Windows Phone 8.1

May

2015

[Updated] String Encryption in Windows 8.1 Universal apps

image credit: Maksim Kabakou, Fotolia.com

[Updated: This post caused a lot of controversy and bad voices, but luckily also some constructive feedback. This is not the initial, but the updated version of this post.]

One of the goals of a Universal Windows app project is to simplify the life of our users. Microsoft provides access to RoamingSettings as well as the RoamingFolder to achieve this goal.

The usage of this storage is fairly simple (it is the same as using the local counterparts). However, one big point is how to save those settings and files securely. Nowadays, a lot of users are even more concerned about security than before, and it makes all sense to encrypt synchronized data.

This is how I came a long with a helper class string encryption. I have searched a lot throughout the Web, but apparently this is not a topic to be discussed openly but behind closed doors. I partly understand that, but I want to say thanks to Ginny Caughey at this point for her feedback on security, and also thank Joost van Schaik for his feedback that “forced” me to change my helper class to extension methods, which makes the usage more readable. If you want to learn more about Extension Methods, this link helped me to understand them and made me changing my code in about 5 minutes.

Let’s talk about security. There are two patterns for encrypting sensitive data: using symmetric algorithm and using asymmetric algorithm. The symmetric key encryption is secure, as long as you have a truly unique identifier that you can use as encryption key. Being very fast, using the symmetric algorithm is only as secure as the key that is used for encryption (obviously, I did it wrong in the first place, that’s why the code is updated). More security is achieved with the asymmetric algorithm, where a public and a private key are used for encryption. The downside of this higher level of security is that it takes longer to perform those actions. There are also more differences between those methods, but that would fill a whole book.

I have learned that on Android and iOS, often the AdvertisingId is used for such operations. Also Windows 8.1 (both phone and PC/tablet) have such an Id, provided by the AdvertisingManager class. Be aware that the id is per-user and per-device and users can switch this off or even reset their advertising id, so this is not a good idea to use. In Windows 8.1 Runtime projects (both phone and tablet/PC, we luckily have the PasswordVault class. This brings us some key advantages: the PasswordVault is encrypted and it does roam to trusted devices. This is what I am using for saving the keys, being it the symmetric one or the asymmetric ones.

Before we will have a look at my Extension methods, I have to put in a disclaimer. I am not saying that my way is the nonplus ultra way to encrypt strings. I do also not say that my way provides 100% security (which in fact does not even exist). My way provides security at a good level, but that level surely can be improved. I will take no responsibility for the security of apps that are using this.

Let’s have a look at my Extension methods that will help you securing your data.

Symmetric Key Encryption

My symmetric encryption methods were using a pre shared key. I received a lot of feedback that this does not make any sense as it throws away the security factor, especially as the Guid can be recalculated. So I changed the method to use random data, that is generated from the CryptographiBuffer.GenerateRandom() method. Then I am putting this into an Base64 encoded string to pass it over to the PasswordVault:

        public static string GetKeyMaterialString(string resource = null, string username = null)
        {
            string key = "";

            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(resource) && string.IsNullOrEmpty(username))
            {
                //replace with your resource name if suitable
                resource = "symmetricKey";
                //replace with your user's name/identifier
                username = "sampleUserName";                                
            }            

            //using try catch as FindAllByResource will throw an exception anyways if the specified resource is not found
            try
            {
                //search for our saved symmetric key
                var findSymmetricKey = _passwordVault.FindAllByResource(resource);
                //calling RetrievePassword you MUST!
                findSymmetricKey[0].RetrievePassword();
                key = findSymmetricKey[0].Password;
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                //getting a true random key buffer with a length of 32 bytes
                IBuffer randomKeyBuffer = CryptographicBuffer.GenerateRandom(32);

                key = CryptographicBuffer.EncodeToBase64String(randomKeyBuffer); 

                _passwordVault.Add(new PasswordCredential(resource, username, key));
            }
            
            return key;
        }

The resource string as well as the username is needed to save the key into the PasswordVault. The FindAllByResource() method will throw an Exception if no credentials are found, in this case we are generating them from scratch in the catch block.

The encryption method is pretty straight forward as well. Microsoft does all the complicated calculating stuff, we just need to call the proper methods. What you get is a Base64 encoded string that easily can be saved into the ApplicationSettings or wherever you need it. Here is the complete extension method:

        public static string EncryptStringSymmetric(this string text)
        {
            string encryptedString = "";

            try
            {
                //load the alghorithm providers
                var symmetricKeyProvider = SymmetricKeyAlgorithmProvider.OpenAlgorithm(SymmetricAlgorithmNames.AesCbcPkcs7);

                //create the symmetric key that is used to encrypt the string from random keystring
                var cryptoKey = symmetricKeyProvider.CreateSymmetricKey(CryptographicBuffer.DecodeFromBase64String(GetKeyMaterialString()));

                //create the IBuffer that is for the string
                IBuffer buffer = CryptographicBuffer.CreateFromByteArray(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(text));

                //encrypt the byte array with the symmetric key
                encryptedString = CryptographicBuffer.EncodeToBase64String(CryptographicEngine.Encrypt(cryptoKey, buffer, null));

                //return the Base64 string representation of the encrypted string byte array
                return encryptedString;
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                return null;
            }

        }

The decryption method of course reverses all this. First, it loads the saved key from the password fault, and then decrypts and returns then the plain text string:

        public static string DecryptStringSymmetric(this string text)
        {
            string decryptedString = "";

            try
            {
                //load the alghorithm providers
                var symmetricKeyProvider = SymmetricKeyAlgorithmProvider.OpenAlgorithm(SymmetricAlgorithmNames.AesCbcPkcs7);

                //create the symmetric key that is used to encrypt the string from random keystring
                var cryptoKey = symmetricKeyProvider.CreateSymmetricKey(CryptographicBuffer.DecodeFromBase64String(GetKeyMaterialString()));

                //decode the input Base64 string
                IBuffer buffer = CryptographicBuffer.DecodeFromBase64String(text);
                //declare new byte array
                byte[] dectryptedBytes;
                //decrypt the IBuffer back to byte array
                CryptographicBuffer.CopyToByteArray(CryptographicEngine.Decrypt(cryptoKey, buffer, null), out dectryptedBytes);
                //get string back from the byte array
                decryptedString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(dectryptedBytes, 0, dectryptedBytes.Length);

                //return plain text
                return decryptedString;
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                return null;
            }
        }

Both methods return null if anything did not work like excepted. This should help you to easily check if something went wrong in there. Here is how to use those methods:

Encrypting the string:

var encryptedString = stringToEncrypt.EncryptStringSymmetric();

Decrypting the string:

var dectryptedString = stringToDecrypt.DecryptStringSymmetric();

Asymmetric Key Encryption

Like I already wrote, for asymmetric encryption always two keys are used. The method to get the keys is there slightly different:

        public static Dictionary<string, string> GetAsymmetricKeyPair(string username = null)
        {
            Dictionary<string, string> keyDictionary;
            const string privKey = "asymmetricPrivateKey";
            const string pubKey = "asymmetricPublicKey";

            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(username))
            {
                //replace with your user's name/identifier 
                username = "sampleUserName";
            }

            //using try catch as FindAllByResource will throw an exception anyways if the specified resource is not found
            try
            {
                //search for our save asymmetric keys
                var findAsymmetricPrivateKey = _passwordVault.FindAllByResource(privKey);
                //calling RetrievePassword you MUST!
                findAsymmetricPrivateKey[0].RetrievePassword();
                var findAsymmetricPublicKey = _passwordVault.FindAllByResource(pubKey);
                //calling RetrievePassword you MUST!
                findAsymmetricPublicKey[0].RetrievePassword();

                //loading our keys into a new Dictionary
                keyDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>()
                {
                    {privKey, findAsymmetricPrivateKey[0].Password},
                    {pubKey, findAsymmetricPublicKey[0].Password}
                };
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                //declaring the Key Algortihm Provider and creating the KeyPair
                var asymmetricKeyProvider =
                    AsymmetricKeyAlgorithmProvider.OpenAlgorithm(AsymmetricAlgorithmNames.RsaPkcs1);
                CryptographicKey cryptographicKeyPair = asymmetricKeyProvider.CreateKeyPair(512);

                //converting the KeyPair into IBuffers
                IBuffer privateKeyBuffer =
                    cryptographicKeyPair.Export(CryptographicPrivateKeyBlobType.Pkcs1RsaPrivateKey);
                IBuffer publicKeyBuffer =
                    cryptographicKeyPair.ExportPublicKey(CryptographicPublicKeyBlobType.Pkcs1RsaPublicKey);

                //encoding the key IBuffers into Base64 Strings and adding them to a new Dictionary
                keyDictionary = new Dictionary<string, string>
                {
                    {privKey, CryptographicBuffer.EncodeToBase64String(privateKeyBuffer)},
                    {pubKey, CryptographicBuffer.EncodeToBase64String(publicKeyBuffer)}
                };

                //saving the newly generated keys in PasswordVault
                //it is recommended to save the both keys separated from each other, though
                _passwordVault.Add(new PasswordCredential(privKey, username, keyDictionary[privKey]));
                //_passwordVault.Add(new PasswordCredential(pubKey, username, keyDictionary[pubKey]));
            }

            //return new Dictionary
            return keyDictionary;
        }

As you can see, I am creating a Dictionary that holds the two keys so we can work with. I also use another key generating method, specially made for asymmetric encryption. I store those two keys separated from each other into the PasswordVault in the end.

