Mobilize.net Silverlight Bridge to Windows UWP

Windows UWP is both Windows Universal Windows platform, a Microsoft Windows NT kernel-based runtime (runtime) platform that spans all Windows device such as window S10 phones, tablets, serface, and embedded devices like Raspberry Pi.

Due to a number of historical reasons before the Windows Phone 7.x/8.x store was flooded with Windows Phone Silverlight (WPSL) architecture applications, due to the different development architecture of the application, Developers who want to migrate WPSL apps to the Windows UWP platform to serve more WINDOWS10 devices require some extra work, and some developers are upset because some code or controls have changed significantly on the WINDOWS10 UWP platform.

Here's a tool to help developers upgrade their apps Mobilize.net Silverlight Bridge This is a Visual Studio integrated tool plug-in that helps developers convert a WPSL app into a Windows 10 UWP Apps. (This tool is currently a preview version so you will encounter some problems when you use it, but even so you can download a try first, there will be no loss, right?) ）

First login to mobilize's website for download

Install this mobilizenetsilverlightbridge.msi execution file

You will then have a Convert to UWP option in your VisualStudio project properties

Then we select the input and output path of the project here to take care to use your UI project because there are some referential relationships between projects, Silverlight Bridge automatically detects that these references are parsed and processed together for conversion work.

When you click Start, the conversion is automatically followed by the upgrade report and log logs to see the problems and situations that are encountered during the conversion process.

After the conversion attempt to compile, because here I am using a default pivot template program does not encounter problems, but I am trying to convert some other projects have encountered some problems, please pay attention to the log log when the conversion

In addition, I found a Helper folder in the completed project, which is not used in the project but should be a processing class related to the application adaptation in the code.

And then I'm going to try to analyze what this converter is doing.

First it will update the manifest file of the converted project here include the application name of the application of NuGet reference, app icon, Capability,declaration and other features of the migration

Second it will help us mapping Silverlight api–> WinRT API Here the content is relatively complex, here if the business logic applied before should not involve too much change because after all is C #, about Silverlight and WinRT All of feature's mapping functions should be code replacements for control-level mapping implementations, but because of the syntax approximation you can escape most of the functionality code, but I also find that if the conversion fails when the agent project is encountered during the conversion, it should be because WINDOWSRT the issue of the Background task mechanism, hopefully the next version will fix the problem.

Then there is the logic of XAML mapping, which I think is more complicated, because the binding logic of XAML is very close to the business logic, and it involves some page styles or control styles, so the probability of failure will be greater. But here this tool can help us understand whether the controls we used before are still supported in windowsrt or should be roughly modified, at least as a guideline.

There is also a problem with async and await APIs because this async Await is a new syntax for. NET 4.5, and there are a number of SDKs that are changed to this asynchronous syntax, so it's possible to involve the problem of method merge with the attention of the developers ' friends.

Finally, the bridge itself is also an open source project that can now be found on GitHub. This preview version already includes 700 function API mappings, More API mappings (up to 1200 mappings) will be completed in November, and developers can not only use the tool, but also expand it to their own needs and share it with other developers.

If you have a Windows Phone Silverlight project then try this tool to see if it can help you migrate your app to the WINDOWS10 UWP:)

Mobilize.net Silverlight Bridge to Windows UWP