Embed Native Views

In Avalonia UI, you can use the native control host feature on Android by creating an instance of AndroidViewControlHandle from an Android view.

tip

This documentation is based on the following example.

We have a class named EmbedSampleAndroid implementing the INativeDemoControl interface. This class contains a method CreateControl which demonstrates how to use native control host.

 public interface INativeDemoControl
    {
        /// <param name="isSecond">Used to specify which control should be displayed as a demo</param>
        /// <param name="parent"></param>
        /// <param name="createDefault"></param>
        IPlatformHandle CreateControl(bool isSecond, IPlatformHandle parent, Func<IPlatformHandle> createDefault);
    }

public class EmbedSampleAndroid : INativeDemoControl
{
    public IPlatformHandle CreateControl(bool isSecond, IPlatformHandle parent, Func<IPlatformHandle> createDefault)
    {
        var parentContext = (parent as AndroidViewControlHandle)?.View.Context
            ?? global::Android.App.Application.Context;

        if (isSecond)
        {
            var webView = new global::Android.Webkit.WebView(parentContext);
            webView.LoadUrl("https://www.android.com/");

            return new AndroidViewControlHandle(webView);
        }
        else
        {
            var button = new global::Android.Widget.Button(parentContext) { Text = "Hello world" };
            var clickCount = 0;
            button.Click += (sender, args) =>
            {
                clickCount++;
                button.Text = $"Click count {clickCount}";
            };

            return new AndroidViewControlHandle(button);
        }
    }
}

In this method, CreateControl, the parent object is cast to AndroidViewControlHandle to get the View's Context. If this fails, the global application context is used.

The isSecond parameter is used to decide which control to create. If it's true, a WebView is created, navigates to "https://www.android.com/", and its instance is wrapped in an AndroidViewControlHandle which is then returned.

If isSecond is false, a Button is created with the text "Hello world". The button's Click event is wired up to an event handler that increases the clickCount and updates the button's text to display the number of clicks. The Button instance is also wrapped in an AndroidViewControlHandle and returned.