The encryption follows basically the same structure as the symmetric key encryption method. Due to the fact I already have two different keys, I think this is ok for the scenario of passing values between the Windows Phone and Windows project. Eventually I will change that in future when I see the need for it. Notice that for encryption, always the public key is used. The public key should also be saved separated from the private key. So here is the complete method:

        public static string EncryptStringAsymmetric(this string text, string publicKey = null)
        {
            //making sure we are providing a public key
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(publicKey))
            {
                var keyPairs = GetAsymmetricKeyPair();
                publicKey = keyPairs["asymmetricPublicKey"];
            }

            try
            {
                //converting the public key into an IBuffer
                IBuffer keyBuffer = CryptographicBuffer.DecodeFromBase64String(publicKey);
                
                //load the public key and the algorithm provider
                var asymmetricAlgorithmProvider = AsymmetricKeyAlgorithmProvider.OpenAlgorithm(AsymmetricAlgorithmNames.RsaPkcs1);
                var cryptoKey = asymmetricAlgorithmProvider.ImportPublicKey(keyBuffer, CryptographicPublicKeyBlobType.Pkcs1RsaPublicKey);

                //converting the string into an IBuffer
                IBuffer buffer = CryptographicBuffer.CreateFromByteArray(Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(text));

                string encryptedString = "";

                //perform the encryption
                encryptedString = CryptographicBuffer.EncodeToBase64String(CryptographicEngine.Encrypt(cryptoKey, buffer, null));

                //return the Base64 string representation of the encrypted string
                return encryptedString;
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                return null;
            }

        }

The decryption of the encrypted string works also in a similar way to the symmetric one, except we are using the private key of our asymmetric key pair. To be able to do this, we need to use the ImportKeyPair method, whose name is a bit misleading in my opinion. In fact, we even need to specify that we want to import the private key and not the whole key pair. But even with that, decryption works like expected:

        public static string DecryptStringAsymmetric(this string text, string privateKey = null)
        {
            //making sure we are providing a public key
            if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(privateKey))
            {
                    var keyPairs = GetAsymmetricKeyPair();
                privateKey = keyPairs["asymmetricPrivateKey"];
            }

            try
            {
                //converting the private key into an IBuffer
                IBuffer keyBuffer = CryptographicBuffer.DecodeFromBase64String(privateKey);

                //load the private key and the algorithm provider
                var asymmetricAlgorithmProvider = AsymmetricKeyAlgorithmProvider.OpenAlgorithm(AsymmetricAlgorithmNames.RsaPkcs1);
                var cryptoKey = asymmetricAlgorithmProvider.ImportKeyPair(keyBuffer, CryptographicPrivateKeyBlobType.Pkcs1RsaPrivateKey);

                //converting the encrypted text into an IBuffer
                IBuffer buffer = CryptographicBuffer.DecodeFromBase64String(text);

                //cdecrypting the IBuffer and convert its content into a Byte array 
                byte[] decryptedBytes;
                CryptographicBuffer.CopyToByteArray(CryptographicEngine.Decrypt(cryptoKey, buffer, null), out decryptedBytes);

                string decryptedString = "";

                //getting back the plain text 
                decryptedString = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(decryptedBytes, 0, decryptedBytes.Length);

                return decryptedString;
            }
            catch (Exception)
            {
                return null;
            }
        }

Like the symmetric methods, also the asymmetric methods return null if something went wrong. Here is how to use them:

Encrypting the string:

var encryptedString = stringToEncyrpt.EncryptStringAsymmetric();

Decrypting the string:

var decryptedString = stringToDecrypt.DecryptStringAsymmetric();

As you can see, securing strings does not have to be more complicated than this. Using the PasswordVault, we have a truly secure place to store the keys (that need to be saved privately and secure), the rest is done by the methods provided by the operating system. I am by far not a security researcher or expert, but this class should provide a good level of security for string encryption in Windows 8.1 universal apps.

If you know more about security or have ideas to improve this helper class, I put up a sample project on Github where you also can play around with the class and the simple app I created for it. Feel free to contribute to this class or discuss in the comments below.

Happy coding, everyone!

Mar

2015

How to implement a bindable progress indicator (loading dots) for MVVM Windows (8.1) Universal apps

Now that I am on a good way to understand and use the MVVM pattern, I am also finding that there are some times rather simple solutions for every day problems. One of these problems is that we don’t have a global progress indicator for Windows Universal apps. That is a little bit annoying, and so I wrote my own solution. I don’t know if this is good or bad practice, but my solution is making it globally available in a Windows Universal app. The best thing is, you just need to bind to a Boolean property to use it. No Behaviors, just the one base implementation and Binding (Yes, I am a bit excited about it). For your convenience, I attached a demo project at the end of this post.

To get the main work for this done, we are implementing our own class, inherited from the Page class. The latter one is available for Windows as well as Windows Phone, so we can define it in the shared project of our Universal app. To do so, add a new class in the shared project. I named it PageBase (as it is quite common for this scenario, as I found out).

First, we need to inherit our class from the Page class:

public abstract class PageBase : Page

Now that we have done this, we need a global available property that we can bind to. We are using a DependencyProperty to achieve this goal. To make the property reflect our changes also to the UI, we also need to hook into a PropertyChanged callback on it:

        //this DepenedencyProperty is our Binding target to get all the action done!
        public static readonly DependencyProperty IsProgressIndicatorNeededProperty = DependencyProperty.Register(
            "IsProgressIndicatorNeeded", typeof (bool), typeof (PageBase), new PropertyMetadata((bool)false, OnIsProgressIndicatorNeededChanged));

        public static void OnIsProgressIndicatorNeededChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
        {

        }

        //get and send the value of our Binding target
        public bool IsProgressIndicatorNeeded
        {
            get { return (bool) GetValue(IsProgressIndicatorNeededProperty); }
            set { SetValue(IsProgressIndicatorNeededProperty, value); }
        }

The next step we need to do is to find the UIElement we want the progress indicator to be in. To do so, we are going through the VisualTree and pick our desired element. This helper method (taken from the MSDN documentation) will enable us to find this element:

        //helper method to find children in the visual tree (taken from MSDN documentation)
        private static void FindChildren<T>(List<T> results, DependencyObject startNode)
          where T : DependencyObject
        {
            int count = VisualTreeHelper.GetChildrenCount(startNode);
            for (int i = 0; i < count; i++)
            {
                var current = VisualTreeHelper.GetChild(startNode, i);
                if ((current.GetType()) == typeof(T) || (current.GetType().GetTypeInfo().IsSubclassOf(typeof(T))))
                {
                    T asType = (T)current;
                    results.Add(asType);
                }
                FindChildren<T>(results, current);
            }
        }

The method goes through the VisualTree, starting at the point we are throwing in as DependecyObject and gives us a List<T> with all specified Elements. From this List we are going to pick our UIElement that will hold the progress indicator for us. Let’s create a new method that will do all the work for us:

        private void CheckIfProgressIndicatorIsNeeded(DependencyObject currentObject)
        {
        }

Notice the DependencyObject parameter? This makes it easier for us to use the method in different places (which we will, more on that later). Let’s get our list of DependencyObjects from our parameter and pick the first Grid as our desired UIElement to hold the progress indicator:

            if (currentObject == null) return;

            //getting a list of all DependencyObjects in the visual tree
            var children = new List<DependencyObject>();
            FindChildren(children, currentObject);
            if (children.Count == 0) return;

            //getting a reference to the first Grid in the visual tree
            //this can be any other UIElement you define
            var rootGrid = (Grid)children.FirstOrDefault(i => i.GetType() == typeof(Grid));

Now that we have this, we are already at the point where we need to create our progress indicator object. I declared a class member of type ProgressBar (which needs to be instantiated in the constructor then). This is how I set it up:

            //setting up the ProgressIndicator
            //you can also create a more complex object for this, like a StackPanel with a TextBlock and the ProgressIndicator in it
            _progressIndicator.IsIndeterminate = IsProgressIndicatorNeeded;
            _progressIndicator.Height = 20;
            _progressIndicator.VerticalAlignment = VerticalAlignment.Top;

The final step in the PageBase class is to check if there is already a chikd of type ProgressBar, if not adding it to the Grid and setting it’s Visibility property to Visible if our above attached DependencyProperty has the value ‘true’:

            //showing the ProgressIndicator
            if (IsProgressIndicatorNeeded)
            {
                //only add the ProgressIndicator if there isn't already one in the rootGrid
                if (!rootGrid.Children.Contains(_progressIndicator))
                {
                    rootGrid.Children.Add(_progressIndicator);
                }
                _progressIndicator.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;
            }

If the value is ‘false’, we are setting the Visibility back to collapsed:

            //hiding the ProgressIndicator
            else
            {
                if (rootGrid.Children.Contains(_progressIndicator))
                {
                    _progressIndicator.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
                }
            }

Now that we have this method in place, let’s go back to our callback method we have been hooking into earlier. To reflect the changes that we are throwing into our DependencyProperty, we are calling our method within the PropertyChanged callback. To do so, we are getting a reference to the PageBase class, which is needed because we are in a static method. Once we have this reference, we are calling our method to show/hide the progress indicator:

        public static void OnIsProgressIndicatorNeededChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            //resolving d as PageBase to enable us calling our helper method
            var currentObject = d as PageBase;

            //avoid NullReferenceException
            if (currentObject == null)
            {
                return;
            }
            //call our helper method
            currentObject.CheckIfProgressIndicatorIsNeeded(d);
        }

That’s all, we are already able to use the global progress indicator. To use this class, you need to do a few things. First, go to the code-behind part of your page. Make the class inherit from the PageBase class:

    public sealed partial class MainPage : PageBase

Now, let’s go to the XAML part and add a reference to your class:

    xmlns:common="using:MvvmUniversalProgressIndicator.Common"

Once you have done this, replace the ‘Page’ element with the PageBase class:

<common:PageBase>
//
</common:PageBase>

After you have build the project, you should be able to set the Binding to the IsProgressIndicatorNeeded property:

    IsProgressIndicatorNeeded="{Binding IsProgressIndicatorVisible}">

If you now add two buttons to the mix, binding their Commands to change the value of the Boolean property, you will see that you can switch the loading dots on and off like you wish. That makes it pretty easy to use it in a MVVM driven application.

