DevFright

Learning Programming

Location Authorization in iOS 8

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Apple has gone the extra mile to make sure the user is explicitly granting your app permission to use the iPhone location services. There are just a few simple steps to go through to get your app setup correctly.

First, add two keys to your info-plist. These are case sensitive and do not appear as a standard entry that you can select. Add both keys so you later have the option of calling either one. Make sure everything is spelled correctly and has the correct “camel case”, otherwise the request for authorization will be ignored.

NSLocationWhenInUseUsageDescription
NSLocationAlwaysUsageDescription

infop [Read more…]

Localization in Xcode 6 – Tutorial

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Your app is available around the world, but you’ve only made your app in the English language? You want to offer your app in the native language of ever user… but how?

Apple has 150 App Stores around the world with hundreds of millions of users. If your goal is to get as many downloads as possible, then make it available in every supported language (there are 40!!!). Maximize your apps potential via localization!

Localization is the ability of your app to display text, images, sounds, and numeric formats(dates and numbers), in the users device language. Localization should be standard practice in all apps, but prior to Xcode 6 it was quite a bit of work.

Apple has gone out of their way to simplify this process and after reading this demo I think you’ll be amazed. Xcode 6 makes localization a “pas sorcier”, or “no brainer”. [Read more…]

Swift Action – UIAlertController

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UIAlert and UIActionSheet have been replaced by UIActionViewController which now handles both.

To demonstrate both in one example I’ll make a short little tutorial showing how to fire an AlertView and also how to bring up an ActionSheet with options.

Start with a new project, single view application, Click NEXT. Select (language)Swift, (device)iPhone, and Save wherever you wish.

swiftNewProj [Read more…]

Targeted Social Sharing using the Social Framework – Tutorial

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This will build off social sharing using UIActivityViewController. If you have not viewed that tutorial you can jump to it here. Or download the project file from where the last tutorial ended. ShareDemo.

The steps to implement intentional sharing to one service are as follows:

– Add the Social Framework to the project
– Import the framework into the header file
– Add buttons for the social types we want to post to.
– Create a method to invoke sharing to the specified service type. [Read more…]

Social Sharing using UIActivityViewController

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ShareScreenApple makes it incredibly easy to add social sharing to your app.  There are at least two ways to do this.

The first calls on the UIActivityViewController which has some built-in, behind the scenes magic. It is extremely simple and does not use a Framework.

UIActivityViewController will bring up any available sharing mechanism on the users phone.  For example when the share button is touched, a view slides up with the available places to share.  Mail, Messaging, Print, Photo Album etc.  If the user has the Twitter or Facebook app on their phone, those icons will be presented as well.

The second way is using the Framework €œSocial€  The Social Framework allows you to target specific social outlets supported by the framework.

In Xcode 6 the available outlets are:

SLServiceTypeFacebook;
SLServiceTypeTwitter;
SLServiceTypeSinaWeibo;
SLServiceTypeLinkedIn;
SLServiceTypeTencentWeibo; [Read more…]

UIKitDynamics Sliding Menu Tutorial for iOS

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This tutorial will focus on a Sliding Menu and implementing effects on the menu using UIKitDynamics.

UIKit Dynamics brings real world physics to objects in your app.  Objects in your app like a button, an image, a table, etc. can have physics behaviors applied to them.

Used in moderation the practical application of these elements will add some polish to your app project.

UIKit Dynamics is made up of four elements;

1.   A Dynamic animator
2.   Dynamic behaviors(Attachment,Snap,Gravity,Collision,Push)
3.   Dynamic behavior items (Allows customization of properties used in the behaviors)
4.   A reference view

The Dynamic Animator groups and manages behaviors as well as the interactions on the reference view.  The animator uses the reference view as the coordinate system to calculate the output of behaviors. [Read more…]

NSArray reverseObjectEnumerator Tutorial

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In the last tutorial, we looked at the sortedArrayUsingComparator method which allows you to run a comparison on objects in an array and rearrange the objects in the array. In this tutorial we will look at a simple method which can be used to reverse the order of the contents of an array. Just be aware that this tutorial is quite brief as the code is relatively simple to use… it’s just a single line if you already have an NSArray to use.

