disabled resharper but I'm still not getting any intellisense:
Same here...For now I switched to Xamarin Studio and Intelli-Sense works there.
SUPER PUMPED about Xamarin.Forms though
Same issue here -- completely turned off Resharper and still not working.
XAML Intellisense has a chance of working if you can open the .xaml file using the Xaml UI Designer editor. When I try to Open With on the .xaml file to select that, I get this error: "The file cannot be opened with the selected editor. Please choose another editor."
This works fine for opening a Xamarin Forms XAML page if the file is defined in another kind of project (say, a WPF project). It seems that Portable Class Libraries is deliberately denying the ability to use that editor. Note that I'm not expecting the designer to work. But opening any xaml file using that editor tends to make the code editing half of the designer work, including Intellisense. So use linked files to add these xml files to another type of project (say... a WPF project for example) and you can open them in the right editor and you're halfway there.
Once the editor can be opened, there's another step required for it to work (from my experience getting XAML Intellisense to work on other object models, anyway). You need to help the editor find the types represented by the tags. Some great documentation on this is available on MSDN. First let's look at the XAML produced by the Xamarin Forms' "Forms XAML Page" item template:
<?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="Dart.MyFormXaml"> <Label Text="{Binding MainText}" VerticalOptions="Center" HorizontalOptions="Center" /> </ContentPage>Notice the root tag has a namespace that is just a URI -- not "clr-namespace" bit. That's fine, but it means some other magic is required to associate the namespace with the assembly that the types come from. For this to work in the designer's code pane, this association comes from the assembly carrying the types. Specifically, the Xamarin.Forms.Core.dll assembly needs to define this attribute:
[assembly: XmlnsDefinition("http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms", "Xamarin.Forms")]That attribute is regrettably missing from the assembly, so getting Intellisense to work while the xmlns attribute is the way it is in the item template (I think) is impossible.
You can preview some of what Intellisense will be like after this work is done (on Xamarin's side) by creating such a .xaml file inside a WPF project, adding the Xamarin.Forms NuGet package to it, and then opening it inside the XAML editor. Change the opening tag to read this:
<ContentPage xmlns="clr-namespace:Xamarin.Forms;assembly=Xamarin.Forms.Core" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml" x:Class="Dart.MyFormXaml">Notice how I've changed the value of the
xmlnsattribute. This now tells XAML exactly where to find theContentPagetype, and so Intellisense now works in VS. But since I've changed the xmlns attribute, I expect (although I've not yet tried it) that this may cause deserialization to fail at runtime.Given that the Core assembly is PCL and that attribute is defined in System.Xaml.dll, that's a no go. The only way that would work is if the consuming side did a string comparison instead of a type and we could define our own version of the attribute.
The IntelliSense works in Xamarin Studio, how to get it working on Visual Studio 2013?
Any one get it working?
Guess I'll use Xamarin Studio for XAML development until they figure out how to get things working in Visual Studio.
If things actually work well (binding and performance in particular), I can't describe how excited I am to be able to write XAML for shared UIs.
Any update on this? Has anyone got XAML intellisense working in VS2013?
I suspect we will need help from MS to make it happen. Sorry
The way their tooling works just isn't really compatible with the PCL framework.
Xamarin Studio Intellisense doesn't work and it gives error as soon as I start typing "<" for tag starting.
Not using Resharper.
Any suggestions?
I would rather have intellisense working before getting a Forms designer in vs.net. Without it, I might as well be typing in Notepad.
Intellisense not working. Wish it did. No resharper, fresh install of Xamarin on top of VS2013 update 2.
I'm going to add a +1 to this. It makes XAML a pretty frustrating experience when there is no IDE support other than color coding. I am using ReSharper, but disabling it doesn't help.
ReSharper also has some issues with the code behind files.
+1! Tomorrow I have a talk about Xamarin, but will not show so much about XAML because is complicate write XAML without intellicense. And Xamarin Studio only show me Android apps
and the experience is completly differente.... I prefer VS and Code behide
+1
Presently we have this situation:
I'm using Xamarin Studio 5.2 (build 379). From previous update in alpha channel XAML autocomplete has broken. It behaves like in simple XML document. No properties autocomplete and no enums autocomplete. Is it a known bug?
Another wish for XAML Intellisense. Much more important (and probably easier to achive) than Designer.
UserVoice is the place to 'vote' on feature requests - they'll get counted up and summarized for us so we know what to aim for next.
Thanks @CraigDunn . I have just suggested a new Idea => http://xamarin.uservoice.com/forums/258559-xamarin-forms-suggestions/suggestions/6187329-xaml-intellisense
In Visual Studio, do the following:
Resharper -> Options -> Code Inspection -> Settings -> Edit Items To skip
In the "File masks to skip" section, enter *.xaml.cs
This will cause Visual Studio to recognize the contents of the generated file. Still no intellisense, but at least the editor doesn't complain of missing methods or properties anymore.
@SMouligneaux I gave my votes! Good idea.
Xamarin Studio 5.2 build 384 still have autocomplete issue in xaml. Is this problem just for me?
Adding myself to the list of user asking for Xaml intellisense in Forms.
Same here, +1 for intellisense at least...
+1. Xamarin Forms are really amazing, but without XAML intellisense, it spoils the party
Please don't +1 this thread. Instead, if you really want to give your vote, head over to the UserVoice that already has this issue.
https://xamarin.uservoice.com/forums/258559-xamarin-forms-suggestions/suggestions/6187329-xaml-intellisense
Xamarin Studio 5.2 release still broken autocomplete in XAML
It's hard write code XALM without intellisense. Please Xamarin team fix it, it's essential for programmers.
We are currently qualifying Xamarin for our mobile business strategy and, as of now, even if we understand the potential power of this approach ("one X-Platform design to rule them all"), we have found critical drawbacks (No auto-completion, no online reference documentation with a clear list of attributes like http://developer.android.com/reference/android/widget/TextView.html, ...) that restrain us from using of Xamarin.Forms.
@CharlesKEAT.4951 there is API documentation, such as this Entry members page.
We are aware that people really want auto-complete for Xaml in Visual Studio; and we're also working hard to continually expand the documentation at developer.xamarin.com.
The xaml editor in the code view is just a xml editor so you don't really get intellisense but with the right schema it would sure act like it . If Xamarin provided us with the schema for http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms we could just follow the instructions on the blog post below and fix it the same way we fixed the Visual Studio Android XML editor (This link talks about VS 2012 but it worked fine for me in 2013):
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/17245308/xamarin-android-intellisense-not-working-in-visual-studio-2010
With the correct xsd file for http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms this should work nicely for us in Visual Studio. Well for the standard Xamarin.Forms Xaml controls at least.