Xamarin.Forms Custom Renderers Custom Renderer for BoxView

Example

Custom Renderer help to allows to add new properties and render them differently in native platform that can not be otherwise does through shared code. In this example we will add radius and shadow to a boxview.

Firstly, we should create custom control in PCL project, which will declare some required bindable property:

namespace Mobile.Controls
{
    public class ExtendedBoxView : BoxView
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// Respresents the background color of the button.
        /// </summary>
        public static readonly BindableProperty BorderRadiusProperty = BindableProperty.Create<ExtendedBoxView, double>(p => p.BorderRadius, 0);

        public double BorderRadius
        {
            get { return (double)GetValue(BorderRadiusProperty); }
            set { SetValue(BorderRadiusProperty, value); }
        }

        public static readonly BindableProperty StrokeProperty =
            BindableProperty.Create<ExtendedBoxView, Color>(p => p.Stroke, Color.Transparent);

        public Color Stroke
        {
            get { return (Color)GetValue(StrokeProperty); }
            set { SetValue(StrokeProperty, value); }
        }

        public static readonly BindableProperty StrokeThicknessProperty =
            BindableProperty.Create<ExtendedBoxView, double>(p => p.StrokeThickness, 0);

        public double StrokeThickness
        {
            get { return (double)GetValue(StrokeThicknessProperty); }
            set { SetValue(StrokeThicknessProperty, value); }
        }
    }
}

Next step will be creating a renderer for each platform.

iOS:

[assembly: ExportRenderer(typeof(ExtendedBoxView), typeof(ExtendedBoxViewRenderer))]
namespace Mobile.iOS.Renderers
{
 public class ExtendedBoxViewRenderer : VisualElementRenderer<BoxView>
 {
    public ExtendedBoxViewRenderer()
    {    
    }

    protected override void OnElementChanged(ElementChangedEventArgs<BoxView> e)
    {
        base.OnElementChanged(e);
        if (Element == null)
            return;

        Layer.MasksToBounds = true;
        Layer.CornerRadius = (float)((ExtendedBoxView)this.Element).BorderRadius / 2.0f;
    }

     
    protected override void OnElementPropertyChanged(object sender, System.ComponentModel.PropertyChangedEventArgs e)
    {
        base.OnElementPropertyChanged(sender, e);
        if (e.PropertyName == ExtendedBoxView.BorderRadiusProperty.PropertyName)
        {
            SetNeedsDisplay();
        }
    }

    public override void Draw(CGRect rect)
    {
        ExtendedBoxView roundedBoxView = (ExtendedBoxView)this.Element;
        using (var context = UIGraphics.GetCurrentContext())
        {
            context.SetFillColor(roundedBoxView.Color.ToCGColor());
            context.SetStrokeColor(roundedBoxView.Stroke.ToCGColor());
            context.SetLineWidth((float)roundedBoxView.StrokeThickness);

            var rCorner = this.Bounds.Inset((int)roundedBoxView.StrokeThickness / 2, (int)roundedBoxView.StrokeThickness / 2);

            nfloat radius = (nfloat)roundedBoxView.BorderRadius;
            radius = (nfloat)Math.Max(0, Math.Min(radius, Math.Max(rCorner.Height / 2, rCorner.Width / 2)));

            var path = CGPath.FromRoundedRect(rCorner, radius, radius);
            context.AddPath(path);
            context.DrawPath(CGPathDrawingMode.FillStroke);
        }
    }
    
 }
}

Again you can customize however you want inside the draw method.

And same for Android:

[assembly: ExportRenderer(typeof(ExtendedBoxView), typeof(ExtendedBoxViewRenderer))]
namespace Mobile.Droid
{
    /// <summary>
    /// 
    /// </summary>
    public class ExtendedBoxViewRenderer : VisualElementRenderer<BoxView>
    {
        /// <summary>
        /// 
        /// </summary>
        public ExtendedBoxViewRenderer()
        {    
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// 
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="e"></param>
        protected override void OnElementChanged(ElementChangedEventArgs<BoxView> e)
        {
            base.OnElementChanged(e);

            SetWillNotDraw(false);

            Invalidate();
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// 
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="sender"></param>
        /// <param name="e"></param>
        protected override void OnElementPropertyChanged(object sender, System.ComponentModel.PropertyChangedEventArgs e)
        {
            base.OnElementPropertyChanged(sender, e);

            if (e.PropertyName == ExtendedBoxView.BorderRadiusProperty.PropertyName)
            {
                Invalidate();
            }
        }

        /// <summary>
        /// 
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="canvas"></param>
        public override void Draw(Canvas canvas)
        {
            var box = Element as ExtendedBoxView;
            base.Draw(canvas);
            Paint myPaint = new Paint();

            myPaint.SetStyle(Paint.Style.Stroke);
            myPaint.StrokeWidth = (float)box.StrokeThickness;
            myPaint.SetARGB(convertTo255ScaleColor(box.Color.A), convertTo255ScaleColor(box.Color.R), convertTo255ScaleColor(box.Color.G), convertTo255ScaleColor(box.Color.B));
            myPaint.SetShadowLayer(20, 0, 5, Android.Graphics.Color.Argb(100, 0, 0, 0));

            SetLayerType(Android.Views.LayerType.Software, myPaint);

            var number = (float)box.StrokeThickness / 2;
            RectF rectF = new RectF(
                        number, // left
                        number, // top
                        canvas.Width - number, // right
                        canvas.Height - number // bottom
                );


            var radius = (float)box.BorderRadius;
            canvas.DrawRoundRect(rectF, radius, radius, myPaint);
        }

        /// <summary>
        ///
        /// </summary>
        /// <param name="color"></param>
        /// <returns></returns>
        private int convertTo255ScaleColor(double color)
        {
            return (int) Math.Ceiling(color * 255);
        }
}

}

The XAML:

We first reference to our control with the namespace we defined earlier.

xmlns:Controls="clr-namespace:Mobile.Controls"

We then use the Control as follows and use properties defined at the beginning:

<Controls:ExtendedBoxView 
    x:Name="search_boxview"
    Color="#444"
    BorderRadius="5"
    HorizontalOptions="CenterAndExpand" 
    />