Containers

Sharp.UI allows you to create single and multi-element containers using curly braces { }.

Single item containers

Objects such as ScrollView, Border, ContentView etc. can contain only one element.

new Scrollview
{
    new VStack
    {
        ...
    }
}

Multi item containers

Objects such as Grid, VStack (short name for the Maui VerticalStackLayout), HStack (short name for the Maui HorizontalStackLayout) etc. can contain multiple elements.

new VStack
{
    new Label("Hello,")
        .FontSize(40),
    new Label("World!"),
    new Ellipse()
        .WidthRequest(100)
        .HeightRequest(40)
},

Setting containers properties

In Sharp.UI, you can set properties for containers using lambda syntax inside the curly braces of the container, or as constructor parameters. The lambda function is a preferred style for setting container properties because it allows you to chain multiple property setters in a single expression, making the code more concise and readable.

new Grid
{
    // setting properties

    e => e
        .BackgroundColor(Colors.Red)
        .AbsoluteLayoutBounds(new Rect(30,170,300,100))
        .Background(new LinearGradientBrush(new Point(0, 0), new Point(1, 1))
        {
            new GradientStop(Colors.Yellow, 0.0),
            new GradientStop(Colors.Red, 0.25),
            new GradientStop(Colors.Blue, 0.75),
            new GradientStop(Colors.LimeGreen, 1.0)
        }),

    // container content here

    new Label("Hello, World!"),
    new Button("Click me")
    ...
},

Or like in this example:

new VStack(e => e
    .Spacing(25)
    .Padding(new Thickness(30, 0))
    .CenterVertically())
{
    new Label("Hello, World!"),
    new Button("Click me")
    ...
};

You can also set the properties of a container outside the curly braces by chaining the property setters on the container object, like this:

new VStack
{
    new Label("Hello, World!"),
    new Button("Click me")
    ...
}
.Spacing(25)
.Padding(new Thickness(30, 0))
.CenterVertically())