Year of Code – Xojo Programming Blog

Year of Code 2025: November Project – PDF Postcard Generator

Gabriel Ludosanu — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 22:32:24 +0000

For November’s Xojo Year of Code 2025, I’ve created a fun and practical project: a PDF Postcard Generator. This desktop application allows you to easily design personalized holiday postcards by combining a chosen image with a custom message, then exporting it as a ready-to-share PDF. It’s a fantastic way to see Xojo’s capabilities in handling graphics, file operations, and PDF creation, all within a simple, intuitive interface.

What this project includes

A DesktopWindow (wMain) that provides a clean user interface for selecting an image, inputting your message, and generating the final PDF postcard.
Intelligent image handling that supports common formats like JPG, PNG, and GIF. The application automatically crops your selected image to a perfect 4:6 aspect ratio, ensuring it fits the postcard layout beautifully.
Robust PDF generation, leveraging Xojo’s PDFDocument and Graphics classes to embed images and render styled text effectively onto the document.
Customizable message rendering, which includes a subtle drop shadow effect for improved readability and a polished look against your background image.
Automated saving of the generated PDF postcard to your desktop, complete with a unique, timestamped filename, and immediate opening of the file in your system’s default viewer for quick review.

Download

You can download the entire Xojo project from GitHub.

This project illustrates Xojo’s robust capabilities for handling graphics and generating PDFs, demonstrating how straightforward it is to create functional and creative desktop applications. We encourage you to use this postcard generator as a springboard for your own ideas. Perhaps you could expand it by adding features like custom fonts, multiple message fields, or even integration with a data source for personalized bulk postcards. Or, consider how Xojo’s PDF features could power entirely new applications for reporting, invoicing, or custom document creation. We’d love to see what you build!

Gabriel is a digital marketing enthusiast who loves coding with Xojo to create cool software tools for any platform. He is always eager to learn and share new ideas!

Year of Code Project

How to Play:

Each month we’ll announce a new theme and share an example project of our own. Share your projects to the Xojo Forum thread for that month via GitHub (all the links you need are posted above ↑ ). Learn how to use Xojo and GitHub.

The Prizes:

Monthly winners get $100 at the Xojo store. Every month you submit a project is another chance to win the grand prize. The grand prize is $250 cash plus a Xojo Pro license and a year of GraffitiSuite and will be announce in December. Learn more about the prizes.

Year of Code 2025: October Project – Multi-Platform Communication

Gabriel Ludosanu — Mon, 13 Oct 2025 19:01:53 +0000

For October’s Xojo Year of Code 2025, I built MPACSocket, a tiny, reusable UDPSocket subclass that enables zero-config, local-network presence and chat across platforms. It wraps binding, broadcast, presence beacons, peer tracking, and JSON parsing into a single class with a clean event-based API. Drop it into Desktop projects and you’ve got instant LAN discovery and messaging.

What this project includes

A self-contained UDPSocket subclass (MPACSocket) that handles bind, presence broadcasting, peer pruning, and chat envelopes with versioned JSON (good for further updates to the protocol).
Simple API: Start(port), Stop(), Rename(name), SendChat(text). Everything else comes through events like Bound, ChatReceived, PeerOnline/PeerOffline, PeerUpdated, StatusChanged, and SocketError.
A sample DesktopWindow (wndMPAC) that wires MPACSocket to a transcript area and peers list.

How to use

Add MPACSocket to your project, drop it onto a DesktopWindow or instantiate in code.
Set DisplayName, call Start(62636), and listen to events to update your UI or console output.
Use SendChat to broadcast a message; presence beacons and peer tracking happen automatically.

Download

You can download the entire Xojo project from GitHub

This project shows how a small, well-scoped class can turn low-level UDP into a friendly, cross-platform building block. Feel free to adapt the events or JSON schema for your own protocols.

Gabriel is a digital marketing enthusiast who loves coding with Xojo to create cool software tools for any platform. He is always eager to learn and share new ideas!

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Year of Code 2025: August Project, Console Apps

Gabriel Ludosanu — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 13:30:00 +0000

Welcome back to the Year of Code 2025 series! For August, I built a minimalist and fun Console Task App that allows users to add, remove, and list tasks interactively in the terminal. No graphical interface, just pure console magic that demonstrates the power of Xojo for CLI apps.

