I am a relative beginner to iOS development, but I managed to get my app to do everything I want it to. However, I have some questions about tying the app up together.
The only code I have currently inside my appDelegate handles remote notifications; when I receive a remote notification I send out the alerts, messages, and so on to the user. I also generate notifications for the notification center which cause different methods to run inside different view controllers.
What about all the different functions in the appDelegate? DidEnterBackground, WillEnterForeground, etc.? My app starts on one view (view1), which creates an object (stream1), which has a method stopStream. I have buttons to start and stop the streams ([self.stream1 stopStream]). My question in, how do I call these methods to stop that particular instance of the object in one of the appDelegate methods? Do I need to create a notification for the notification center inside the appDelegate, and handle it triggering in the view? Or is there a simpler method? Or am I doing things completely wrong and not according to best practices?
Any help would be appreciated! Also a link to a guide about the architecture of apps, or a link to your favorite book about building apps in iOS would be great!
Your app delegate only needs to implement the various app delegate methods if the app delegate actually needs to do something with those events.
If a given view controller or other class is interested in the various app delegate notifications (such as enter background, or return to foreground, etc.), then the view controller or other class should register for the corresponding notification. See the docs for UIApplication for the different notifications.
Do not have the app delegate method post a custom notification.
All the methods you're looking for can be found listed here in the docs.
As for what to do about them thats definitely up to your app. It is best practice to handle at least going in and out of the background properly so at least use the methods for those and take the appropriate action in your app.
Its very common for apps to simply blast out NSNotifications like you mention. Its perfectly acceptable in most circumstances.
Related
This applies to iOS programming specifically using QuickBlox's API for video calls.
Obviously you don't want users to receive video calls in just one view controller in the app, so you need to make users be able to receive calls anywhere in the app.
Before I spend hours figuring out how to do this, I'm wondering how to tackle this issue.
I'm guessing that it has something to do with the - (void) chatDidReceiveCallRequestFromUser function in the AppDelegate, and having an alert view pop up over any view in the apps.
How do you make QuickBlox video calls receivable while being in any view of the app?
In my application I created singleton class which conform QBChatDelegate protocol. In this class I implemented all needed methods and created #property with my viewController in which I realized all video chat code. So when call request coming I make all needed operation and call viewController's QBChatDelegate methods and if I need - present view controller by using TabBarController or in any other way.
What is the need of delegation in iphone/ipad development or objective C?
I read so many articles on it. All were telling how to implement the concept, but no one was telling why we need to implement that, in which case we should implement it.
Suppose you want to implement Login functionality in your app ... now you won't show Login screen every time you run your app.. only when it is first started and you don't have a login and password...
So in this case..
Your app starts :
View 1 loads (default view )
You check no Login name is there..
You load a new view..(Login View ) .
User enter his details..you get your login and password...
now you want to go back to default view and load the main app with
the names the user entered in Login View....
Now you will use delegate to pass these information(login details) back to default View..so that it knows..its details. now there are many different ways to do these things...like notification and singleton classes.. but when you want to sent more than 3-4 sets of data.. it is best to use delegates
Think of all the components that iOS and Cocoa provide you with. TableViews, TextFields, PopOvers...etc.
When the developers wrote these components, they couldn't possibly know all the various implementations that us developers were going to create using these components. But we need somehow to communicate with them in a generic way.
These components use delegates. The delegate is an implementation independent way of describing some behaviour that your component can conform to.
When UITableView need to find out what is the height of the rows, the UITableView only needs to know about UITableViewDelegate. It doesn't need to know about MyTableViewController, JohnsTableViewController, BobsTableViewController... etc.
So the delegate is decoupling the component from the implementation and the type.
Decoupling is a good thing. It makes maintaing and changing code a lot easier, and makes code reusable.
Delegation is a simple and powerful pattern in which one object in a
program acts on behalf of, or in coordination with, another object.
The delegating object keeps a reference to the other object—the
delegate—and at the appropriate time sends a message to it. The
message informs the delegate of an event that the delegating object is
about to handle or has just handled. The delegate may respond to the
message by updating the appearance or state of itself or other objects
in the application, and in some cases it can return a value that
affects how an impending event is handled. The main value of
delegation is that it allows you to easily customize the behavior of
several objects in one central object.
SOURCE
Use a delegate if you want to talk to only one object. For example, a
tableView has a delegate - only one object should be responsible for
dealing with it.
Use notifications if you want to tell everyone that something has
happened. For example in low memory situations a notification is sent
telling your app that there has been a memory warning. Because lots of
objects in your app might want to lower their memory usage it's a
notification.
this was an answer posted to my question here
There are two key benefits of delegation: customizing objects without subclassing, and improving encapsulation.
Customization without subclassing is a benefit you get from many of the Cocoa and Cocoa-Touch APIs using the delegate pattern. If they didn't do so, you might have to subclass a UITableView every time you wanted to change its behavior by using different types of cells or a different data source. Instead, you just set the table view's delegate and data source to customize its behavior.
