As I mentioned in a previous post, you can quite easily load Xaml dynamically in your Xamarin.Forms App. But how about performance? How long does it take in comparison to “regular” loading of pre-compiled Xaml.

It’s anything but easy to really measure this. We could eventually use LoadFromXaml and measure the differences. I decided to create DataTemplates and use the CreateContent() method to create the actual Control.

<DataTemplate x:Key="Test1">
<Grid>
    <Grid.RowDefinitions>
        <RowDefinition Height="auto" />
        <RowDefinition Height="*" />

    </Grid.RowDefinitions>
    <Label Text="Hello World!" />
    <Button Grid.Row="1" Text="Press me" />
</Grid>
</DataTemplate>
<DataTemplate x:Key="Test2">
    <dynamiccontrol:XamlView>
        <dynamiccontrol:XamlView.Xaml>
            <![CDATA[
            <Grid>
                <Grid.RowDefinitions>
                    <RowDefinition Height="auto" />
                    <RowDefinition Height="*" />

                </Grid.RowDefinitions>
                <Label Text="Hello World!" />
                <Button Grid.Row="1" Text="Press me" />
            </Grid>
            ]]>
        </dynamiccontrol:XamlView.Xaml>
    </dynamiccontrol:XamlView>
           
</DataTemplate>

You can see that the Xaml is quite easy, but loading it dynamically takes over 20 times longer than compiled Xaml.

I tried to create 10,000 controls and measured the following values:
Compiled Xaml: 5.8s
Dynamic Xaml: 133.1s

I know the test is not very representative, but you should always keep in mind that there may be a performance problem when using this method. Especially when you want to create dynamic Layouts in ListViews.

You can slightly boost performance (5-10%), when you load the whole DataTemplate from Xaml, and then create the Control with it.

Dynamic DataTemplate: 124s