Layout not displaying content when loaded through new activity in Xamarin

Question

I'm developing an app with Xamarin.

I have three activities, DiallerActivity, ContactsActivity and SplashActivity - and two .axml layouts, Main.axml and Contacts.axml

The SplashActivity is the first loaded which displays a splashscreen on opening the app, when it's done it loads the DiallerActivity which displays my Main.axml layout - this works fine.

Inside my Main.axml layout I have a button which when clicked loads the ContactsActivity which should then load the Contacts.axml which just has 3 buttons inside and a label.. none of which are programmed to do anything.

The problem is that when the button is clicked, the display changes to a blank screen, still showing the android bar at the top of the screen.. it just does not show any content from the .axml file.

I need the Contacts.axml layout to be displayed when the activity is run.. I hope i've made this clear. My current code is below.

Code for DiallerActivity

protected override void OnCreate (Bundle bundle)
    {
        base.OnCreate (bundle);

        // Set our view from the "main" layout resource
        SetContentView (Resource.Layout.Main);

Button btnAcceptClick = FindViewById<Button> (Resource.Id.btnAccept);

btnAcceptClick.Click += delegate {
            StartActivity (typeof(VoWiFiApplicationFinal.ContactsActivity));
        };

Code for ContactsActivity

public class ContactsActivity : Activity
{
    protected override void OnCreate (Bundle bundle)
    {
        base.OnCreate (bundle);

        // setting the contacts.axml as the view
        SetContentView (Resource.Layout.Contacts);
    }
}

Does anyone have any idea why the Contacts.axml isn't displayed? If you need me to provide any more information just say and i'll bring it over.. I am using C# as my language by the way, so i'd prefer help related to that if it even applies to the question in mind. Thanks for reading.

Contacts.xaml code

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<LinearLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
android:layout_width="fill_parent"
android:layout_height="fill_parent"
android:orientation="vertical">
<LinearLayout
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:id="@+id/toptest"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="horizontal">
    <TextView
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:id="@+/label1"
        android:text="testlabel" />
</LinearLayout>
<LinearLayout
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:id="@+id/testagain"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="horizontal" />
<LinearLayout
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:id="@+id/menuBar"
    android:layout_height="wrap_content"
    android:orientation="horizontal">
    <Button
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:text="ACCEPT"
        android:id="@+id/btnAccep"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:layout_weight="1" />
    <Button
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:id="@+id/btnDeclin"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:text="DECLINE" />
    <Button
        android:layout_width="fill_parent"
        android:layout_height="wrap_content"
        android:id="@+id/btntes"
        android:layout_weight="1"
        android:text="TEST" />
</LinearLayout>
</LinearLayout>

Answer 1

There seems to be a bug in Xamarin somewhere. I also got a blank screen (except for the action bar) when I renamed the .axml-file back and forth and experimented with strings in values\strings.xml, sometimes giving them the same name as the .axml-file. Not sure if the strings had anything to do with it though, but I remember getting some kind of error when compiling at one point.

Anyway, the solution for me was to

1. Backup the contents of the .axml-file and delete the file completely.
2. Create a new .axml-file with another name than the original.
3. Paste the backed up content into the new file.
4. Rename the new file back to the old name.

After that I did a test run and everything worked again.