But what if we need to show the progress indicator as soon as we are coming to the page? No worries, we are already prepared and need only a little more code for that. In the PageBase class constructor, register for the Loaded event:

            Loaded += PageBase_Loaded;

In the Loaded event, we are calling again our main method to show the progress indicator, but this time we use the current window content as reference to start with:

        void PageBase_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
        {
            //using the DispatcherHelper of MvvmLight to get it running on the UI
            DispatcherHelper.CheckBeginInvokeOnUI(() =>
            {
                //Window.Current.Content is our visual root and contains all UIElements of a page
                var visualRoot = Window.Current.Content as DependencyObject;
                CheckIfProgressIndicatorIsNeeded(visualRoot);
            });

        }

As we need to reflect changes on the UI thread, I am using the DispatcherHelper of the MvvmLight Toolkit. You can use your own preferred method as well for that. That’s all, If you now test it with setting the IsProgressIndicatorNeeded property in your page directly to ‘True’ in XAML, you will see the loading dots right from the start.

Like always, I hope this is helpful for some of you.

Happy coding!

Download Sample project

Feb

2015

How to easily check the pressed keyboard button with a converted event using MVVM (Windows Universal)

In case you missed it, I lately am deeply diving into MVVM. Earlier today, I wanted to implement the well loved feature that a search is performed by pressing the Enter button. Of course, this would be very easy to achieve in code behind using the KeyUpEvent (or the KeyDownEvent, if you prefer).

However, in MVVM, especially in a Universal app, this is a bit trickier. We need to route the event manually to our matching command. There are surely more ways to achieve it, but I decided to use the Behaviors SDK to achieve my goal. The first step is of course downloading the matching extension (if you haven’t done so before). To do so, click on TOOLS/Extensions and Updates in Visual Studio and install the Behaviors SDK from the list:

The next step we need to do is to add a new Converter (I added it to the common folder, you may change this to your preferred place). As we are hooking up the KeyUpEventArgs, I called it KeyUpEventArgsConverter. After you created the class, implement the IValueConverter interface. You should now have a Convert and a ConvertBack method. We are just adding two lines of code to the Convert method:

            var args = (KeyRoutedEventArgs)value;
            return args;

That’s it for the Converter. Save the class and build the project. For the next step, we need to go to our View where the Converter should do its work. Before we can use it, we need to give our Converter a key to be identified by the Binding engine. You can do this app wide in App.xaml, or in your page:

<common:KeyUpEventArgsConverter x:Key="KeyUpEventArgsConverter"/>

Also, we need to add two more references to our View (besides the Common folder that holds our converter, that is):

    xmlns:i="using:Microsoft.Xaml.Interactivity" 
    xmlns:core="using:Microsoft.Xaml.Interactions.Core"

The next step is to implement the Behavior to our input control (a TextBox in my case):

<TextBox  Header="enter search terms" PlaceholderText="search terms" Text="{Binding KnowledgeBaseSearchTerms, Mode=TwoWay, UpdateSourceTrigger=PropertyChanged}" >
    <i:Interaction.Behaviors>
         <core:EventTriggerBehavior EventName="KeyUp">
             <core:InvokeCommandAction
                   Command="{Binding SearchTermKeyEventArgsCommand}"
                   InputConverter="{StaticResource KeyUpEventArgsConverter}">
             </core:InvokeCommandAction>
          </core:EventTriggerBehavior>
     </i:Interaction.Behaviors>
</TextBox>

With the EventTriggerBehavior, we are able to hook into the desired event of a control. We then only need to bind to a Command in our ViewModel and tell the Behaviors SDK that it should route the “KeyUp” event using our Converter.

Let’s have a final look at the command that handles the event:

        public RelayCommand<KeyRoutedEventArgs> SearchTermKeyEventArgsCommand
        {
            get
            {
                return _searchTermKeyEventArgsCommand
                    ?? (_searchTermKeyEventArgsCommand = new RelayCommand<KeyRoutedEventArgs>(
                    p =>
                    {
                        if (p.Key == Windows.System.VirtualKey.Enter)
                        {
                            //your code here
                        }
                    }));
            }
        }

As you can see, we are using a Command that is able to take a Generic (in my case it comes from the MVVM Light Toolkit, but there are several other version floating around). Because of this, we are finally getting the KeyRoutedEventArgs into our ViewModel and are able to use its data and properties.

The VirtualKey Enumeration holds a reference to a lot of (if not all) keys and works for both hardware and virtual keyboards. This makes this code safe to use in an Universal app.

As I am quite new to MVVM, I am not entirely sure if this way is the “best” way, but it works as expected with little efforts. I hope this will be useful for some of you.

Useful links that helped me on my way to find this solution:

http://blog.galasoft.ch/posts/2014/01/using-the-eventargsconverter-in-mvvm-light-and-why-is-there-no-eventtocommand-in-the-windows-8-1-version/

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/xaml/hh868246.aspx

Happy coding, everyone!

Nov

2014

How to capture a photo in your Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime app – Part III: capturing and saving the photo

This is the third and last post of this series. In the first two posts I showed you how to start the preview of MediaCapture and some modifications we can apply to it. In this post, we are finally capturing and saving the photo – including the modifications we made before.

The easiest way – capture as is:

The easiest way to capture the photo is to use MediaCapture’s CapturePhotoToStorageFileAsync() method. This method shows you how to do it:

            //declare image format
            ImageEncodingProperties format = ImageEncodingProperties.CreateJpeg();

            //generate file in local folder:
            StorageFile capturefile = await ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder.CreateFileAsync("photo_" + DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString(), CreationCollisionOption.ReplaceExisting);

            ////take & save photo
            await captureManager.CapturePhotoToStorageFileAsync(format, capturefile);

            //show captured photo
            BitmapImage img = new BitmapImage(new Uri(capturefile.Path));
            takenImage.Source = img;
            takenImage.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;

This way however does not respect any modifications we made to the preview. The only thing that gets respected is the camera device we are using.

Respecting rotation in the captured photo:

In our ongoing sample, we are using a 90 degree rotation to display the preview element in portrait mode. Naturally, we want to port over this orientation in our captured image.

There are two ways to achieve this. We could capture the photo to a WriteableBitmap and manipulate it, or we could manipulate the image stream directly with the BitmapDecoder and BitmapEncoder classes. We will do the latter one.

First, we need to open an InMemoryRandomAccessStream for our the captured photo. We are capturing the photo to the stream with MediaCapture’s CapturePhotoToStreamAsync() method, specifing the stream name and the image format.

The next step is to decode the stream with our BitmapDecoder. If we are performing only rotation, we can directly re-encode the InMemoryRandomAccessStream we are using. Rotating the captured photo is very simple with just setting the BitmapTransform.Rotation property to be rotated by 90 degrees, pretty much as easy as rotating the preview.

The last steps are generating a file in the storage, followed by copying the transcoded image stream into the file stream. Here is the complete code that does all this:

            //declare string for filename
            string captureFileName = string.Empty;
            //declare image format
            ImageEncodingProperties format = ImageEncodingProperties.CreateJpeg();

            //rotate and save the image
            using (var imageStream = new InMemoryRandomAccessStream())
            {
                //generate stream from MediaCapture
                await captureManager.CapturePhotoToStreamAsync(format, imageStream);

                //create decoder and encoder
                BitmapDecoder dec = await BitmapDecoder.CreateAsync(imageStream);
                BitmapEncoder enc = await BitmapEncoder.CreateForTranscodingAsync(imageStream, dec);

                //roate the image
                enc.BitmapTransform.Rotation = BitmapRotation.Clockwise90Degrees;

                //write changes to the image stream
                await enc.FlushAsync();

                //save the image
                StorageFolder folder = KnownFolders.SavedPictures;
                StorageFile capturefile = await folder.CreateFileAsync("photo_" + DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString() + ".jpg", CreationCollisionOption.ReplaceExisting);
                captureFileName = capturefile.Name;

                //store stream in file
                using (var fileStream = await capturefile.OpenStreamForWriteAsync())
                {
                    try
                    {
                        //because of using statement stream will be closed automatically after copying finished
                        await RandomAccessStream.CopyAsync(imageStream, fileStream.AsOutputStream());
                    }
                    catch 
                    {

                    }
                }
            }

Of course, we need to stop the preview after we captured the photo. It also makes all sense to load the saved image and display it to the user. This is the code to stop the preview:

        private async void CleanCapture()
        {

            if (captureManager != null)
            {
                if (isPreviewing == true)
                {
                    await captureManager.StopPreviewAsync();
                    isPreviewing = false;
                }
                captureManager.Dispose();

                previewElement.Source = null;
                previewElement.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
                takenImage.Source = null;
                takenImage.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed;
                captureButton.Content = "capture";
            }

        }

The result of above mentioned code (screenshot of preview left, captured photo right):

Cropping the captured photo

Not all Windows Phone devices have an aspect ratio of 16:9. In fact, most devices in the market have an aspect ratio of 15:9, due to the fact that they are WVGA or WXGA devices (I talked a bit about this already in my second post). If we are just capturing the photo with the method above, we will have the same black bands in our image as we have in our preview. To get around this and capture a photo that has a true 15:9 resolution (makes sense for photos that get reused in apps, but less for real life photos), additional code is needed.

