August 31st, 2021

Introducing the .NET MAUI Community Toolkit (Preview)

Brandon Minnick

Developer Advocate

The Community Toolkit team is excited to announce the first pre-release two new .NET Multi-platform App UI (.NET MAUI) Toolkits:

As announced last month, these libraries are the evolution of the Xamarin Community Toolkits. They contain .NET MAUI Extensions, Advanced UI/UX Controls, Effects, and Behaviors to help make your life as a .NET MAUI developer easier.

These features are contributed by you, our amazing .NET community, and maintained by a core set of maintainers (see “Focus On Community”, below).

And – the best part – the features you add to the .NET MAUI Toolkit may one day be included into the official .NET MAUI library! We leverage the Community Toolkits to debut new features and work closely with the .NET MAUI engineering team to nominate features for promotion.

What to Expect in .NET MAUI Toolkit

The .NET MAUI Toolkit does not yet include all of the amazing community contributions from the Xamarin Community Toolkit. We are actvely porting them from Xamarin.Forms to .NET MAUI and they will be available in upcoming releases (see “Schedule”, below).

Maui Toolkit Features

The .NET MAUI Toolkit will not contain the MVVM features from Xamarin Community Toolkit, like AsyncCommand. Going forward, we will be adding all MVVM-specifc features to a new NuGet Package, CommunityToolkit.MVVM.

What to Expect in .NET MAUI Markup Toolkit

The .NET MAUI Markup Toolkit allows developers to continue architecting their apps using MVVM, Bindings, Resource Dictionaries, etc., without the need for XAML:

Fluent C# UI Extensions
Create your .NET MAUI UI in C# using MVVM (no XAML)

The .NET MAUI Markup Toolkit contains all of the C# UI extension methods from the Xamarin Community Toolkit.

Here are examples from my open-source HackerNews app:

ContentPage	DataTemplate
Link to Source Code	Link to Source Code

Docs

We have teamed up with the Microsoft Docs team to find a new home for all of the Community Toolkit documentation. Stay tuned for future updates when we announce the new location of the Community Toolkit docs on docs.microsoft.com.

Getting Started

Both MauiCompat libraries are available as a NuGet package that can be added to any .NET 6 project targeting net6.0-ios and net6.0-android:

	CommunityToolkit.Maui	CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup
NuGet Package	https://www.nuget.org/packages/CommunityToolkit.Maui/	https://www.nuget.org/packages/CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup/

Open a .NET MAUI project in Visual Studio

In the Visual Studio Package Manager Console, enter the following command:

Install-Package CommunityToolkit.Maui

Install-Package CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup

To add the namespace to the toolkit:

In C#, add the following:

using CommunityToolkit.Maui;

using CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup;

In XAML, add the following:

xmlns="https://schemas.microsoft.com/dotnet/2021/maui"
xmlns:behaviors="clr-namespace:CommunityToolkit.Maui.Behaviors;assembly=CommunityToolkit.Maui"
xmlns:converters="clr-namespace:CommunityToolkit.Maui.Converters;assembly=CommunityToolkit.Maui"
xmlns:effects="clr-namespace:CommunityToolkit.Maui.Effects;assembly=CommunityToolkit.Maui"
xmlns:views="clr-namespace:CommunityToolkit.Maui.Views;assembly=CommunityToolkit.Maui"

Focus on Community

While these libraries are built in collaboration with the .NET team at Microsoft, it is truly a community effort. The core team, Andrei Misiukevich, Pedro Jesus, Gerald Versluis, Javier Suárez, and (myself) Brandon Minnick, are here mostly to move things forward.

Your help and input is very much required. Whether that is through triaging issues, updating Docs, participating in discussions or adding actual code, we will need your help!

Starting in November, following the first offical release (aka non pre-release) of .NET MAUI Community Toolkit, we encourage you to open Feature Requests and Proposals to add your favorite .NET MAUI extensions to the toolkit:

Once your proposal has been approved, you will be welcome to submit a Pull Request adding your own feature to the toolkit!

Schedule

The .NET MAUI Community Toolkit will GA alongside .NET MAUI and .NET 6 in November 2021.

Date	Milestone
August 2021	First NuGet Pre-Release of `CommunityToolkit.Maui`
August 2021	First NuGet Pre-Release of `CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup`
September 2021	Second NuGet Pre-Release of `CommunityToolkit.Maui`
September 2021	Second NuGet Pre-Release of `CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup`
October 2021	Third NuGet Pre-Release of `CommunityToolkit.Maui`
October 2021	Third NuGet Pre-Release of `CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup`
November 2021	.NET MAUI GA
November 2021	`CommunityToolkit.Maui` GA
November 2021	Begin Accepting New Proposals + Feature Requests for `CommunityToolit.Maui`
November 2021	`CommunityToolkit.Maui.Markup` GA
November 2021	Begin Accepting New Proposals + Feature Requests for `CommunityToolit.Maui.Markup`

Summary

The .NET MAUI Community Toolkits are still a work in progress, but we wanted to share our progress with you today!

