There's a system search in iOS that allows users to search though the whole device by searching entered keyword for app names, mail messages, calendar and etc. Is it possible to provide some additional information (content info) about my app to system search? We are developing some rich-graphic-content app and there are various objects there.
The customer asked us, is it possible to implement such use case: a user enters the name of some object and system search finds that object and shows our app name in the result list :) Maybe it's possible to create some "sitemap" with information about the app content, to put that somewhere into plist and to ask system search to use that for search index. I'm pretty sure it's impossible, just want to be 100% sure :)
UPDATE: One thought on that - maybe system search also uses app description text from itunes? If so then we could place additional information there and to workaround that :)
For static keywords (that are pre-defined when building the app), you can do this: How to get an iPhone app to appear in Spotlight with a query that doesn't exactly match
Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way to add keywords dynamically, e.g. for the objects/files created with your app, like the Apple-provided apps do. Hopefully, the ability to add your app's contents to Spotlight will be added in a future version of iOS (7+).
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I'm trying to make an app that allows the user to put in information and then transfer the information over to Microsoft word to automatically organize it into an invoice. However, I cannot find the information about the Microsoft word app in order to do this. This website http://beta.appinventor.mit.edu/learn/reference/other/activitystarter.html states that you require the package name and class name, or the appropriate intent, in order to work an activity starter.
I'm using MIT App Inventor and I'm kind of new at this. Please help.
If you can't find the package/class name (online) for the application, you can't start an activity. Most likely that it is not open source, so it is not available for the public.
From http://ai2.appinventor.mit.edu/reference/other/activitystarter.html:
These can be App Inventor apps created by you or others. They can
also be apps like Camera and Maps that are pre-installed on the
device. Or they be any app at all as long as you have the
necessary information to provide to the activity starter.
For example:
To start an acitivity for the camera use the package android.hardware.camera2. (https://developer.android.com/reference/android/hardware/camera2/package-summary.html)
I don't know if you want to consider it, but you can also use FusionTables. The information you submit in your app will be inserted into a table in your Google Drive. (http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/ai2/pizzaparty.html)
I started looking into OwnCloud app development to add some capabilities I would like to my server. To me it seems like Apps can't modify anything like the Login page or User Management page. Is this the case?
I want to build a user registration app and would love to integrate it into the user management page (if not and it has to exist as its own app page not a big deal). The one big problem I see so far is not being able to add a "Register" link to the login page. I could just go in and add it to the source manually, but I would like to keep the App self contained so others can use it too.
If this is not possible to do in an App I may just need to modify the core application and then see if they will accept my feature addition in a pull request.
Thanks to anyone who can shed some light on this for me. I don't want to waste my time trying to figure out how to do it with an App on the platform if it wont be doable.
After a lot of digging around I did figure out a way to do this.
In the App's app.php file, you can force a script to be loaded if the plugin is enabled:
$api->addScript('script_name'); // without .js
In that script jQuery can be used to add the elements to the page where you need them.
This was a good solution for me since I only needed to add a single button to the login page. I can see this being a bad idea if you want to make vast modifications. At that point you might as well just create a separate page that you have full control over.
At https://developers.facebook.com/docs/opengraph/guides/collections/#datatodefaultsections it says:
There's a way to suggest people add your app's data to their section
directly. It's best described with an example. If you were rdio, you
could suggest adding rdio's music.listens data to the music section
like this:
https://www.facebook.com/me/music?rdiomusic
/me is the special shortcut that refers to the person, music is the
special section for music and the rdiomusic is rdio's app namespace.
(The app namespace can be found in the Basic tab of your app's
dashboard settings.)
This functionality does not appear to be turned on or available for all developers. When attempting to do the above URL structure with my own app and a section (movies, music, books), there was no opportunity to add it to those sections as described.
Why not? Is this functionality not yet live / available to all?
I will start the development of a new facebook app to replace an old one. I can create a new one and start from zero... or can I replace the code of the old one and change its name, to keep the users? It sounds weird to me, but could I?
Is there any consequence of changing the name of the app? Can I keep my users if I change the name?
Thanks!
The app name is purely for display purposes – changing it does not have any effects apart from what gets displayed to the user in the Auth dialog and other places where your app name gets displayed, f.e. posts made through your app (although for the latter it’ll also influence the displaying of previously made posts – they will show up as made via the new app name when viewed after the change).
to keep the users?
But if you radically change the functionality, maybe you should “start fresh” – I don’t know how much I’d like it as a user when an app I used before now does something completely different …
I need to make an application in which the user can toggle between two languages on triggering a click event on a button.
The problem here is that I have seen examples in which, if we want to load our localized nib file, then we need to change the language from the settings options and we can get the proper nib file loaded according to language selected.
I want to do this within my application, meaning I don't want to go to the settings menu and change the language and then reload the application.
I just want the above effect within my application (that is, through a button click event the app should be able to toggle between two languages).
Is it possible, and does Apple allow it?
Nobody here can tell you whether Apple will allow it, but if your app is well designed and there's a good reason for this departure from the usual way of doing things, you've probably got a good shot.
There's nothing to prevent you from loading a nib file localized for a different region. I'd probably avoid trying to use Apple's automatic mechanism, though. Just name your nib files using some pattern and load the appropriate one.
If you want your life to easy, you will take advantage of the Localization built into the operating system. Otherwise, you will have write your own methods to load localized strings or nib files.
There is no reason for Apple to reject an app that shows localized text based on an in-app setting. I work to help developers localize apps and, although I don't suggest this approach, they have done it and I've never heard of a rejection from Apple.
What you won't be able to do is use Apple's built-in tools, which rely on the system settings to determine a user's language and push the text from a Localizable.strings file. But it honestly won't take you too long to implement a similar system yourself using functions akin to gettext.
You essentially need to implement the same basic logic as any localization system:
1) Surround your in-app texts in a function that will display the proper language based on the user's chosen settings
2) Export your source texts (probably English into file
3) Translate the English strings into each language in a separate file
The function you write can follow the lines of gettext, which has examples in many programming languages. If the settings is "French" grab the equivalent string from the French file. If the setting is English, just print the English.
You won't be able to use Apple's tools, but you CAN do it on your own and Apple won't really care as far as I know. However, if you choose to localize into an Apple-supported language, follow this app localization tutorial for iOS using the standard Localizable.strings method.