I am working on a personal project, and the idea of being able to see where other members in the app were at the moment or if they were moving, but trying to share live locations has been becoming a little challenge, and store data as it goes on a databases i dont think is the right approach or am i wrong? I know theres an sdk called pubnub.... any ideas?
going with bidirectional communication sockets would be better choice . go for couchbase , couchDB , etc
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Which backend should I use in my app? Basically I want a user to be able to submit a number to the cloud, and have another user be able to receive it.
Is Parse.com the best solution to this?
This article might help you make a choice.
I have seen a couple of projects that initially used parse, but later on switched to helios
. Main reasons being transparency of costs and flexibility.
Idea: Create an database that I can integrate with an iPhone app.
As I have never worked very in-depth with online databases, I need advice on what methods are best for creating a database. The database would need to contain a list of usernames and passwords to login.
P.S. - I have my own website server.
The easiest thing would be to just use MySQL probably. Then you would define web services that expose basic access to the entities in the database. Best to do those with REST. That might be more than you are up for.
The problem with lesser solutions is that you can't have users just connecting directly to a db from the mobile app. So you have to have something talking to the db.
The other option would be to try to implement the whole thing using Game Center, since that has support for players and scores, etc. Not sure if that would be sufficient. I have looked at it but not in a lot of depth and there are changes coming in iOS 5.
In my opinion there is no need to bother with the iPhone app, just make a mobile version of the website. At the end of the day, you'll have to write the website infrastructure anyway, and with a website there is no need to worry about distribution. You'll even be able to support those using other devices.
If you are still looking for ideas, I learned a lot of what I know of web-based databases from a book called Head First PHP & MySQL (ISBN 978-0-596-00630-3). I already knew SQL and C++ (C++ is similar in many ways to PHP), but you really don't need it with book. It will teach you the very basics of both languages and how to tie them together. It will also give you a good frame of reference to Google solutions or ask informed questions.
I'm trying to plan out an application on the iPhone/Android that could be used to track dates/locations of events and update them as necessarily but I really have no idea what kind of method I should take.
Currently, there's two ideas for methods in my head:
1) Make a mobile webpage/website that could be updated with the necessarily information, then display this particular webpage/website on the App for users to view.
2) Make an app in iOS/Android to do the above without displaying the webpage at all.
The first idea is the easiest for me to grasp, since I roughly know the procedures of setting this method up. Displaying the webpages on a iPhone/Android screen should be relatively easy and this also allows me to only update the webpage with the latest information and all without (hopefully) building some kind of update system for the app itself.
The second idea is probably the better of the two, since I can make use of all the nifty features in the iOS/Android to make some pretty cool (what are the cool things, i don't know yet) things. I'm not exactly experienced in the field of creating apps, and I really have no idea how to start some kind of self-update functionality on an app, seeing all the apps I've done thus far are offline-based apps that does not communicate with anything save for local files. Should I get the App upon startup to download a file (XML or whichever?) to "read" the contents then update as necessarily?
Or should I just go for the first method, since it can be more efficient than the second one?
I'm really lost here, can anyone offer some tips and advice?
I believe that the first approach is a good one but I would suggest the following:
1- Create the website that will do all the business in your mind then
2- Port out the application in an easy way to be a mobile application how? Please have a look into this http://www.appcelerator.com/
3- Another idea that would save you the pain of going into all the above is to create a facebook application, this way you can make use of the facebook infrastructure and you will have the viral effect as I guess thats what you are looking for.
I hope I've introduced a good tips for you.
I understand that apple no longer allows me to send "device data" to third-party services. As a result of this, Flurry and presumably every other analytics company no longer collects OS/hardware version data. However, this data is very valuable to anyone trying to target development toward the people who are actually using the apps.
I can imagine a few different ways to collect this data.
1) Send a custom event indicating the hardware/os version to Flurry. This, of course, is in direct violation of the agreement with Apple. However, I suspect plenty of people are doing this, and just not getting busted. Still, not an ideal solution. Even if Apple didn't notice that we were sending this data, I'd rather not have the possibility of the app getting pulled hanging over my head.
2) Use an analytics package which allows me to collect data on my own server. Localytics is one company which seems to offer this. However, I don't think they offer this with their free plan. Is anyone aware of any free (or cheap) analytics tools which will allow me to send data to my own server?
3) Roll my own solution. This could either be an entire replacement for Flurry, or I could continue to use flurry, but send only the device data to my own server. This is a little clunky. I'd much rather have all my analytics data in one place. And would much rather not have to deal with building my own tool if I don't have to
So, is anyone else collecting device data? Are you using one of the above techniques? Or maybe something different I hadn't thought of?
Hi maybe "Testflight Live" could help you.
As far as I know Testflight is allowed by Apple.
https://testflightapp.com/sdk/live/
I've heard of people using UIWebViews to connect to a webpage with a counter. The counter is incremented each time a page is accessed, and the pages are separated by feature/UIView. This way the developer can tell which features get the most usage.
As far as device data, you most likely are looking at rolling your own tracking mechanism, probably going through a server like Google App Engine that's set up to receive your data.
I made this an answer so I could continue to check back, because I'd like to know some more info as well. I voted up your question and favorited it
Good luck, sir
How does one build a directory of 'Spots' for users to check-in to in a native iPhone app? Or, does the developer borrow data from, let's say, Google Maps?
When you Use data obtained from another network or source, you take a risk that the data may change and or may not be accurate, The data may cease to exist, (more so with google, LOL, one minute they are there like gangbusters, the next they are like "Gone" no explanation no apologies, just missing in action, if your developing an application for a business its always best to use your own data sources.
That may be more expensive but its the only way you will have any kind of control over your application resources,.
You can go both ways, it depends on what you want to do and how you designed it to do it. You can have a prerecorded and static database of spots, or you can update it sometimes connecting to some server or you can do it all dynamically by loading each time data from the internet.
Which one to choose? first you shall design your app having in mind something like:
How many times will these datas change
How frequently will these changes happen
How much will it cost to do an update
and so on
Developing your own database of places is likely to be quite an undertaking (and your competitors have a big head start). Google is beginning to provide their Places API for "check-in" style applications, so you may be able to get in on their beta.