As with getting the right camera solution, I generated an Enumeration that holds all possible values as well as a helper method to detect which aspect ratio the currently used device has:

        public enum DisplayAspectRatio
        {
            Unknown = -1,

            FifteenByNine = 0,

            SixteenByNine = 1
        }

        private DisplayAspectRatio GetDisplayAspectRatio()
        {
            DisplayAspectRatio result = DisplayAspectRatio.Unknown;

            //WP8.1 uses logical pixel dimensions, we need to convert this to raw pixel dimensions
            double logicalPixelWidth = Windows.UI.Xaml.Window.Current.Bounds.Width;
            double logicalPixelHeight = Windows.UI.Xaml.Window.Current.Bounds.Height;

            double rawPerViewPixels = DisplayInformation.GetForCurrentView().RawPixelsPerViewPixel;
            double rawPixelHeight = logicalPixelHeight * rawPerViewPixels;
            double rawPixelWidth = logicalPixelWidth * rawPerViewPixels;

            //calculate and return screen format
            double relation = Math.Max(rawPixelWidth, rawPixelHeight) / Math.Min(rawPixelWidth, rawPixelHeight);
            if (Math.Abs(relation - (15.0 / 9.0)) < 0.01)
            {
                result = DisplayAspectRatio.FifteenByNine;
            }
            else if (Math.Abs(relation - (16.0 / 9.0)) < 0.01)
            {
                result = DisplayAspectRatio.SixteenByNine;
            }

            return result;
        }

In Windows Phone 8.1, all Elements use logical pixel size. To get the values that most of us are used to, we need to calculate the raw pixels from the logical pixels. After that, we use the same math operations I used already for detecting the ratio of the camera resolution (see post 2). I tried to calculate the values with the logical pixels as well, but this ended up in some strange rounding behavior and not the results I wanted. That’s why I use the raw pixel sizes.

Before we continue with capturing the photo, we are going to add a border that is displayed and shows the area which is captured to the user in XAML:

When we are cropping our photo, we need to treaten the BitmapEncoder and the BitmapDecoder separately. To crop an image, we need to set the Bounds and the new Width and Height of the photo via the BitmapTransform.Bounds property. We also need to read the PixelData via the GetPixelDataAsync() method, apply the changed Bounds to it and pass them to BitmapEncoder via the SetPixelData() method.

At the end, we are flushing the changed stream data directly into the file stream of our StorageFile. Here is how:

            //declare string for filename
            string captureFileName = string.Empty;
            //declare image format
            ImageEncodingProperties format = ImageEncodingProperties.CreateJpeg();

            using (var imageStream = new InMemoryRandomAccessStream())
            {
                //generate stream from MediaCapture
                await captureManager.CapturePhotoToStreamAsync(format, imageStream);

                //create decoder and transform
                BitmapDecoder dec = await BitmapDecoder.CreateAsync(imageStream);
                BitmapTransform transform = new BitmapTransform();

                //roate the image
                transform.Rotation = BitmapRotation.Clockwise90Degrees;
                transform.Bounds = GetFifteenByNineBounds();

                //get the conversion data that we need to save the cropped and rotated image
                BitmapPixelFormat pixelFormat = dec.BitmapPixelFormat;
                BitmapAlphaMode alpha = dec.BitmapAlphaMode;

                //read the PixelData
                PixelDataProvider pixelProvider = await dec.GetPixelDataAsync(
                    pixelFormat,
                    alpha,
                    transform,
                    ExifOrientationMode.RespectExifOrientation,
                    ColorManagementMode.ColorManageToSRgb
                    );
                byte[] pixels = pixelProvider.DetachPixelData();

                //generate the file
                StorageFolder folder = KnownFolders.SavedPictures;
                StorageFile capturefile = await folder.CreateFileAsync("photo_" + DateTime.Now.Ticks.ToString() + ".jpg", CreationCollisionOption.ReplaceExisting);
                captureFileName = capturefile.Name;

                //writing directly into the file stream
                using (IRandomAccessStream convertedImageStream = await capturefile.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.ReadWrite))
                {
                    //write changes to the BitmapEncoder
                    BitmapEncoder enc = await BitmapEncoder.CreateAsync(BitmapEncoder.JpegEncoderId, convertedImageStream);
                    enc.SetPixelData(
                        pixelFormat,
                        alpha,
                        transform.Bounds.Width,
                        transform.Bounds.Height,
                        dec.DpiX,
                        dec.DpiY,
                        pixels
                        );

                    await enc.FlushAsync();
                }
            }

You may have notice the GetFifteenByNineBounds() method in the above code. As we need to calculate some values for cropping the image, I decided to separate them. They are not only providing values for the image to be cropped, but also size values for our earlier added Border that is used in my sample (download link at the end of the project) to show the size that the photo will have after our cropping (which is an automatic process in our case,). Here is the code:

        private BitmapBounds GetFifteenByNineBounds()
        {
            BitmapBounds bounds = new BitmapBounds();

            //image size is raw pixels, so we need also here raw pixels
            double logicalPixelWidth = Windows.UI.Xaml.Window.Current.Bounds.Width;
            double logicalPixelHeight = Windows.UI.Xaml.Window.Current.Bounds.Height;

            double rawPerViewPixels = DisplayInformation.GetForCurrentView().RawPixelsPerViewPixel;
            double rawPixelHeight = logicalPixelHeight * rawPerViewPixels;
            double rawPixelWidth = logicalPixelWidth * rawPerViewPixels;

            //calculate scale factor of UniformToFill Height (remember, we rotated the preview)
            double scaleFactorVisualHeight = maxResolution().Width / rawPixelHeight;

            //calculate the visual Width
            //(because UniFormToFill scaled the previewElement Width down to match the previewElement Height)
            double visualWidth = maxResolution().Height / scaleFactorVisualHeight;
            
            //calculate cropping area for 15:9
            uint scaledBoundsWidth = maxResolution().Height;
            uint scaledBoundsHeight = (scaledBoundsWidth / 9) * 15;

            //we are starting at the top of the image
            bounds.Y = 0;
            //cropping the image width
            bounds.X = 0;
            bounds.Height = scaledBoundsHeight;
            bounds.Width = scaledBoundsWidth;

            //set finalPhotoAreaBorder values that shows the user the area that is captured
            finalPhotoAreaBorder.Width = (scaledBoundsWidth / scaleFactorVisualHeight) / rawPerViewPixels;
            finalPhotoAreaBorder.Height = (scaledBoundsHeight / scaleFactorVisualHeight) / rawPerViewPixels;
            finalPhotoAreaBorder.Margin = new Thickness(
                                            Math.Floor(((rawPixelWidth - visualWidth) / 2) / rawPerViewPixels), 
                                            0,
                                            Math.Floor(((rawPixelWidth - visualWidth) / 2) / rawPerViewPixels), 
                                            0);
            finalPhotoAreaBorder.Visibility = Visibility.Visible;

            return bounds;
        }

Again, we need to apply raw pixels to achieve the best results here (I just pasted those lines in for this sample). To calculate the correct values for our Border, we need the scale factor between the screen and the preview resolution we used (which is the scaleFactorVisualHeight double). Before we’re calculating the border values, we are setting the Width to resolution’s Height (we rotated, remember?) and calculate the matching 15:9 Height.

The Border values are based on the Width and Height of the cropped image, but scaled down by scaleFactorVisualHeight’s value and converted in raw pixel. The Margin positions the border accordingly on top of the preview element.

This is the result of above mentioned code (screenshot of preview left, captured photo right):

That’s all you need to know to get started with basic photo capturing from within your Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime app. Of course, there are also other modifications that you can apply, and I mentioned already most of the classes that lead you to the matching methods and properties (click on the links to get to the documentation)

By the way, most of the code can be adapted in a Windows 8.1 app as well (with some differences, of course).

Sample project

As promised, you can download the sample here. It contains all code snippets I showed you and is able to run as you build and deploy it.

As always, feedback is welcome and I hope this post is helpful for some of you.

Until the next time, happy coding!

Nov

2014

How to capture a photo in your Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime app-Part II: some common modifications

Like promised in my first post about photo capturing, I will provide some common modification scenarios when using the MediaCapture API. This is what this post is about.

Choosing a camera

If you read my first post, you probably remember that the MediaCapture API automatically selected the front camera of my Lumia 1020. Like often, we have to write some additional code to switch between the cameras.

