I want to implement the feature "DO Not Disturb" in iOS 6.
First question : Is there any framework or api apple exposed to control them through the code?
After lot of googling i found an application on the app store "Call Bliss" that provides this functionality and complete control over the calls, sms and mms.
Can anybody explain how this application works?
or
any other work around to learn and implement this feature in iOS?
Thanks in advance...
From reading the description of Call Bliss, it actually sounds quite simple in how it works.
1) Do Not Disturb must be enabled at all times. Not scheduled, not off, but on at all times.
2) It requires you to set the contacts group for exceptions to Do Not Disturb to "Bliss Exceptions". This implies that the application requires access to your address book.
From there, it's probably wise to assume that it manages the contacts in the "Bliss Exceptions" contact group based on whatever parameters you set in the application. It adds and removes people in that group based said parameters.
So to answer your question, no, there is no framework to do this. The way they're doing it is likely the only way to do it currently with no public API for managing do not disturb status.
There is no public API to even access do-not-disturb functionality.
I think this is what the app does:
The app creates and manages its own contact list (called Bliss exceptions)
the user have to select it in the do-not-disturb preferences.
The App can run in the background because it uses location tracking (probably significant only to save battery life), so when the user changes locations it can update the exception list.
When a call is received do-not-disturb system functionality checks the Bliss exceptions list and silences all calls from contacts on the list.
Please note that reviewers complain about the lack of time based call blocking. It is impossible because the app can only execute code when the location is changed.
In my Knowledge there is no way to implement it via code. There is no public api provided for restricting the calls.
But there is an API for detecting the calls : CTCallCenter and a FrameWork called CoreTelephonyFramework
Related
My program needs to react to the user not taking any action on a GNotification.
More specificially, a piece of data is written to the database only if the user does not press the "undo" button on the notification sent after the data's creation. My target deployment scenario does have notifications enabled and a real timeout value.
To be precise: Moving the notification "away" / deleting it should also count as such a timeout.
1) Is there a built-in way to 'listen' to notification timeouts?
2) If not, how could I still implement similar behavior?
I would use the D-Bus org.freedesktop.Notifications interface. Although it is still a draft specification, it does appear stable. My experience accessing the D-Bus interface using Vala has been that it is easier to use and gives the full feature set of the specification. GNotification doesn't seem to be as feature complete.
From the draft specification you will see there is an expire_timeout argument of the org.freedesktop.Notifications.Notify method. That should fit your time out requirement, although I've not used it personally. There is also a org.freedesktop.Notifications.NotificationClosed signal that will allow your program to be notified when the notification is closed, including because of a time out or if it was dismissed by the user.
This post about the screen lock re-design for GNOME Shell 3.10 might give some indication of what notifications are capable of. The post includes some screenshots of notifications appearing in the lock screen.
Objective: I want to develop an UI application that runs a service/ task/method
periodically to update database. This service should start after
periodically even if my application is not active/visible/user exits
app. Similar to an Android Service .
I'm using BlackBerry Java 7.1 SDK eclipse plugin .
The options I came across are the following:
1) How to run BlackBerry application in Background
This link suggests that I extend Application instead of UIApplication. But I can't do that as my application has a user interface.
2) Make application go in background
I don't want my UI application to go in background, instead i just want my application to call the service periodically .
3) Run background task from MainScreen in BlackBerry?
This link suggests to run I a thread, but I don't think that if user exits my application then the thread will run in background
4) Blackberry Install background service from UI application?
This suggests using CodeModuleManager ,whose usage I'm unable to figure .
Please suggest what is the best way to achieve this objective or suggests any other better method .
I am new to blackberry so please pardon my ignorance.
To expand on Peter's Answer:
You will need to create two classes :
class BgApp extends Applicaton
class UiApp extends UiApplication
I guess you have already created the class that extends UiApplicaiton. So add another class that extends Application.
