What's the best way to implement a drawer navigation with Xamarin

Question

Is it true that with Xamarin you need to make your custom Navigation Drawer, unlike normally in Java you would use "DrawerLayout"?

As far as I notice is that in Java/Android Studio you can easily make a DrawerLayout while on Xamarin you need to make a custom Drawer? Where it doesn't show stock buttons/slides/etc to open it.

Or am i incorrect and is Java/Android Studio using the same way for making Navigation Drawers as Xamarin?

That is, when I have a Nexus 5 it will show three small lines on the top left of my action bar which will open the drawer and also open the drawer when i slide from left to right on my screen.

While on some other device it works differently.

I'm trying to make it look almost identical as the Google Mail where: you can slide it in click next to it or slide it back to slide it back when its opened the three grey lines on the action bar slide in a little bit actionbar commands etc etc..

Anyone has some guidance for me on how to start with this on Xamarin?

Answer 1

I know this is an old post but...

Xamarin has ported the Navigation Drawer sample from the Android Developer site.

Android (Java) Guide: http://developer.android.com/training/implementing-navigation/nav-drawer.html

Xamarin (C#) Guide: http://developer.xamarin.com/samples/monodroid/android5.0/NavigationDrawer/

Answer 2

You can definitely follow the guide thtat @James Callender pointed out or you can make like easy and use a template with Navigation Drawer already implemented and ready to use.

https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/bee6442f-8f5a-4bba-8849-e380b61e76b0

Great contribution from James Montemagno