The cameras are listed in the Panels in the Windows.Devices.Enumeration Namespace. This namespace contains all “devices” that are connected to the phone and has different properties to detect the correct panel. We are going to use the DeviceClass to detect all video capture devices (which are normally also the photo capture devices on Windows Phone, but can be different on a PC/Tablet). As we want to switch between Front and Back, we are also detecting the EnclosureLocation. Here is how I implemented it:

        private static async Task<DeviceInformation> GetCameraID(Windows.Devices.Enumeration.Panel camera)
        {
            DeviceInformation deviceID = (await DeviceInformation.FindAllAsync(DeviceClass.VideoCapture))
                .FirstOrDefault(x => x.EnclosureLocation != null && x.EnclosureLocation.Panel == camera);

            return deviceID;
        }

To make this Task actually useful, we are also updating the InitializePreview() method from the first part:

        private async void InitializePreview()
        {
            captureManager = new MediaCapture();

            var cameraID = await GetCameraID(Windows.Devices.Enumeration.Panel.Back);

            await captureManager.InitializeAsync(new MediaCaptureInitializationSettings
            {
                StreamingCaptureMode = StreamingCaptureMode.Video,
                PhotoCaptureSource = PhotoCaptureSource.Photo,
                AudioDeviceId = string.Empty,
                VideoDeviceId = cameraID.Id,
            });

            StartPreview();
        }

In this case, we selected the back camera. To make the MediaCapture API actually use this device, we need to generate a new instance of MediaCaptureInitializationSettings, where we select the cameras Id as VideDeviceId. If you now start capturing, this is an exemplary result:

Rotating the preview

However, this not quite satisfying, because the preview automatically uses the landscape orientation. Luckily, this can be changed with just one single line of code (that needs to be added before actually starting the preview):

captureManager.SetPreviewRotation(VideoRotation.Clockwise90Degrees);

Now the result looks like this:

Note: the black bands on both sides may happen due to the fact that most devices have a 15:9 ratio (WXGA, WVGA). On Devices like the Lumia 830 or 930, which have a 16:9 ratio, the preview will use the full screen in portrait mode. I tried a lot of things to get rid of those bands already, sadly without success. Once I found a proper solution, I will write another blog post and link it here on how to do it (any tips are welcome).

Limiting resolution

Sometimes, we need to limit resolutions (for example resolution limits on other parts in our app). This is possible by detecting the supported solutions and matching them to the screen ratio. As we are using the whole screen for previewing, of course we want to get our captured photo to use the same space, too.

My way to do this is to calculate the screen ratio, and return an enumeration value. This is the easiest way, and can be easily used in the further code to limit the resolution. The enumeration looks like this:

public enum CameraResolutionFormat
{
    Unknown = -1,

    FourByThree = 0,

    SixteenByNine = 1
}

And this is my helper to match the screen format (which is always wide screen on Windows Phone):

        private CameraResolutionFormat MatchScreenFormat(Size resolution)
        {
            CameraResolutionFormat result = CameraResolutionFormat.Unknown;

            double relation = Math.Max(resolution.Width, resolution.Height) / Math.Min(resolution.Width, resolution.Height);
            if (Math.Abs(relation - (4.0 / 3.0)) < 0.01)
            {
                result = CameraResolutionFormat.FourByThree;
            }
            else if (Math.Abs(relation - (16.0 / 9.0)) < 0.01)
            {
                result = CameraResolutionFormat.SixteenByNine;
            }

            return result;
        }

We could easily extend the calculation to 15:9, too. However, as the most camera resolutions are 4:3 or 16:9, this makes no sense in our use case (as 15:9 is still a widescreen format). The next thing we need to add is another helper to get the highest possible resolution for our photo and the preview. We are achieving this by generating a new object of type VideoEncodingProperties:

        private VideoEncodingProperties maxResolution()
        {
            VideoEncodingProperties resolutionMax = null;

            //get all photo properties
            var resolutions = captureManager.VideoDeviceController.GetAvailableMediaStreamProperties(MediaStreamType.Photo);

            //generate new list to work with
            List<VideoEncodingProperties> vidProps = new List<VideoEncodingProperties>();

            //add only those properties that are 16:9 to our own list
            for (var i = 0; i < resolutions.Count; i++)
            {
                VideoEncodingProperties res = (VideoEncodingProperties)resolutions[i];

                if (MatchScreenFormat(new Size(res.Width, res.Height)) != CameraResolutionFormat.FourByThree)
                {
                    vidProps.Add(res);
                }
            }

            //order the list, and select the highest resolution that fits our limit
            if (vidProps.Count != 0)
            {
                vidProps = vidProps.OrderByDescending(r => r.Width).ToList();

                resolutionMax = vidProps.Where(r => r.Width < 2600).First();                
            }

            return resolutionMax;
        }

What I am doing here: I read all available VideoEncodingProperties for the MediaStreamType Photo. As I mentioned before, we need only wide screen resolution for Windows Phone, that’s why I add only those that have not a 4:3 ratio to my list. Then I am using LINQ to order the list and select the highest resolution from that list.

Using this helper is also very easy, done with one line of code before starting the preview and best also before rotating the preview:

await captureManager.VideoDeviceController.SetMediaStreamPropertiesAsync(MediaStreamType.Photo, maxResolution());

This way, we are able to respect any resolution limits that we might face while developing our app, while keeping the photo quality as high as possible.

        private CameraResolutionFormat MatchScreenFormat(Size resolution)
        {
            CameraResolutionFormat result = CameraResolutionFormat.Unknown;

            double relation = Math.Max(resolution.Width, resolution.Height) / Math.Min(resolution.Width, resolution.Height);
            if (Math.Abs(relation - (4.0 / 3.0)) < 0.01)
            {
                result = CameraResolutionFormat.FourByThree;
            }
            else if (Math.Abs(relation - (16.0 / 9.0)) < 0.01)
            {
                result = CameraResolutionFormat.SixteenByNine;
            }

            return result;
        }

Focus

Focusing on objects in your photo is quite important. Sadly, it seems that currently we are not able to have a one solution fits all devices solution for using AutoFocus. I experimented a lot with it, and finally I got aware of known issues with Nokia drivers and the new MediaCapture API’s, as described here. Microsoft is working with Nokia (or their devices department) to fix this problem.

The only solution I got working for an Runtime app is to use manual focus. All other attempts gave me one Exception after the other, be it on cancelling the preview or be it on while previewing itself. I’ll write another post on how to use the AutoFocus as soon as it is working like it should. In the meantime, here is my solution for manual focusing.

First, add a Slider control in your XAML page:

<Slider x:Name="FocusValueSlider" Maximum="1000" Minimum="0" Grid.Row="0" Margin="12,0,15,0" Header="adjust focus:" ValueChanged="FocusValueSlider_ValueChanged" Value="500" SmallChange="25" LargeChange="100" ></Slider>

Notice that as with any slider, you need to follow the order: Set Maximum first, then Minimum. If you do not, you will likely get an unusable Slider in return. If the VideoDeviceController.Focus property would work (seems like it is also affected by the above mentioned driver problems), we could read and set the Slider values from its MediaDeviceControl.Capabilities property. I tried to read them at any stage of previewing, but their values are always 0.0, null and false. The range up to 1000 fits in very well on all devices I tested (Lumia 920, 930 and 1020).

Ok, enough of whining. Let’s have a look at my solution. First, we need to generate a small helper that allows us to adjust the focus based on the slider values:

        private async void SetFocus(uint? focusValue = null)
        {
            //try catch used to avoid app crash at startup when no CaptureElement is active
            try
            {
                //setting default value
                if (!focusValue.HasValue)
                {
                    focusValue = 500;
                }

                //check if the devices camera supports focus control
                if (captureManager.VideoDeviceController.FocusControl.Supported)
                {
                    //disable flash assist for focus control
                    captureManager.VideoDeviceController.FlashControl.AssistantLightEnabled = false;

                    //configure the FocusControl to manual mode
                    captureManager.VideoDeviceController.FocusControl.Configure(new FocusSettings() { Mode = FocusMode.Manual, Value = focusValue, DisableDriverFallback = true });
                    //update the focus on our MediaCapture
                    await captureManager.VideoDeviceController.FocusControl.FocusAsync();
                }
            }
            catch { }
        }

This methods checks if the current camera supports Focus, and sets its value according to the slider. The AssistantLight is disabled in this case. Its default is enabled (true).

To add the possibility to adjust the focus, we need to configure our own FocusSettings that tell the camera that we are focusing manually based on the slider’s value. Finally, we need to perform the focusing action by calling the FocusControl’s FocusAsync method.

The next step is to hook up to changes in the slider values within the FocusValueSlider_ValueChanged event:

        private void FocusValueSlider_ValueChanged(object sender, RangeBaseValueChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            try
            {
                //convert double e.NewValue to uint and call SetFocus()
                uint focus = Convert.ToUInt32(e.NewValue);
                SetFocus(focus);
            }
            catch 
            {
                
            }
        }

Now every move of the slider will change the focus of the preview and of course also of the captured photo (which we will learn more about in the third post of this series). To initialize our Focus correctly with the value of 500 we set in XAML, just call SetFocus(); before you start the preview. Here is the result:

Disclaimer: I do not know if this follows best practices, but it works. If you have feedback for the above mentioned code snippets, feel free to leave a comment below.

In the third and last post I’ll show you how to save the images (also in different folders or only within the app).

Until then, happy coding!

Nov

2014

How to capture a photo in your Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime app–Part I: the preview of the photo to capture

With the recent release of the public beta of RandR, I also learned a lot about taking photos from within an Windows Phone 8.1 app. There are several differences to Windows Phone 8, so I decided to start this three part series on how to capture a photo in your app (it would be too much for one single post).

The series will contain following topics:

Part I (this one): the preview of the photo to capture
Part II: quick look on some common modifications for the preview
Part III: capturing and saving the photo

The series concentrates on basic features to enable you to get started. I am adding relevant links to those posts, and at the end of the series, I will also attach a sample project.

Let’s start

Before we can use MediaCapture, please make sure that you enable Webcam and Microphone in your app’s Package.appxmanifest file. Then, we need is an Element that shows us the preview of the content we want to capture. In a Runtime app, we are using a CaptureElement for this. We also need to buttons, one to start/cancel the preview operation, and one to save the photo. Of course we want to show the photo we have taken, so we need also an image element.