As for encapsulation, the delegate pattern helps you keep the different components of your code separate. For example, if your custom View needs to have some data, it would be bad practice to simply give it access to your Model, or even full access to your Controller. Instead, you'd probably set up some kind of delegate protocol for your View that your Controller would implement. That way your classes know no more about each other than they need to, so that changes in one part would be less likely to break others.
I am fairly new to Objective-C, but haven't been able to find the answer I am looking for yet.
I am building a practice app which counts down days till specific events (christmas). It all works well, but I wanted to implement a simple way to change the background image (created from storyboards). The current setup of the app is a basic utility app, with the alternate view containing a UISegmentedControl that will set which background image will be displayed behind the countdown label.
I know I can just push separate views, but that seems quite inefficient. I am fairly sure I can use NSNotifications to update the background image, but am still unclear after reading the documentation how to implement it.
One way is to use delegates. A delegate is a callback. That avoids one view passing a reference to another view and having it poke (introduces coupling). Instead, one provides a callback via a formal protocol and delegate to the other.
Here's an SO question that covers it:
What exactly does delegate do in xcode ios project?
Another option is to have a shared model. Using a singleton pattern, multiple views can share a model (data and operations) and you can use NSNotificationCenter to send notifications. When the other view gets the notification that the background changed, it can query the model and update the background.
Related posts:
Giving notification to another class with NSNotificationCenter
How to share an object with the entire project?
As far as the pros and cons go, basically a notification is good when you want to broadcast a change to multiple views. Delegation is good when two items need to communicate directly with some abstraction.
NSNotificationCenter vs delegation( using protocols )?
Could anyone tell me when we use the AppDelegate.m and AppDelegate.h during iPhone programming? I have used only the ViewController.m and ViewController.h for basic learning. I just want to know when and why AppDelegate is used.
Both define classes, but the classes are used for different things. ViewController.h/m define a view controller class that manages a hierarchy of views -- basically, one screen of an application. You might have multiple screens that each have their own view controller.
AppDelegate.h/m define a class that manages the application overall. The app will create one instance of that class and send that object messages that let the delegate influence the app's behavior at well-defined times. For example, -application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: is sent when the app has finished launching and is ready to do something interesting. Take a look at the UIApplicationDelegate reference page for a list of messages that the app delegate can implement to modify the behavior of the application.
I would like to add the following to #Caleb's answer.
If care is not taken, the AppDelegate could easily become one of the most accessed objects in the application. I usually refrain from calling methods in the AppDelegate from any of my ViewControllers. Unless, something needs to be reported to the AppDelegate that would influence the behaviour of the whole application.
I keep my AppDelegate for the following:
initialization: whatever needs to be done on the very first launch (after an install or an update)
data migration from version to version (e.g. if you use CoreData and migrations)
configuration of objects linked via IBOutlets from MainWindow.xib
determining the initial orientation to launch in
saving uncommitted data / state prior to the application being terminated or entering background mode
registering for the Apple Push Notification Service and sending the device token to our server
opening one of the supported application URLs (e.g. maps://)
For other use case scenarios and a more thourough description of the AppDelegate, see the iOS Application Programming Guide.
The view-controller. h/m is responsible of controlling the connection between your model and your view (more on MVC here).
AppDelegate. h/m is responsible for the life-cycle of your application. What to do when the user press the home button and exit your app, what to do when the app enter background. Things like this.
I am developing an iPhone application with multiviews (Nav controller), but i like to receive an event if user touches in any view of the view. I understand it can be done by subclassing application delegate? If that's true how can i do it? My requirement is, i like to receive an event as soon as user touches any where in any view within my application.
Thanks for your help and time.
Your reference to subclassing UIApplication will work. Read down through the comments and it covers a somewhat quirky IMO way to implement it (by having the AppDelegate be a subclass of UIApplication). Myself, I would create a separate class to be the UIApplication subclass, rather than having the app delegate do both jobs, but I see the merit of either way.
That said, this is a very large and unusual stick and may suggest a design failure. What problem are you solving with this?
A way to do it is to use a Singleton class (which acts as an observer/mediator), which the application is an example of, in which you have viewControllers subscribe to when they are intersted in the touch events of a certain view. When the touch occurs the Singleton class is informed of the event as a result it informs all subscribers to the event of the event.
Here is an example
#interface MyEventClass
{
-(void)TouchEventDidOccur;
-(void)subscribeToTouchEvent:(id)delegate selector(selector):sel
}
Above is the singleton class
now this is an example of what the view touchesBegan method might look like
-(void)touchesBegan...
{
[[MyEventClass sharedInstance] TouchEventDidOccur];
}
and how one would subscribe to the event
[[MyEventClass sharedInstance] subscribeToTouchEvent:self selector:#selector(receiveTouchEvent:)]
hope this helps
What's wrong with using notifications? If you have disconnected classes across your application, it's trivial to have them listen for a particular notification, then have your views or view controllers post that notification when a touch event happens. All of the observers will take action on the notification.