Then create a class that extends TimerTask and implement its run method to call the method that updates the database.
class UpdateDatabaseTask extends TimerTask
In the BgApp constructor, create a Timer. And schedule the UpdateDatabaseTask using the schedule(TimerTask, long, long) method.
Define alternate entry points, check the "Do not show on homescreen" and "auto run on startup" checkboxes for the bgapp's entry point.
It is easiest and simplest to use the builtin persistence mechanism (PersistentStore and Persistable interface) for storing data. Even if you use any other means like RecordStore or SQLDb, both UiApp and BgApp can use access the same database. The values updated by the bgapp will be accessible by the uiapp and vice-versa, automatically.
If you want to send a signal from bgapp to uiapp (for example when bgapp downloads new data you want the uiapp to reload the data instantaneously), post a Global Event (ApplicationManager.postGlobalEvent()) when the download is complete and listen for it in the screen that is displaying the data (GlobalEventListener interface).
There are code samples for each of these available as part of the SDK or search on the internet and you'll find a lot of implementations.
Good research, lots of interesting thoughts.
I think the best thing to do is to try the simple standard approaches and only make something more sophisticated if you need to.
Here are two options that would be regarded as 'standard', with brief advantages and disadvantages:
a) Make your UiApplication go to the Background
Instead of exiting when the user presses the 'close' button, your UiApplication will "requestBackground()". it will automatically be bought to the foreground when the user clicks on the icon, or selects your application from the task switcher. Then you can run a Thread whenever you want or in fact leave one running to update the database.
This is my preferred method. But you have to careful with memory management to make sure there are no leaks. And some people don't like the idea that the Application is visible on the Task Switcher all the time.
b) Alternate Entry
With this option, your one Application package contains two Applications, or more accurately, one Application and one UiApplication. The UiApplication is run when the user clicks on the icon. The Application runs as a background task, and updates the database for your UiApplication.
This looks like a more elegant solution, but introduces some possible communication issues, and is more difficult to debug.
In your case, since you are relatively new to BB, I would suggest that you use option a, and if you find it doesn't work for you, you will not find it that difficult to swap to option b.
And to comment on the Options you have already presented:
Sort of covered with option b
Option a
You are correct - if an Application exits, all the Threads are killed
Leaves the problem of creating the application in the first place and then debugging it. This is not really a solution for you, more an implementation method.
The above is brief, please ask if it is not clear.
This might help with b:
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Java-Development/Set-up-an-alternate-entry-point-for-an-application/ta-p/444847
Edit:
Editing this to respond to the questions and to expand on the alternative answer, which expanded on this one (bit circular I know...).
To answer the second question first, I agree with the other answer which states the alternate entry (background) and the foreground app can share an SQLite database.
With respect to how these two communicate, while they work just fine, personally I am not a great fan of Global Events because they are propagated to all Applications on the BlackBerry. You can achieve similar things in many alternative ways - the trick is to find something that is common to both applications so that they can communicate. To this end, I recommend using RuntimeStore. See this KB article:
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Java-Development/Create-a-singleton-using-the-RuntimeStore/ta-p/442854
Regarding how you persist your database, I like PersistentStore because it is present on all devices. But if you really have a database, and not persistent Objects, then SQLite seems the ideal thing to use. Personally I would not use RecordStore, but here is a discussion of the options:
http://supportforums.blackberry.com/t5/Java-Development/Introduction-to-Persistence-Models-on-BlackBerry/ta-p/446810
And just a clarification - in the example given, you have two applications, BgApp and UiApp. You will only have one main() method. This main method will use the args that you specify to determine which one to start, which it will create and have it "enter the dispatcher". If I could make a recommendation - use "gui" as the argument to specify that you will start your UiApplication. I have experienced a circumstance that the OS attempted to start my alternate entry Ui application with this String, regardless of what I had actually specified. Might have been a one off, but I have stuck to doing that ever since.