What this project includes:

Interactive command-line interface to manage tasks
Commands to add new tasks, mark tasks complete, list all tasks, and remove tasks
Simple file saving/loading to keep your tasks persistent between sessions
Clean and modular code architecture for easy customization or extension

This project highlights how Xojo can be used beyond GUI applications, making it ideal for automation scripts, tooling, or quick utilities you want to run directly in the console (Mac, any Linux flavor, Windows) without the overhead of a full UI.

You can check out the full source code and try it out yourself at GitHub: Xojo-Console-Tasks.

Give it a spin, modify it to suit your needs, and share your enhancements or questions with the Xojo community. This is a great way to get comfortable with console application design in Xojo and to stretch your coding skills in a new context.

Stay tuned for next month’s project as we continue our journey deep into the many facets of coding with Xojo!

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Gabriel is a digital marketing enthusiast who loves coding with Xojo to create cool software tools for any platform. He is always eager to learn and share new ideas!

Year of Code 2025: July Project, Charting

Javier Menendez — Thu, 10 Jul 2025 18:32:31 +0000

July’s Year of Code theme is charting. Charting uses the DesktopChart, WebChart or MobileChart controls to make your data stand out with visualizations like Bar, Bubble, Pie, Scatter charts and more.

For this project, I created a small iPhone app to track my expenses – something I personally needed. While it’s designed for tracking holiday and travel spending, it works just as well for managing general monthly expenses.

Far from perfect, but useful for the described scenarios, this iPhone app lets the user set a trip location, add a description and even define a budget. That way, they can check in at any time to see how things are going during a trip or when tracking general monthly expenses. (It doesn’t make much sense to offer this kind of app for iPad.)

When it comes to entering new expenses, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible with minimal input and just a few taps. So, aside from entering the amount and the place where the expense occurred, the app automatically captures the geolocation. This helps me better remember places like restaurants, gas stations or points of interest I might want to stop at or visit again when traveling the same route.

When tracking monthly expenses, the app lets you duplicate existing entries so details like the expense location remain the same, and you only need to enter the new amount. This is especially handy if you tend to refuel at the same gas station or do your weekly grocery shopping at the same store.

So, what about charts? Honestly, this area has plenty of room for improvement and could eventually include a wide range of stats and visualizations. But for this initial release, I kept it simple to meet my own needs. In addition to the basic ‘Total Budget vs. Current Expenses’ stats, the app includes a Pie chart that breaks down spending by category.

Of course, you can download the full source code here and adapt or improve it so it suits your own needs.

Want to give it a try? The iOS app is available for free on the App Store: https://apple.co/3EGL33r

VoyageExpenses is built entirely with Xojo. It’s 100% Xojo code, with only two small exceptions where Declares were needed. It was published to the App Store using the Publish feature introduced in Xojo 2025r1.

Visit the Xojo Docs to learn more about using charts in Xojo. Visual elements like charts can make the data in your apps more memorable and impactful. We’ve written extensively on charting throughout the Xojo Blog.

Year of Code Project

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Javier Menendez is an engineer at Xojo and has been using Xojo since 1998. He lives in Castellón, Spain and hosts regular Xojo hangouts en español. Ask Javier questions on Twitter at @XojoES or on the Xojo Forum.

Year of Code 2025: June Project, Cross-Platform Code Class

Gabriel Ludosanu — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 18:00:00 +0000

June’s Year of Code theme is about writing code that works in any type of Xojo project. To demonstrate Xojo’s powerful multi-platform capabilities, this month I’m sharing a practical example: a single data loader and search class you can use—without modification—on Linux, Mac, Windows, Web, Console, iOS, Android or Raspberry Pi!

Introducing `dataClass`: Universal Data Fetching for Xojo

Do you ever wish you could just grab some remote JSON data, search through it, and use it in your app, no matter what kind of project you’re building? That’s exactly what this little, pure-Xojo dataClass allows!

Here’s what it does:

Loads a list of posts from a web API (using standard URLConnection and Xojo’s built-in JSONItem).
Lets you search by any term within the post’s title or body – case-insensitive.
Works unchanged in all Xojo project types – all of them!