Add this code to your XAML page:

<Grid>
    <CaptureElement x:Name="previewElement" Stretch="UniformToFill" />
    <Image x:Name="takenImage" Stretch="UniformToFill" Visibility="Collapsed"></Image>
</Grid>
<Grid VerticalAlignment="Bottom">
    <Grid.RowDefinitions>
        <RowDefinition Height="Auto"></RowDefinition>
        <RowDefinition Height="Auto"></RowDefinition>
        <RowDefinition Height="*"></RowDefinition>
    </Grid.RowDefinitions>
<Button Grid.Row="0" x:Name="captureButton" Content="capture" Click="captureButton_Click" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Margin="12,0"/>
<Button Grid.Row="1" x:Name="saveButton" Content="save" Click="saveButton_Click" HorizontalAlignment="Stretch" Margin="12,0"/>
</Grid>

Asign the click handlers to the code behind file, where we will also continue to work now.

Before we’ll have a look at the preview code, we need to enable our app to obtain the whole screen. This makes all sense, as we want to capture a photo, and of course we want to see as much as possible in the preview. Add these two lines to the constructor of the page:

var appView = Windows.UI.ViewManagement.ApplicationView.GetForCurrentView();
appView.SetDesiredBoundsMode(ApplicationViewBoundsMode.UseCoreWindow);

The ApplicationViewBoundsMode enumeration has two values (UseVisible and UseCoreWindow). The later one uses the whole screen (even behind the SystemTray and also behind the BottomAppBar) and suits our needs. Only one thing to remember for your app: You need to set the Margins in this case to get your UI right.

The preview code

Windows Runtime apps use the MediaCapture class for all photo and video capturing.

To enable your app to preview the things you want to capture, we first need to initialize the MediaCapture. We are doing this by a helper method, as we will need it in the next post to create some options for our MediaCapture. After declaring a page wide variable for the MediaCapture, add the following code to your code behind file:

       private async void InitializePreview()
       {
           captureManager = new MediaCapture();

           await captureManager.InitializeAsync();
           StartPreview();
       }

To make the initialized MediaCapture actually doing something, we also need to start the preview:

private async void StartPreview()
{

    previewElement.Source = captureManager;
    await captureManager.StartPreviewAsync();
              
    isPreviewing = true;
}

What we are doing is to set the Source of our previewElement that we declared in XAML to our captureManager and asynchronously start the preview. The isPreviewing Boolean is used to detect if we are actually previewing. We’ll need it in our method to stop the preview. This is very important. If you do not stop the preview, chances are high that you will freeze your phone or make the camera unusable for other apps, too!

To stop the preview, add this code:

private async void CleanCapture()
{
    if (captureManager != null)
    {
        if (isPreviewing == true)
        {
            await captureManager.StopPreviewAsync();
            isPreviewing = false;
        }
        previewElement.Source = null;
        captureButton.Content = "capture";
        captureManager.Dispose();
    }
}

We need to do a double check here: First, we need to see if we have a captureManager instance. Then, if we are previewing, we are going to stop it. If we are no longer previewing, we are setting the CaptureElement Source to null, rename our button and free all resources our captureManager used with the Dispose() method.

Now that we have everything for the preview in place, we are able to connect it to our captureButton:

private void captureButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
    if (isPreviewing == false)
    {
        InitializePreview();
        captureButton.Content = "cancel";
    }
    else if (isPreviewing == true)
    {
        CleanCapture();
    }
}

Now we are already able to start previewing (without any options) on our phone:

You might get similar strange results if you start capturing. For example, the preview on my Lumia 1020 is flipped upside down and the front camera is used.

How we are going to change this, is topic of the second part.

Until then, happy coding!

Oct

2014

How to generate a round image button for your Windows Phone 8.1 app (to use everywhere)

Recently, I experimented a bit because I wanted a round button that contains an image that can be used everywhere where I can add a standard button (and not just in the AppBar). I managed to get a simple style out of these experiments (sample at the end of this post).

First, you should check if you have already installed Syncfusion’s free Metro Studio (we will need it later). It is a powerful helper if you need icons, so if you do not have it, go straight ahead and download it here: http://www.syncfusion.com/downloads/metrostudio

Still here/back? Great! Ok, let’s start. In our project, generate a new button:

<Button Width="72" Height="72"></Button>

If you want your round button to have a smaller size, feel free to adjust the 72 pixels mine has to your preferred value.

The next step is to generate a new Style. Right click on the Button, and select ‘Edit Template’, followed by ‘Edit a Copy’.

Set the name of your style in the next window, and save define it as an app-wide Style or on your page:

This should open your App.xaml file and display the button as well as the newly generated style.

We are starting with our custom style modifications right at the top:

Set both Doubles to 0 and the Thickness to 0,0.

Next, scroll down to find the Border Element of the Button Template (closing ‘VisualStateManager.VisualStateGroups’ helps a lot).

Click on the Border element and add/adjust the ‘CornerRadius’ property. At a size of 72, the minimum value is 38 for the radius. This should be fine for most cases, but it may be higher/smaller if you are using another size. Don’t worry if your button looks like this at them moment:

We are going to fix it right now by setting the Height and Width properties of our Border element:

Height="{Binding Path=Height, RelativeSource={RelativeSource Mode=TemplatedParent}}"
Width="{Binding Path=Width, RelativeSource={RelativeSource Mode=TemplatedParent}}"

This binds the Width and Height properties of our Button to the Style. Now we just need to define the Height and the Width of our Button to make it actually look really round. Setting both to 72 will result in a nice round button.

Like you can imagine, displaying text does not make a lot of sense in this case. Round Buttons should contain an image. You could add one through adding a background, but this will result in a strange looking button when it gets pressed. Also, it does not reflect changes like a color change. To solve this, we are going to add code that is able to draw a shape for us. This is achieved with the Path Class in XAML. The Path class draws lines into a FrameworkElement like a Canvas or a Border.

To enable our Style to work with Path Data, we need to add some code before the ‘Template’ property Setter in our Style:

<Setter Property="ContentTemplate">
    <Setter.Value>
        <DataTemplate>
            <Path Stretch="Uniform"
                  RenderTransformOrigin="0.5,0.5"
                  Margin="2,6,2,2"
                  Fill="{Binding Path=Foreground, RelativeSource={RelativeSource Mode=TemplatedParent}}"
                  Data="{Binding Path=Content, RelativeSource={RelativeSource Mode=TemplatedParent}}"></Path>
        </DataTemplate>
    </Setter.Value>
</Setter>

What does this code do? The ContentTemplate allows us to add rich content to our UIElement, the Button. To make it resuable, we are setting it up in our custom button style. The RenderTransforOrigin property value of 0.5,0.5 centers our Path drawn shape within the border. However, I found out that some shapes do not look good with that alone. That’s why I adjusted the Margin property together with it. This should fit most icon shapes, but you might adjust this for your own needs.

The most important aspects are the Fill property as well as the Data property. Binding the Fill Brush to the Foreground Brush property is necessary to reflect changes like theme changes as well as changes in the VisualState. Only this way it behaves like a native Button. Binding the Data property allows us to enter the Path string into the Content property of a button that uses our Style without any conversion. This makes it very simple to generate a button with our desired icon.

And this is where Syncfusion’s MetroStudio comes in handy. It allows you not only to generate icons as png, but also as shape in XAML. To get the relevant Data, open MetroStudio, search for your icon. Below the icon, there is an Edit Button. Tap it to open the icon settings page. On that settings page, you set up your button. Play around a little bit to get used to it (it’s pretty easy).

Once you have your desired icon on the screen, click on the </>XAML Button. Copy the highlighted part of the XAML code:

Back in Visual Studio, add this copied code to the Content property of our Button:

Content="F1M181.003,-1898.78L207.077,-1902.33 207.089,-1877.18 181.027,-1877.03 181.003,-1898.78z M207.065,-1874.28L207.085,-1849.1 181.023,-1852.69 181.022,-1874.45 207.065,-1874.28z M210.226,-1902.79L244.798,-1907.84 244.798,-1877.5 210.226,-1877.22 210.226,-1902.79z M244.807,-1874.04L244.798,-1843.84 210.226,-1848.72 210.177,-1874.1 244.807,-1874.04z" 
Height="72" 
Width="72"
Style="{StaticResource RoundButtonStyle}" 
VerticalAlignment="Center" 
HorizontalAlignment="Center"/>

Which will result in this nice looking round button with a Windows logo on it:

If you run the sample project, you can see that the Button behaves like a native Button with text. Download the sample project here.

I am pretty sure this can be improved. I will continue to play around with this, and if I have found enough optimizations, I will write another post about them. Until then, this should help you to get started with your own round button – and the best thing: you can use it like any standard button wherever you want in your Windows (Phone) 8.1 app!

Happy coding, everyone!

Oct

2014

How to create a folder in Windows Phone 8.1 Pictures Library (and save/read files into/from it)

Some of you might have noticed that UniShare has its own folder in your devices picture library. Also some other apps like WhatsApp or Tweetium have it. The advantages of your app’s own folder are clear:

easier to get images into your app
user can always reflect which pictures come from your app
another presence of your app within the OS
higher remember rate for your app at the user site (which leads to more frequent usage of your app)

This post will show you how easy it is to generate a folder into the Pictures Library as well as save and read files into/from this folder.

