![\"Santa](\"http:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/44\/2019\/12\/Santa-Talk.gif\")
<\/a><\/p>\n(A very special thanks to the snppts website<\/a> for the great inspiration on the user interface<\/a> for Santa Talk! Y’all are definitely on the nice list this year!)<\/p>\n Santa’s a busy guy this time of year though. So this Xamarin.Forms app relies on Microsoft Cognitive Services – Text Analytics<\/a> and Azure Functions<\/a> to determine if you’re getting a gift.<\/p>\n You can download the app, and read instructions on how to install the Azure components of it from this GitHub repo.<\/p>\n Text Analytics is one of over twenty different Cognitive Services products. And it can do some pretty neat things.<\/p>\n For example, it can parse a string of text and pick out the key phrases. In essence telling you just the important parts. It can also identify entities, or people, places, or things contained within a sentence.<\/p>\n Santa Talk uses Text Analytics’ ability to detect the language a string a text was written in. And it also parses the general sentiment of a string. Positive or negative thoughts behind the text.<\/p>\n Even though Text Analytics provides a .NET SDK, you should not invoke it directly from a Xamarin app (or any client-based application for that matter).<\/p>\n Rather, you should only invoke a private resource like Text Analytics from a server-based client. You do not want to leak the private API key for Text Analytics after all.<\/p>\n And Azure Functions makes a great server-based client.<\/p>\n The benefits of Azure Functions are numerous, but Santa Talk exploits the ability to have a Function run in response to an HTTP call. Essentially making a Function a backing Web API.<\/p>\n So what’s the challenge? How do you get on Santa’s “Nice List”?<\/p>\n Everyone who participates can apply for some swag. Everyone will win Xamarin stickers and 10 entries will be chosen at random to receive a $25 gift card to the .NET Foundation Store<\/a>. Which is packed with Xamarin t-shirts, monkeys, and stickers!<\/p>\n The world is your snow globe. Which means, any idea is a good idea!<\/p>\n Here are a few that we thought of:<\/p>\n Additionally, there is a free tier of Cognitive Services and you can run Azure Functions locally – so this can all be done for FREE!<\/em><\/p>\n Here are some resources to get you started:<\/p>\n This Winter Solstice, give the Xamarin holiday challenge a spin for a chance to win awesome Xamarin swag by forking or cloning the Santa Talk repo and submitting to GitHub!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":569,"featured_media":46042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,383,1],"tags":[867,7081,7699,7700,7701],"class_list":["post-46022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-developers","category-events","category-xamarin","tag-azure","tag-challenge","tag-cloud","tag-holiday","tag-santa-talk"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":" This Winter Solstice, give the Xamarin holiday challenge a spin for a chance to win awesome Xamarin swag by forking or cloning the Santa Talk repo and submitting to GitHub!<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46022","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/569"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46022"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46022\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/xamarin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Cognitive Services – Text Analytics<\/h3>\n
Azure Functions<\/h3>\n
Santa Talk – The Challenge<\/h2>\n
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Get Sweet Xamarin Swag!<\/h3>\n
<\/p>\nWhat Can You Add or Extend?<\/h3>\n
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So Get Going!<\/h2>\n
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