Why is This Cool?

By using only built-in classes and avoiding platform-specific quirks, you can build business logic and utility classes that drop straight into your app, whatever the deployment target.

The Complete Source Code

You can copy the full dataClass source from this GitHub repository.

What Will You Build?

Have a favorite cross-platform Xojo technique, class or code module? Show us your own! Share in this month’s Year of Code forum thread.

Stay tuned for more Year of Code 2025 examples, and happy coding!

Gabriel is a digital marketing enthusiast who loves coding with Xojo to create cool software tools for any platform. He is always eager to learn and share new ideas!

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Year of Code 2025: May Project, Mobile Apps

Paul Lefebvre — Wed, 07 May 2025 16:00:00 +0000

One of the most common things I love to use my phone for is sharing pictures of my pets with others. We have two cats and a dog: Shawmut, Christofur and Lucy. To be honest, I’m not much a cat person as I find that cats are almost all Richards, constantly causing and getting into trouble. I’m 100% a dog person.

But even though I have my own pets, I do love looking at pet pictures. It’s a simple pleasure, but there’s not much that I find more calming.

Years ago I made a Xojo app (CatsUp) that displayed random cat pictures and it was a lot of fun. And one thing that Xojo excels at is making it fun to create software! That’s what the Year of Code is all about, after all.

Speaking of that, here is the Year of Code topic for May: Mobile Apps.

You can already find CatsUp for iOS and Android included in the Xojo examples, but why stop at just cats? Being a dog guy, I want to see some dogs. All the dogs.

Since I’m not here to start a cats vs. dogs war, I thought, why not both? It turns out I’m not the only one that thinks this as there are actually public web services that serve up pictures of cats and dogs. Web services and mobile apps go together like peanuts butter and chocolate.

The web service for cats that I’ve previously used is called TheCatAPI and is available here: https://thecatapi.com

There is an equivalent dog one called, unsurprisingly, TheDogAPI: https://www.thedogapi.com

For my mobile app this month, I’ve created an all-new app that can show pictures of cats, dogs or both! I call it Pawz.

Pawz app icon

Actually, it’s two apps since I made versions for iOS and Android. Here’s a look:

Pawz on iOS

Pawz on Android

Although they are separate projects, both use basically the same code. In fact there is only about 50 lines of code in each project! The UI itself is just a big ImageViewer that is used to show the picture and several toolbar buttons.

There are three buttons to request a cat picture, dog picture or a surprise picture that could be either. There is also an extra button that lets you share the picture, if you really like it.

You can find the source for the iOS and Android versions of Pawz on GitHub here:

https://github.com/paullefebvre/pawz

Year of Code is all about having some fun making an app. As you can see with Pawz, it doesn’t have to be anything extravagant. Even fun apps can be made quickly with very little code!

I can’t wait to see what great mobile apps you all create this month. Share your creations in the Forum topic.

One More Thing

Although phones and tablets are what we usually think of when talking about Mobile Apps, you know what else is rather mobile? A vehicle! And it just so happens that many vehicle manufacturers, such as Cadillac, Chevy, Ford, Honda, Polestar, Renault and Volvo are now using Android to run their infotainment systems. Technically it’s Android Automotive OS (AAOS), but it is very similar to regular Android.

Because Xojo builds standard Android Runtime (ART) apps, Xojo Android apps also work on Android Automotive OS as a “parked app”. You can test with this by using Android Studio to install an Android Automotive VM for the Emulator. Once you’ve added that you can run your Xojo Android projects on it just like any other device. Pawz works fine in an AAOS Emulator.

Why do I bring this up? No reason, although I believe Xojo 2025 Release 2 pre-release testing might be starting soon…

Paul learned to program in BASIC at age 13 and has programmed in more languages than he remembers, with Xojo being an obvious favorite. When not working on Xojo, you can find him talking about retrocomputing at Goto 10 and on Mastodon @lefebvre@hachyderm.io.

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Year of Code 2025: April Project, User Interface

Gabriel Ludosanu — Tue, 08 Apr 2025 15:30:00 +0000

April’s Year of Code theme is all about a great User Interface, I decided to focus on refining the user experience of an existing application. My project involves a user interface revamp of the familiar built-in ToDo desktop app example provided with Xojo.