Preparation

First, you need to add this using statements to your app:

using Windows.Storage;
using Windows.Storage.Streams;
using Windows.UI.Xaml.Media;
using Windows.UI.Xaml.Media.Imaging;

Next, add the Picture Library capabilities to your app’s Package.appmanifest.

If you have a 8.1 Silverlight app, you need to add it to both the Package.appmanifest as well as the WMAppManifest.xml:

Then we are already able to generate our folder with this single line of code (counts for both Silverlight and Runtime apps):

StorageFolder appFolder= await KnownFolders.PicturesLibrary.CreateFolderAsync("myCustomAppFolder", CreationCollisionOption.OpenIfExists);

You should always use the CreateFolderAsync method together with the CollisionOption ‘OpenIfExists’. This way, your app will open it every time you are going to save a file, but creates the folder if it does not exist yet. If you now go to your pictures library, you will not see your folder yet, although it is there (use a File Manager app to check it if you want). Folders do only get populated when they have content. This is what the next step is about.

Save an image file

Saving an image is also pretty straight forward. First we are generating a StorageFile within our folder:

StorageFile myfile= await appFolder.CreateFileAsync("myfile.jpg", CreationCollisionOption.ReplaceExisting);

This generates a File Container that we can write our image to. To save the image we are going to asynchronously write the Stream of our image into it:

//asuming we have an Image control, replace this with your local code
var img = myImage.Source as WriteableBitmap;
//get fresh drawn image 
img.Invalidate();

using (Stream stream = await myfile.OpenStreamForWriteAsync())
{
   img.SaveJpeg(stream, img.PixelWidth, img.PixelHeight, 0, 100);
}

This code works for both a Windows Phone 8.1 Silverlight and Runtime apps. If you now go to your Pictures library, you will see your app’s folder as well as your saved image. Pretty easy, right?

Read images from our app’s folder

Reading an image file is pretty easy as well. Here is the code:

//open the picture library
StorageFolder libfolder = KnownFolders.PicturesLibrary;
//get all folders first
IReadOnlyList<StorageFolder> folderList = await libfolder.GetFoldersAsync();
//select our app's folder
var appfolder = folderList.FirstOrDefault(f => f.Name.Contains("myCustomAppFolder"));
//get the desired file (assuming you know the file name)
StorageFile picfile = await appPicturesFolder.GetFileAsync("myfile.jpg");
//generate a stream from the StorageFile
var stream = await picfile.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.Read);
//generate a new image and set the source to our stream
BitmapImage img = new BitmapImage();
img.SetSource(stream);

//todo: work with the image

To get our generated folder, we need to fetch a list of folders in the library using the StorageFolder.GetFoldersAsync() method. We then query this list for our app’s folder. If you want to get a list of all pictures in your folder, you can use the StorageFile.GetFilesAsync() method. What I have done above is to load our saved single file. Finally, I opened a stream from this file and assigned it to a new BitmapImage, which can be used in our app.

There are also a lot of other options one can do with these folders and files, this is a very common scenario.

As always, I hope this post is helpful for some of you.

Jun

2014

How to load a list of a user’s twitter friends/followers in your Windows Phone app

During the last days, I was adding a new function to UniShare that suggests users the Twitter handles while typing in some text. The base of this new function is a list of the user’s twitter friends. In this post, I am going to show you how to generate this list and save it for further use. First thing I need to talk about: you can only load a maximum of 3000 friends at once due to the rate limit on Twitter’s part. At the end of the post, I’ll give you also an idea how to continue this after the first 3000 users were loaded. For the most scenarios, 3000 should be enough to cover the major part of your users. To be able to load all friends we first create a Task that fetches 200 entries of our user’s friends list. To be able to perform paging through all entries, Twitter uses so called cursors, which are 64-bit signed integers (long). You can read more about that here on Twitter’s API documentation. Let’s have a look on this Task:

        private async Task<string> TwitterFriendsListString(long twitterCursor)
        {
            ShowProgressIndicator("generating mention suggestion base...");

            //needed for generating the Signature
            string twitterRequestUrl = "https://api.twitter.com/1.1/friends/list.json";

            //used for sending the request to the API
            //for usage of the url parameters, go to https://dev.twitter.com/docs/api/1.1/get/friends/list
            string twitterUrl = string.Format("https://api.twitter.com/1.1/friends/list.json?cursor={0}&screen_name={1}&count=200&skip_status=true&include_user_entities=false", twitterCursor, App.SettingsStore.twitterName);

            string timeStamp = GetTimeStamp();
            string nonce = GetNonce();

            string response = string.Empty;

            //we need to include all url parameters in the signature
            //IMPORTANT: Twitter's API demands them to be sorted alphabetically, otherwise the Signature will not be accepted
            string sigBaseStringParams = "count=200";
            sigBaseStringParams += "&" + "cursor=" + twitterCursor;
            sigBaseStringParams += "&" + "include_user_entities=false";
            igBaseStringParams += "&" + "oauth_consumer_key=" + twitterConsumerKey;
            sigBaseStringParams += "&" + "oauth_nonce=" + nonce;
            sigBaseStringParams += "&" + "oauth_signature_method=HMAC-SHA1";
            sigBaseStringParams += "&" + "oauth_timestamp=" + timeStamp;
            sigBaseStringParams += "&" + "oauth_token=" + App.SettingsStore.twitteroAuthToken;
            sigBaseStringParams += "&" + "oauth_version=1.0";
            sigBaseStringParams += "&" + "screen_name=" + App.SettingsStore.twitterName;
            sigBaseStringParams += "&" + "skip_status=true";
            string sigBaseString = "GET&";
            sigBaseString += Uri.EscapeDataString(twitterRequestUrl) + "&" + Uri.EscapeDataString(sigBaseStringParams);

            string signature = GetSignature(sigBaseString, twitterConsumerSecret, App.SettingsStore.twitteroAuthTokenSecret);

            string authorizationHeaderParams =
                "oauth_consumer_key=\"" + twitterConsumerKey +
                "\", oauth_nonce=\"" + nonce +
                "\", oauth_signature=\"" + Uri.EscapeDataString(signature) +
                "\", oauth_signature_method=\"HMAC-SHA1\", oauth_timestamp=\"" + timeStamp +
                "\", oauth_token=\"" + Uri.EscapeDataString(App.SettingsStore.twitteroAuthToken) +
                "\", oauth_version=\"1.0\"";

            HttpClient httpClient = new HttpClient();

            httpClient.DefaultRequestHeaders.Authorization = new HttpCredentialsHeaderValue("OAuth", authorizationHeaderParams);
            var httpResponseMessage = await httpClient.GetAsync(new Uri(twitterUrl));

            response = await httpResponseMessage.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();

            return response;
        }

As you can see, we need to create our signature based on the url parameters we are requesting. Twitter demands them to be sorted alphabetically. If you would not sort them this way, the Signature is wrong and your request gets denied by Twitter. We are overloading this Task with the above mentioned cursor to get the next page of our user’s friends list. If you need the GetNonce() and GetSignature() methods, take a look at this post, I am using them for all requests to Twitter. Now that we have this Task ready to make our requests, lets load the complete list. First, declare these objects in your page/model:

        public List<TwitterMentionSuggestionBase> twitterMentionSuggestionsList;
        public long nextfriendlistCursor = -1;
        public string friendsResponseString = string.Empty;
        public string friendsJsonFileName = "twitterFriends.json";

Then we need to create a loop to go through all pages Twitter allows us until we are reaching the rate limit of 15 requests per 15 minutes. I using a do while loop, as this is the most convenient way for this request:

            //to avoid double entries, make sure the list is we are using is empty
            if (twitterMentionSuggestionsList.Count != 0)
            {
                twitterMentionSuggestionsList.Clear();
            }
            //starting the do while loop
            do
            {
                //fetching the Json response
                //to get the first page of the list from Twitter, the cursor needs to be -1
                friendsResponseString = await TwitterFriendsListString(nextfriendlistCursor);

                //using Json.net to deserialize the string
                var friendslist = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject<TwitterFriendsClass.TwitterFriends>(friendsResponseString);
                //setting the cursor for the next request
                nextfriendlistCursor = friendslist.next_cursor;

                //adding 200 users to our list
                foreach (var user in friendslist.users)
                {
                    //using the screen name ToLower() to make the further usage easier
                    TwitterMentionSuggestionsList.Add(new TwitterMentionSuggestionBase() { name = "@" + user.screen_name.ToLower() });
                }

                //once the last page is reached, the cursor will be 0
                if (nextfriendlistCursor == 0)
                {
                    //break will continue the code after the do while loop
                    break;
                }
            }
            //the while condition needs to return true if you would set up a Boolean for it!
            while (nextfriendlistCursor != 0);

As long as the cursor is not 0, the loop will load the json string with 200 entries. The class you’ll need for deserializing can be easily generated. Just set a breakpoint after the call of our Task, copy the whole response string and go to http://json2csharp.com to get your class. The TwitterMentionSuggestionBase class only contains a string property for the name and can be extended for you needs:

    public class TwitterMentionSuggestionBase
    {
        public string name { get; set; }
    }

Of course we need to save the list for further use. The code I use is pretty much the same you’ll find when you search for “saving json string to file” with your favorite search engine and works with Windows Phone 8 and 8.1:

            //saving the file to Isolated Storage
            var JsonListOfFriends = JsonConvert.SerializeObject(twitterMentionSuggestionsList);
            try
            {
                //getting the localFolder our app has access to
                StorageFolder localFolder = ApplicationData.Current.LocalFolder;
                //create/overwrite a file
                StorageFile friendsJsonFile = await localFolder.CreateFileAsync(friendsJsonFileName, CreationCollisionOption.ReplaceExisting);
                //write the json string to the file
                using (IRandomAccessStream writeFileStream = await FriendsJsonFile.OpenAsync(FileAccessMode.ReadWrite))
                {
                    using (DataWriter streamWriter = new DataWriter(writeFileStream))
                    {
                        streamWriter.WriteString(JsonListOfFriends);
                        await streamWriter.StoreAsync();
                    }
                }
            }
            catch
            {

            }

This way, we can easily generate a friends list for our users, based on their Twitter friends. Some points that might be helpful:

users with more than 3000 friends will receive an error after reaching this point on our task. Catch this error, but continue to save the already loaded list. Save the latest cursor for the next page and prompt the user to continue loading after 15 minutes to continue loading.
if you want to have a list with more details about a user’s friends, extend the TwitterMentionSuggestionBase class with the matching properties.
this code can also be used to determine the followers of a user, you just need to change the url parameters as well as the signature parameters according to the matching Twitter endpoint

As always, I hope this is helpful for some of you. Until the next post, happy coding!

