Develop Reference

Using Android Studio with Unity

I would like to build an app that uses augmented reality. To be honest, i prefer Android Studio, but i realized, that Unity3D with Vuforia might be the best choice for me. Im intrested in the best solution, to build my app in Android Studio, but clicking on a button (this will be my main usecase), i open the augmented reality project, i built in Unity. What would be the best solution?
UPDATE
Here is what i found:
First way:
I make my project in Unity, and exporting the project (add the module name to dependencies:
dependencies{
compile project(':UnityClasses')
}
Then importing it into Android Studio. Then i could talk between modules like this:
How-to-call-method-and-return-its-value-with-unityplayer-unitysendmessage
If im correct here, in this way i can send data to Unity module within Android Studio by the 3rd parameter of UnitySendMessageExtension, and i can send data back by the Callstatic method.
Second way:
Use Unity as a Subview
Third way
Integrating Unity into Android Studio
Can anyone help me, who tried these above, to tell me what the best way is?

Unity is a full development solution, so you really do not need to mix up with android studio.
And additionally, Unity is fully compatible with whatever you need because it is C# based so in addition to Unity specific support, anything that works for C# will work for Unity as well.
and here is a link to the Unity firebase SDK:
https://firebase.google.com/docs/unity/setup?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI56nk0-Cb2QIVAilpCh2GOw6zEAAYASAAEgIPZfD_BwE
The only real difference is if you don't like to program 50% visually 50% C# in Unity VS programming in javandroid (that's what I call whatever is going on in android studio ^-^').
Plus Unity exports to everything while android studio is exclusive to android devices, so developing for Unity has greater benefit.
EDIT:
You can call Android OS features written in java or c++, from C# by using the Native Plugins functionality:
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AndroidJARPlugins.html
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/NativePlugins.html
as well as extending the main activity with your own activities
https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/AndroidUnityPlayerActivity.html
All these features are there for when you want to do more than just games, like architectural visualization or whatever other app that requires 3D manipulations like AR.

Couldn't find the required information in the lock file. Make sure you have .NETCore,Version=v5.0/win10-anycpu mentioned in your targets

I'm working on a Windows 10 universal app. The aim was to have a JS front end connecting to a C# library for the heavy lifting. Though when I add the reference and trey to compile I get the following error
Couldn't find the required information in the lock file. Make sure you
have .NETCore,Version=v5.0/win10-anycpu mentioned in your targets.
I've looked around and in a few cases the solution has been to update Visual Studio and the NuGet packages which I have done.
Any suggestions would be great,
Thanks

Just change build configuration to x86 or ARM and it should work.
Any CPU is not supported by UWP projects, because they are built using .NET Native. You can read more about it here.

How to migrate a Windows Universal App to Portable Library Project?

I have previously developed a Windows Universal App.
I would like to migrate all the non-platform specific code to place in a portable class library project for further development.How to achieve this?
In the Windows Universal App there are some backend C# code controlling UI contents and manipulate the data as well. I may not able to seperate the non-platform specific code nicely. Can I still migrate to PCL project in this case?
I searched on the portable class library documentation as the link below:
https://msdn.microsoft.com/library/gg597391.aspx
The description looks confusing. Does it mean that I just include my previous app package in the PCL project and then everything works?

How to Migrate
Unless you changed your question title to "how can I move platform independent portion of my code to PCL", I believe no others can easily understand your meaning.
I assume that you already have a Windows Universal app project in Visual Studio. Then to move code to PCL,
Simply create an empty PCL project (choose a proper profile), and add it as a reference to your original Windows Universal app project.
Cut (not copy) and paste some source files from your app project to this PCL project.
Compile the solution and fix issues.
If you don't know what is a PCL profile, read MSDN related materials. If you don't know which source files should go to PCL, and which should remain in app project, do experiments or check out other guys' sample project.
About The Confusion You Got
I can only say to understand what you highlighted, you should read carefully what is not highlighted in the same sentence, and the subtitle.
Clearly when you have a PCL project, and a Windows Store/Phone app project that references the PCL, when you generate the deployment package (.appx) in Visual Studio, the final package will include every needed assemblies.
It obviously isn't what you described.

You will need to extract the platform specific code. The docs you quote go in the other direction: the PCL is included in the appx package, not the app package in the PCL.
Depending on how entrenched the platform specific code is you may be able to separate it out via inversion of control: define an interface the PCL can use to call back into the host to acquire platform specific data which the PCL can then manipulate.
For example, if the current code has platform specific code to open a file and get its contents, the PCL could call a funtion in the host which opens a file and returns a stream to the contents.

How to make Parse work with Xamarin's PCL project and MvvmCross?