The goal wasn’t to add new features but to explore how applying thoughtful UI design principles can significantly enhance the look and feel of an application, making it more visually appealing and cohesive.

Here are some of the key aspects of the UI revamp:

Design System Foundation: I started by establishing a basic design system. This involved defining core visual elements to ensure consistency across the entire application interface.
Typography Definition: Specific styles were defined for how titles and standard text should appear. This helps create a clear visual hierarchy and improves readability.
Consistent Color Palette: A specific set of colors (Light & Dark mode) was chosen and implemented throughout the project, contributing to a unified and more polished look.
Refined ListBox Appearance: The standard DesktopListBox control received some visual tweaks to better align with the overall updated aesthetic.

The aim was to demonstrate how focusing on UI details can elevate even a simple example application.

Here’s a glimpse of the revamped ToDo app:

You can find the complete source code for this UI-enhanced ToDo app project on GitHub.

Stay tuned for more exciting projects as we continue our Year of Code 2025 journey!

Gabriel is a digital marketing enthusiast who loves coding with Xojo to create cool software tools for any platform. He is always eager to learn and share new ideas!

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Year of Code 2025: March Project, Web Apps

Gabriel Ludosanu — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 15:04:00 +0000

March’s topic is Web Apps and I’m excited to introduce my project: Quiziverse, a complete quiz and trivia web application.

Quiziverse is designed to engage users with time-limited questions across various categories, making it a fun and interactive way to test knowledge. The application leverages a SQLite database as the backend for all data storage.

Here are some of the key features of Quiziverse:

Admin Area: The app includes a secure admin area, allowing administrators to manage categories and questions easily. Admins can add, edit, or delete questions and categories to keep the trivia fresh and exciting.
Scoreboard: A dynamic scoreboard keeps track of player scores in real-time, fostering a competitive spirit among users. Players can see how they stack up against others, adding an element of fun to the experience.
Time-Limited Questions: Each question comes with a timer, challenging players to think quickly and answer before time runs out. This feature adds to the intensity of the game and keeps players on their toes.
Import JSON Files: To make it easy for admins to add new content, Quiziverse includes a function to import JSON files containing new categories and questions. This feature simplifies content management and allows for quick updates.
Mobile Optimized Design: Understanding the importance of accessibility, Quiziverse is designed to be mobile-friendly. Players can join the trivia challenge from their smartphones or tablets for a seamless experience.

Here’s a sneak peek of the Quiziverse interface:

You can find the complete source code for Quiziverse on GitHub, along with detailed documentation to help you get started.

Stay tuned for more exciting projects as we continue our Year of Code 2025 journey!

Gabriel is a digital marketing enthusiast who loves coding with Xojo to create cool software tools for any platform. He is always eager to learn and share new ideas!

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Year of Code 2025: February Project, Database Apps

Paul Lefebvre — Tue, 11 Feb 2025 16:48:26 +0000

February’s Year of Code 2025 topic is Databases and my project is a SQLite object-relation mapping library that I call Storm.

I first created Storm in 2008 when I was working on consulting projects as a way to more rapidly create database apps for clients. It has been updated over the years and the latest version is available on GitHub:

Storm

An ORM lets you write code like this to set database column values and save them:

Var dodgers As New Team
dodgers.Name = "LA Dodgers"
dodgers.Coach = "Dave Roberts"
dodgers.Save

Team is a table in the database with a corresponding class in Xojo that inherits from Storm.DBObject.

The included demo projects shows how you can implement a simple UI for a database with Team and Player tables.

The docs for Storm are contained within its Github repository wiki.

In addition to accessing the full repository on GitHub, you can also download Storm as a ZIP.

I’ve created a forum topic for you to start sharing your Year of Code projects and I’ll also be sure to include this one as well. Remember, participants can win a $100 to use in the Xojo Store!

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Year of Code 2025: January Project, Desktop Apps

Paul Lefebvre — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 19:26:16 +0000

January’s Year of Code 2025 topic is Desktop apps and my project is XojoText.

XojoText is a simple text editor that lets you edit multiple files in one window with a list of files in the left sidebar. You can create new blank documents, documents from a selection in another document or from the clipboard.

