Copy And Paste Using Clipboard In Xamarin.Forms

Introduction

Copy and paste are used to share the data between apps, or within an app, and for almost all the platform-supported clipboard operations. So, in this article, we can learn how to achieve this functionality in Xamarin.Forms using DependencyServices concept.

Requirements

This article's source code is prepared by using Visual Studio. And it is better to install the latest Visual Studio updates from here.
This article is prepared on a Mac machine.
This sample project is Xamarin.Forms PCL project.
This sample app is targeted for Android, iOS. And, tested for Android & iOS.

Description

Let's start

Step 1

First, follow the below steps to create a new Xamarin.Forms project.

Open Visual Studio for Mac.
Click on the File menu, and select New Solution.
In the left pane of the dialog, let's select the type of templates to display. Multiplatform > App > Xamarin.Forms > Blank Forms App and click on Next.
Next, enter your app name (Ex: ClipbordDemo). At the bottom select target platforms to Android & iOS and shared code to Portable Class Library and click the Next button.
Then, choose project location with the help of Browse button and click Create.

Now, the project structure will be created like below.

ClipboardDemo
It is for Shared Code
ClipboardDemo.Droid
It is for Android.
ClipboardDemo.iOS
It is for iOS

Portable Class Library(PCL)

Step 2

Create an interface IClipboardService inside the Interfaces folder and having method declaration of CopyToClipboard.

IClipboardService.cs

namespace ClipboardDemo.Interfaces {
public interface IClipboardService {
void CopyToClipboard(string text);
}
}

Xamarin.Android

Create a class ClipboardService and you need to implement CopyToClipboard method like below.

ClipboardService.cs

using System;
using ClipboardDemo.Interfaces;
using Xamarin.Forms;
using Android.Content;
using ClipboardDemo.Droid.DepencencyServices;
[assembly: Dependency(typeof(ClipboardService))]
namespace ClipboardDemo.Droid.DepencencyServices {
public class ClipboardService: IClipboardService {
public void CopyToClipboard(string text) {
var clipboardManager = (ClipboardManager)Forms.Context.GetSystemService(Context.ClipboardService);
ClipData clip = ClipData.NewPlainText("Android Clipboard", text);
clipboardManager.PrimaryClip = clip;
}
}
}

Note
ClipData's purpose is a representation of clipped data on the clipboard. ClipData is a complex type containing one or more Item instances, each of which can hold one or more representations of an item of data. For displaying to the user, it also has a label.

Xamarin.iOS

In iOS also, we create a class ClipboardService and need to implement CopyToClipboard method like below.

ClipboardService.cs

using ClipboardDemo.Interfaces;
using Xamarin.Forms;
using ClipboardDemo.iOS.Services;
using UIkit;
[assembly: Dependency(typeof(ClipboardService))]
namespace ClipboardDemo.iOS.Services {
public class ClipboardService: IClipboardService {
public void CopyToClipboard(string text) {
UIPasteboard clipboard = UIPasteboard.General;
clipboard.String = text;
}
}
}

Note
UIPasteboard is an object that helps a user share data from one place to another within your app, and from your app to other apps.

PCL

Create your own Xaml page named VersionAndBuildNumberPage.xaml.

ClipboardDemoPage.xaml

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<ContentPage xmlns="http://xamarin.com/schemas/2014/forms"
xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2009/xaml"
xmlns:local="clr-namespace:ClipboardDemo"
BackgroundColor="White"
x:Class="ClipboardDemo.ClipboardDemoPage">
<StackLayout Padding="40, 60,40,0"
VerticalOptions="FillAndExpand"
HorizontalOptions="FillAndExpand">
<Label
Text="Copy and Paste"
FontSize="25"
FontAttributes="Bold"
TextColor="#533F95"
HorizontalOptions="CenterAndExpand" />
<StackLayout
VerticalOptions="CenterAndExpand"
Spacing="40">
<Entry
Placeholder="Enter text"
PlaceholderColor="#533F95"
TextColor="#533F95"
x:Name="ClipboardCopyText"
HorizontalOptions="FillAndExpand"
HeightRequest="45"
VerticalOptions="StartAndExpand" />
<Button
Text="Copy To Clipboard"
BackgroundColor="#533F95"
TextColor="White"
HorizontalOptions="FillAndExpand"
HeightRequest="45"
Clicked="Btn_CopyToClipboard_Click" />
</StackLayout>
</StackLayout>
</ContentPage>

Call to DependencyService

Now, let us call the dependency service in the code behind under CopyToClipboard click event for copying the text to clipboard.

var clipboardService = DependencyService.Get<IClipboardService>();
clipboardService?.CopyToClipboard(ClipboardCopyText.Text);

ClipboardDemoPage.xaml.cs

using System;
using ClipboardDemo.Interfaces;
using Xamarin.Forms;
namespace ClipboardDemo {
public partial class ClipboardDemoPage: ContentPage {
public ClipboardDemoPage() {
InitializeComponent();
}
private void Btn_CopyToClipboard_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(ClipboardCopyText.Text)) {
var clipboardService = DependencyService.Get < IClipboardService > ();
clipboardService ? .CopyToClipboard(ClipboardCopyText.Text);
DisplayAlert("ClipboardDemo", "Text copied!", "Ok");
} else {
DisplayAlert("ClipboardDemo", "Please enter the text", "Ok");
}
}
}
}

Note
In the above class, we are calling Clipboard Service and passing user entered text in ClipboardCopyText Entry.

Output

Please download the source code from here.