Finally two comments on the use of Timers and Timertask to provide triggered events. The first comment to make is whatever you run in the TimerTask should not take that long - so you should just use the TimerTask to initiate the download Thread (which might take a long time). Secondly for me, in this situation, I would not use Timer/TimerTask. I would rather just have a single Thread, which 'waits', and then processes. The advantage to me is that this can be adaptive. For example, if you fail to connect, then you might shorten the time till the next connection attempt. Or if it is after hours, then you might lengthen the time between connections to reduce battery usage. Or you might stop connecting completely when the battery is very low.
Hope this helps.
I'm developing a navigation app which uses the UIBackgroundModes=location setting and receives CLLocationManager updates via didUpdateToLocation. That works fine.
The problem is that the intervals between location updates are very hard to predict and I need to make sure the app is called something like once every few seconds to do some other (tiny) amounts of work even if the location did not change significantly.
Can I do that? Am I allowed to do that? And how can I do that?
I found a blog post, but I'm not sure if this is really the way to proceed.
Permissible background operations are pretty limited in scope. You cannot, for example, just leave an NSTimer running to perform some arbitrary code while your application is in the background - so the simple answer to your question is no, you cannot. Definitely read the Apple documentation regarding what is and isn't allowed (most of what's allowed pertains to apps that "need" specific ongoing services, like the ability to play music, or respond to location changes (GPS type apps...). You may be able to construct a viable solution by responding to location or significant location change notifications...
Can i send location updates to my server in background from iOS4?. I want to get users location changes and post it to a server using a web-service call. Main question here is, is it possible to call a web-service or http-post while app is in background?
Absolutely, and you may want to review this earlier thread when I asked the same question - credit due to #RedBlueThing for providing the key information.
I've written this up as an example on our blog as well. The key to this working is beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler: without that you won't get reliable results as it will perhaps work some of the time, but not others.
Yes. You can basically do anything you want in the background callbacks.
I'd like to add that you should make sure you are aware of the possible impact on battery life, as the antennas may have to be turned on to perform your requests. Perhaps you could store the locations in core data, and post it to the server when the app resumes.
But there's no technical reasons to not do it, and afaik it will pass review too.
I've decided to integrate OpenFeint into my new game to have achievements and leaderboards.
The game is dynamic and I would like user to be rewarded immediately for some successful results, but as it seems for me, OpenFeint's achievements are a bit sluggish and it shows visual notification only when it receives confirmation from the server.
Is it possible to change something in settings or hack it a little bit to show notification immediately as soon as it checks only local database if the achievement has not been unlocked it?
Not sure if this relates to the Android version of the SDK (which seems even slower), but we couldn't figure out how to make it faster. It was so unacceptably slow that we started developing our own framework that fixes most of open feint's shortcomings and then some. Check out Swarm, it might fit your needs better.
There are several things you can do to more tightly control the timing of these notifications. I'll explain one approach and you can use this as a starting point to explore further on your own. These suggestions apply specifically to iOS apps. One caveat is that these suggestions refer to internal APIs in OFSDK 2.8 for iOS and not ordinarily recommended for high level use and subject to change in future versions.
The first thing I recommend is that you build the sample app with your own product key. Use the standard sample app to experiment before applying the result to your own code.
You are going to get the snappiest response by separating the notification pop-up UI from the process of submitting the achievement. This way you don't have to worry about getting wrapped up in the logic for deciding whether the submission is going just to the local db or is doing the full confirmation on an async network transaction.
See the declaration of "showAchievementNotice" in "OFNotification.h". Performing a search in the sample app, you will see that this is the internal API used for displaying the achievement pop-up when an achievement is earned. It does not actually submit the achievement. You can call this method directly as it is called from "OFAchievementService.mm" to directly control when the message appears. You can then use the following article to disable the pop-up from being called when the actual submission occurs:
http://support.openfeint.com/dev/notification-pop-ups-in-ios/
This gives you complete freedom to call the submission at a later time provided you keep track of the need to do so. For example, you could locally serialize a flag to take care of the actual submission either after the level is done or the next time the app starts up. Don't forget that the user could quit out of a game without cleanly finishing a level.