It is based on the XojoText example that is included with Xojo, but enhanced in these ways:

Word, character, line counts shown at bottom of editing area.
Recent Items menu.
Window menu.
Saves window position.
Prompts to sae changes.
Contextual menu on files in the sidebar.
Click “x” to close files in the sidebar.

Suggestions for improvements and things to add:

Find/Replace capability.
Printing.
PDF generation.

I’ve created a forum topic for you to start sharing your Year of Code projects and I’ll also be sure to include this one as well.

You can download the XojoText project from GitHub here: https://github.com/paullefebvre/XojoText

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Year of Code 2025: Kickoff

Paul Lefebvre — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 16:30:00 +0000

Xojo is kicking off 2025 with something for everyone in the Xojo community, an event that will help new users grow their Xojo coding skills and existing users polish theirs. Back in 2018, we did a “Summer of Code” contest that challenged people to create one project a week through the summer. This was a lot of fun and many interesting apps were made that summer. For 2025, we have expanded that idea out to the entire year! However, instead of one app a week, we will make one app a month from January to November 2025. In December we will give away a grand prize!

The Idea

Early each month we will share a blog post that introduces an app “theme” and recaps the prior month. A week or so later, we will create a Forum topic and post an example project created by one of the Xojo team. To participate in the Year of Code, make a Xojo project that that demonstrates the theme in some way, share it on GitHub to make it easily accessible to everyone and then add a post about it (with your GitHub link) to the Forum topic.

If you have not used GitHub before, here is a blog post on how to share a Xojo project on GitHub.

Ideally, these will be small, focused apps that can be made in a few days. The idea is to have fun creating something that others might learn from. But I guarantee you’ll learn something as well. After all, the best way to get better at coding is to always be coding.

How To Participate

Each month Xojo will announce a new theme and share an example project. Share your own projects in the Xojo Forum thread for that month via GitHub, preferably. Projects with code shared at other sites can be eligible as long as the code is accessible to everyone. Learn how to use Xojo and GitHub.

The Prizes

And yes, there will be prizes for those that participate. Each month all participants (everyone who shares a project that month) will be entered for a chance to win a monthly prize of $100 at the Xojo Store plus a 25% off coupon for GraffitiSuite.¹ The $100 can be applied to any Xojo license purchase or Extras Store item. At the end of 2025, all participants from the year will be entered to win the grand prize of a Xojo Pro license, $250 cash and a free year of GraffitiSuite. The more months in which you participate throughout the year, the more chances you’ll have to win the grand prize.

January’s Theme

Now that it is January (Happy New Year, everyone), the 2025 Year of Code kicks off with this theme: Desktop apps. People have used Xojo to make wonderful desktop apps since its inception in 1998 so this is an ideal first theme that is broad enough to allow anyone to participate. Look for a post next week announcing this months’ project details. Once it is posted, I will start a forum topic for others to share GitHub links to their projects and apps. In early February we will do a blog post that highlights what people made this month and introduce February’s theme.

I hope you will join us for the 2025 Year of Code and I look forward to seeing what you make with Xojo!

#2025YearOfCode

Monthly winners are excluded from future monthly prizes but each monthly participant earns an additional entry into the grand prize drawing. ︎

Year of Code Project

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Year of Code – Xojo Programming Blog

Year of Code 2025: November Project – PDF Postcard Generator

What this project includes

Download

Year of Code 2025: October Project – Multi-Platform Communication

What this project includes

How to use

Download

Year of Code 2025: August Project, Console Apps

What this project includes:

Year of Code 2025: July Project, Charting

Year of Code 2025: June Project, Cross-Platform Code Class

Introducing dataClass: Universal Data Fetching for Xojo

Why is This Cool?

The Complete Source Code

What Will You Build?

Year of Code 2025: May Project, Mobile Apps

One More Thing

Year of Code 2025: April Project, User Interface

Year of Code 2025: March Project, Web Apps

Year of Code 2025: February Project, Database Apps

Year of Code 2025: January Project, Desktop Apps

Year of Code 2025: Kickoff

The Idea

How To Participate

The Prizes

January’s Theme

Introducing `dataClass`: Universal Data Fetching for Xojo