Jun

2014

How to connect your Windows Phone 8 & 8.1 app to Yammer

In my recent project UniShare I also added Yammer, because some of users asked for it and we use it also at Telefónica.

This post is all about how to connect you Yammer. First, we need to prepare our app. Five steps are needed for preparation.

First, we need an uri scheme to launch our app. To add an uri scheme, right click on the WMAppManifest.xml and click on ‘Open With…’ and select ‘XML (Text) Editor with Encoding’. After the ‘Tokens’ section, add your custom uri scheme within the ‘Extensions’ tag, for example:

      <Protocol Name="yourapp-yammercallback" NavUriFragment="encodedLaunchUri=%s" TaskID="_default" />

Next step is to add a proper UriMapper:

public class UriMapper : UriMapperBase
{
    public override Uri MapUri(Uri uri)
    {
        if (uri.ToString().Contains("yourapp-yammercallback"))
        {
            string decodedUri = HttpUtility.UrlDecode(uri.ToString());

            int redirectUriIndex = decodedUri.IndexOf("yourapp-yammercallback");
            string redirectParams = new Uri(decodedUri.Substring(redirectUriIndex)).Query;
            // Map the OAuth response to the app page
            return new Uri("/MainPage.xaml" + redirectParams, UriKind.Relative);
        }

        else return uri;
    }
}

If you want to learn more about uri schemes, you can read my blog post here.

The third step is to generate your app on Yammer to get your Tokens. Open https://www.yammer.com/client_applications, click on ‘Register New App’ and fill in the form:

After clicking on continue, click on ‘Basic Info’ and add your uri scheme in the field ‘Redirect Uri’ and click on ‘Save’.

The fourth step starts with downloading the Yammer oAuth SDK for Windows Phone from Github. Open the solution and built all projects. After that, you can close the solution. Go back into your project, and right click on ‘References’, followed by ‘Add Reference’. Browse to the folder ‘\WPYammer-oauth-sdk-demo-master\windows-phone-oauth-sdk-demo-master\Yammer.OAuthSDK\Bin\Release’ and add the file with the name ‘Yammer.OAuthSDK.dll’.

The last step is to add your keys and the redirect uri in your app’s resource dictionary:

<model:OAuthClientInfo xmlns:model="clr-namespace:Yammer.OAuthSDK.Model;assembly=Yammer.OAuthSDK" x:Key="MyOAuthClientInfo"
    ClientId="your client id" 
    ClientSecret="your client secret" 
    RedirectUri="yourapp-yammercallback" />

Now that our app is prepared, we can finally launch the oAuth process. First, we need to read our values from our app’s resource dictionary. Add this to the constructor to do so:

YammerClientId = App.MyOAuthClientInfo.ClientId;
YammerClientSecret = App.MyOAuthClientInfo.ClientSecret;
YammerCallbackUri = App.MyOAuthClientInfo.RedirectUri;

To kick the user out to the oAuth process, which happens in the phone’s browser, just add these two lines to your starting event (for example a button click event).

OAuthUtils.LaunchSignIn(YammerClientId, YammerCallbackUri);
App.Current.Terminate();

You might notice the app gets terminated. We have to do this because only this way, the uri scheme we added earlier can do its work. If the app is not terminated, the values cannot be passed into our app. Technically, it would also be possible to use the WebAuthenticationBroker on 8.1 for this. Sadly, the Yammer authorization pages do not work well with the WAB. The best way to use it with this library, is to kick the user to the browser.

Once we are receiving the values of the authentication, we can continue the authentication process to get the final access token. Add this code to your OnNavigatedTo event:

ShowProgressIndicator("connecting to Yammer...");

if (NavigationContext.QueryString.ContainsKey(Constants.OAuthParameters.Code) && NavigationContext.QueryString.ContainsKey(Constants.OAuthParameters.State) && e.NavigationMode != NavigationMode.Back)
{
    OAuthUtils.HandleApprove(
        YammerClientId,
        YammerClientSecret,
        NavigationContext.QueryString[Constants.OAuthParameters.Code],
        NavigationContext.QueryString[Constants.OAuthParameters.State],
        onSuccess: () =>
        {
            GetYammerCurrentUserData();
        }, onCSRF: () =>
        {
            MessageBox.Show("Please contact us via the 'help & support' page.", "Invalid redirect", MessageBoxButton.OK);
        }, onErrorResponse: errorResponse =>
        {
            Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => MessageBox.Show(errorResponse.OAuthError.ToString(), "Invalid operation", MessageBoxButton.OK));
            HideProgressIndicator();
        }, onException: ex =>
        {
            Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() => MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString(), "Unexpected error", MessageBoxButton.OK));
            HideProgressIndicator();
        }
    );
}
// "Deny"
else if (NavigationContext.QueryString.ContainsKey(Constants.OAuthParameters.Error) && e.NavigationMode != NavigationMode.Back)
{
    string error, errorDescription;
    error = NavigationContext.QueryString[Constants.OAuthParameters.Error];
    NavigationContext.QueryString.TryGetValue(Constants.OAuthParameters.ErrorDescription, out errorDescription);

    string msg = string.Format("error: {0}\nerror_description:{1}", error, errorDescription);
    MessageBox.Show(msg, "Error", MessageBoxButton.OK);

    if (NavigationContext.QueryString != null)
    {
        string[] NavigationKeys = NavigationContext.QueryString.Keys.ToArray();
        ClearNavigationContext(NavigationKeys);
    }

    OAuthUtils.DeleteStoredToken();

}

With this, you are handling all errors and events properly. If the call ends successfully, we are finally able to get our user’s data:

public void GetYammerCurrentUserData()
{
    ShowProgressIndicator("connecting to Yammer...");

    var baseUrl = new Uri("https://www.yammer.com/api/v1/users/current.json", UriKind.Absolute);

    OAuthUtils.GetJsonFromApi(baseUrl,
        onSuccess: response =>
        {
            //do something with the result (json string)

            HideProgressIndicator();

        }, onErrorResponse: errorResponse =>
        {
            Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() =>
            {
                MessageBox.Show(errorResponse.OAuthError.ToString(), "Invalid operation", MessageBoxButton.OK);
                HideProgressIndicator();

            });
        }, onException: ex =>
        {
            Dispatcher.BeginInvoke(() =>
            {
                MessageBox.Show(ex.ToString(), "Unexpected error", MessageBoxButton.OK);
                HideProgressIndicator();

            });
        }
    );
}

As you can see above, the result is a json string that contains the current user’s data. You can either create a class/model to deserialize the values or use anonymous deserialization methods.

One important point: you cannot publish your app outside your home network until it got approved as a global app by Yammer. I am waiting for nearly two weeks now for UniShare to get approved and hope it will become available for all soon.

As always, I hope this post is helpful for some of you.

Happy coding!

Windows Phone 8.1

[Updated] String Encryption in Windows 8.1 Universal apps

Symmetric Key Encryption

Encrypting the string:

Decrypting the string:

Asymmetric Key Encryption

Encrypting the string:

Decrypting the string:

How to implement a bindable progress indicator (loading dots) for MVVM Windows (8.1) Universal apps

How to easily check the pressed keyboard button with a converted event using MVVM (Windows Universal)

How to capture a photo in your Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime app – Part III: capturing and saving the photo

The easiest way – capture as is:

Respecting rotation in the captured photo:

Cropping the captured photo

Sample project

How to capture a photo in your Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime app-Part II: some common modifications

Choosing a camera

Rotating the preview

Limiting resolution

Focus

How to capture a photo in your Windows Phone 8.1 Runtime app–Part I: the preview of the photo to capture

Let’s start

The preview code

How to generate a round image button for your Windows Phone 8.1 app (to use everywhere)

How to create a folder in Windows Phone 8.1 Pictures Library (and save/read files into/from it)

Preparation

Save an image file

Read images from our app’s folder

How to load a list of a user’s twitter friends/followers in your Windows Phone app

Follow me

Recent Posts

Symmetric Key Encryption

Encrypting the string:

Decrypting the string:

Asymmetric Key Encryption

Encrypting the string:

Decrypting the string:

The easiest way – capture as is:

Respecting rotation in the captured photo:

Cropping the captured photo

Sample project

Choosing a camera

Rotating the preview

Limiting resolution

Focus

Let’s start

The preview code

Preparation

Save an image file

Read images from our app’s folder

Follow me

Recent Posts

Tags