Lets say you have 5 NSStrings which are a,b,c,d,e. When we iterate through these they will come out in the order of a,b,c,d,e. What if we want to show this information in a table view, but in reverse order? i.e., e,d,c,b,a. We do this with the reverseObjectEnumerator method of NSArray. [Read more…]

iOS 7 Background App Refresh Tutorial

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Background App Refresh is a new feature added to iOS 7. What it does is allows apps to quietly wake up and download content all while in the background.

Some of the built in Apple apps such as Mail, Contacts and the Calendar have always done this. When a new email arrives, you open the app and the email is there. Likewise, you add a contact on a remote device and it is automatically added to your contact list on your iPhone. On the other hand, all 3rd party apps could not do this. When notifications of a new email arrive, you open the app and then need to wait for syncronisation to happen. The same happens with apps like Evernote where your new notes are not downloaded until you open the app and sync it.

Background App Refresh changes this. iOS 7 developers can now add a few changes to their code and when done, iOS creates a schedule based on how often you use the app and then at intervals through the day, the app will quietly fetch data from your server so that when the user opens up the app, the syncronisation is already done.

Many apps have already taken advantage of this feature. This includes Dropbox, Evernote, Instapaper, Mailbox, Newsify and OmniFocus to name just a few.

Today, I want to show you how you can get your app to take advantage of this iOS 7 feature. [Read more…]

How to Use the CLRegion Class for Geofencing

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When iOS 5 launched in October 2011, one of the features that caught my attention was location based reminders. Location based reminders provided the ability to connect a specific reminder to a specific location. An example could be, written in English, “When I arrive at the supermarket, remind me to buy flowers for my wife” or “when I leave work, remind me to call Fred”. When you approach a supermarket a reminder pops up telling you to go get flowers or when I leave the office, I get a reminder to call someone on my way home. Although GPS/location features have been available for most generations of the iPhone, mixing that power with context can make your app very powerful.

Of course, geofencing isn’t only for the built in reminders app that shipped with iOS 5. Apple has opened it up for developers to access. Today, we’ll be looking at how to work with geofencing which specifically uses the CLRegion Class as well as the CLLocationManager. A good place to start, as always, is the class reference. If you are unsure how to understand class references, methods, passing messages, properties etc… then take a read of this post and return back when done. [Read more…]

NSUserDefaults Example App

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The NSUserDefaults Class allows you to save settings of your app so that when the user closes the app or perhaps reboots their iOS device, the settings you set are retained. A quick example could be a maps app that lets you set it to show distances in Miles or Kilometers.

Before I continue, I want to point out that if you want to share settings across devices then you need to look at storing preferences in iCloud.

In todays tutorial I want to show a quick demonstration of how NSUserDefaults works and how you create the object as well as save data. I will also show you how to retrieve the data so that your app can load up with the settings the user selected.

Various types of data can be stored in NSUserDefaults which includes NSData, NSString, NSNumber, NSDate, NSArray, or NSDictionary. Typically you would wrap a UIImage in to NSData to store in NSUserDefaults. Of course, you can also use other options to store data such as CoreData, but NSUserDefaults is a quick and simple way to store small amounts of data with just a few lines of code.

Lets begin by creating a new Single View application in Xcode. We then need to add a few things to the storyboard. Although you can follow this tutorial step by step, perhaps you could also experiment with your own ideas. The storyboard below has two views. The standard View Controller on the left that is set up when you create a Single View App. The second is a Table View Controller. I chose a Table View Controller because this is how I typically see settings views arranged. Of course, it isn’t essential that you use a Table View Controller for a settings view.

NSUserDefaults-Tutorial-Storyboard [Read more…]