As you begin your journey in .NET MAUI, try out the Toolkits, open proposals on our GitHub repositories, join the discussions and help us make the best Toolkits for the community!

Author

Brandon Minnick

Developer Advocate

I am on the Developer Advocate team at Microsoft, and I love C#, .NET, and Mobile App development! I worked at Xamarin (before the Microsoft acquisition) and continue to share my passions with fellow Xamarin, C# and Cloud developers! I am an avid coder, having developed countless apps and I love working closely with the developer community to help fellow mobile app and cloud developers make 5-star apps!

8 comments

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Thomas Glaser September 1, 2021 0

Where did the ObservableObject go? It wasn’t exactly a big class, but we used it quite a lot because it’s just convenient.
- Gerald Versluis September 2, 2021 0
  
  Hey Thomas!
  
  For the .NET MAUI Toolkit we have to reevaluate all the things we currently have, especially if they touch things that look like MVVM. Since we now work together with the other toolkit(s), we don't want to have duplicate things.
  
  This preview release has a minimal set of things we managed to port already. That something is not in there doesn't mean it won't come. However, it also doesn't mean that it will come. We...
  Read more
  Hey Thomas!
  
  For the .NET MAUI Toolkit we have to reevaluate all the things we currently have, especially if they touch things that look like MVVM. Since we now work together with the other toolkit(s), we don’t want to have duplicate things.
  
  This preview release has a minimal set of things we managed to port already. That something is not in there doesn’t mean it won’t come. However, it also doesn’t mean that it will come. We might need to put it in a different place for things to make more sense. Of course our goal is to take nothing away from what you can currently use.
  
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  - Thomas Glaser September 3, 2021 0
    
    Thanks for the explanation. I’m taking that as a hint to start using some MVVM library I suppose 🙂
- vang chat September 1, 2021 0
  
  Very Good
Jack Bond September 1, 2021 0

When can we expect a DataGrid for Maui from Microsoft? If you guys don’t already have an answer for this, someone is dropping the ball.

I don’t think I’m alone when I say, I won’t adopt a new Microsoft platform until they release a DataGrid for it.

And no, I won’t use Telerik, or any other 3rd party SDK EVEN IF IT’S FREE.
- Gerald Versluis September 2, 2021 0
  
  The only way to find out if you are not alone in this is to see if there is already an issue on the .NET MAUI repository and if not; open one so we can gauge interest. We make all our decisions based on data that comes from a variety of sources. I can say with certainty it will not be part of the first release as we are working for parity with Xamarin.Forms, but...
  Read more
  The only way to find out if you are not alone in this is to see if there is already an issue on the .NET MAUI repository and if not; open one so we can gauge interest. We make all our decisions based on data that comes from a variety of sources. I can say with certainty it will not be part of the first release as we are working for parity with Xamarin.Forms, but there will definitely be new things in the future.
  
  For what it’s worth, the third-party controls are very good and I think that is also why there isn’t a big ask to add it as a first-class citizen. I would be very curious why you are so against the vendor controls.
  
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  - Jack Bond September 3, 2021 · Edited 0
    
    Third-party controls are great, until all of a sudden they're not supported. Dunno how many times v.Next was released and it was like a vendor wasn't even aware that new versions were possible. Another aspect is, if Microsoft isn't shipping a DataGrid, generally speaking, the project isn't ready for prime time. UWP is a perfect example. It was like they took Silverlight / WPF code, hired the a bunch of HTML hacks, smashed their heads...
    Read more
    Third-party controls are great, until all of a sudden they’re not supported. Dunno how many times v.Next was released and it was like a vendor wasn’t even aware that new versions were possible. Another aspect is, if Microsoft isn’t shipping a DataGrid, generally speaking, the project isn’t ready for prime time. UWP is a perfect example. It was like they took Silverlight / WPF code, hired the a bunch of HTML hacks, smashed their heads with hammers, and then said, “We’d like you to do the worst port in the history of software.” Boom, UWP.
    
    As to Maui third party controls, what’s the link to the NuGet package for Telerik? What no link, I have to download it??? Whoa, and now’s there’s a registration form?????? I’ve already completely lost interest.
    
    Silverlight, WPF, and even UWP have a DataGrid. Is Microsoft strapped for cash? It should have been developed IN PARALLEL.
    
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  - Peter Scheutz September 9, 2021 0
    
    The missing DataGrid is a dealbreaker for me too, for the same reasons as @Jack Bond mentions.
    IMO It’s a huge oversight, and a missing native Open Source DataGrid, will stop me from even trying out MAUI, because I know we will be needing it.