I am having a lot of problems when trying to integrate Parse with cross-platform Xamarin app. At first, I was able to create Android app using Xamarin and MvvmCross and integrate with Parse service (done by adding Parse component in Xamarin). When it comes time to develop iOS app, I am having problem to refactor out Parse dependency into Core PCL project, since Parse currently doesn't support Xamarin PCL projects. Hence, there is no Parse NuGet package or Xamarin component that can be added to PCL project. I can easily add Parse component to iOS project and Android project respectively, but that will require lots of code duplication across both projects.
I've read that referencing Parse.dll and Parse.NetFx45.dll in Core project enables me to use Parse calls in Core project. I did this and are able to compile everything successfully. However, when I try to initialize Parse in Core project using ParseClient.Initialize("ApplicationID", "DotNetKey");, I get TypeInitializationException during runtime.
Question is, what is the best way to integrate Parse service with Xamarin & MvvmCross cross-platform application? I'd imagine lots of people would have done this, but couldn't find references/examples. Duplicating codes across both iOS and Android project definitely shouldn't be the way to go.

Here are a couple of ideas:
First, if you are currently manually copying Parse code changes from project to project, you could speed up that process by writing a script that you run that would clone certain files to the other project. Or you could maybe write a grunt script that copies files automatically when it detects a change.
Now, here is another approach that stores Parse code in one project but is shared across platforms:
The Problem: I was using a Shared Project instead of a PCL to house my Xamarin.Forms and Parse code. The Parse code was working just fine, but I ran into an issue when trying to use my own custom ContentView in my ContentPage in XAML. I wanted a solution that would allow my custom ContentView to work as well as my Parse code -- both from the same project.
The Solution: I have switched to now housing my Xamarin.Forms and Parse code in a PCL. But there is a small catch. Before I explain the catch, just know that it does work with NO Parse code duplication (except for the one line of Parse initialization code that goes in each platform's specific project).
What's the catch? The catch is that in your portable class library you have to manually swap in and out either the Parse.iOS.dll or Parse.Android.dll depending on what you are compiling for at the time.
Does it increase the file size? No. I tested with my app using a Shared Project (where it uses the platform project's referene to the Parse dll) versus a Portable Class Library (where you have to add a reference to the dll in the platform's project as well as the PCL) and found no increase in the app file size by doing it this way.
Below is the project structure that is currently working for me (with project names renamed for confidentiality). (FYI: I am using Xamarin for Mac.)
MyProject.iOS
- Reference to Parse.iOS.dll
- Reference to the Portable Class Library
MyProject.Android
- Reference to Parse.iOS.dll
- Reference to the Portable Class Library
Portable Class Library
- Parse Code
- Xamarin Forms Code
- Reference to either Parse.iOS.dll or Parse.Android.dll
Important: When swapping out the DLL in the PCL, I found that if I right-click the DLL under the References menu, and then click Delete, it caused issues in my project where the iOS project wouldn't compile anymore because it was still looking for the Parse.Android.dll or vice-versa. I tried cleaning the solution, deleting bin and obj folders from the solution's file system to no avail. I got it to work again by doing this: Right-click References, click Edit References, and then uncheck the one Parse DLL and check the box for the other. However, then after that, I tried the "Delete" method again and didn't have problems compiling. Who knows, maybe that issue will crop up for me again.
Won't this get annoying? Depending on how often you switch between platforms, the manual swapping of DLLs may or may not get annoying. No matter how annoying that is though, it can't be worse than having duplicate code. (Perhaps this swapping process could be automated with a script? I think you'd have to unload the PCL and reload it though if you modify the .csproj with a script. Anyone out there up for the challenge? Or perhaps there is a way to do a conditional reference to the DLL based on the platform it is compiling for. Thoughts anyone?)
I hope this helps. If you like any of these ideas better than what you are currently doing please accept this as the answer and let us know which route you decide to take.

Isn't the best way to to this, to create a Parse Plugin for Mvvmcross? Where you define your interfaces that want to use.
And in each platform specific library you reference the parse dll and call the method. So in you Core project you should be able to call the IParse.methods...

So I got it working fine on both Android and iOS by referencing Parse.Android.dll in all 3 projects (Core, iOS, and Android). Yes it sounds weird, but that's what's working for me. Just go to Parse download page and download Xamarin SDK under Android section. It works wonders too! No code duplications, no mess :)

Convert folder of images to video using WP7+

I am trying to use Slicer dll reference to convert images to a video file, but I am having a problem with adding the reference to my Windows Phone project, I get the error
Reference cannot be added to l because it was not built using the Windows Phone runtime. Windows Phone projects will work only with Windows Phone assemblies.
I searched and found this link where it's mentioned to
Create a new class library for Silverlight for Windows Phone 7
I don't know if I am creating the class project right but it's not working I get the same errors as with the win phone project, can't install .dll, does anyone know how I can create the class library correctly without this error?
Or even if it is possible to use Splicer with windows phone 7 & 8?
Thanks for your help.

As far as I know, Splicer isn't built to work on Windows Phone. While it seems like it would make sense that general .NET libraries would work on a .NET compatible platform like WP7 and WP8, that's not necessarily the case. (a little outdated, but here: http://dotnet.dzone.com/articles/not-every-library-will-work)
You could always check out Splicer from Codeplex, but you'd probably have to do a non-trivial amount of modification to get it to work for your project. I'd surmise you could maybe pull it off by just modifying the class libraries in the solution, but there are probably pitfalls included with that. Worse comes to worse, you could take all the source files, copy them into a new Windows Phone library project, and then resolve all the build errors. Either way, it'll involve some work.