Chapter 27. Communicating with Network Services

Network services have the potential to broaden your app’s capabilities by connecting it to a vast collection of online resources. Many services such as Twitter and Facebook offer web APIs that allow your app to interact or even extend the services.

Windows Phone devices have low power mobile processors, which limit their processing power. By leveraging network services, your app can provide capabilities more akin to a desktop application.

This chapter begins by looking at the types of network services available on the phone. It then looks at monitoring network connectivity and at determining the type of network connection that the phone is using—Wi-Fi or cellular—enabling you to tailor the amount of data traffic your app uses accordingly.

The chapter then looks at the Open Data Protocol (OData) and how to create an app that consumes the eBay OData service. You see a useful custom component that allows your app to fetch data from a service as soon as the user scrolls to the end of a ListBox.

The chapter then looks at using the Simulation Dashboard to simulate real-world network conditions during development.

Finally, the chapter looks at the new Windows Phone 8 Data Sense feature. You learn how to reduce or halt your app’s data usage when a user approaches or exceeds his or her data plan limit.