i am totally new to iphone and i am trying to create a universal app.
Now I am creating an empty application. According to all tutorials , by checking universal option it should auto create appdelegates for both iphone and ipad.
But all i can see is only one appdelegate . Kindly tell me how can i create both.
Best Regards
Brayden is correct in answering that you almost never need multiple app delegates. All the delegate usually does is handle the moments when the application launches, suspends or terminates. Back in the days when iPhones ran iOS 4.0, and iPads ran iOS 3.2, you might need very different code in the delegate because only iOS 4.0 supported multitasking. Those days are long gone, and your delegate should probably act the same on all devices.
Yes, you sometimes do reach a point where your program must behave differently on iPhone and iPad. Check the idiom at that time and no earlier. Otherwise you're just duplicating code to no purpose.
My most recent app contains almost no special checks for iPhone or iPad. It doesn't even use different XIBs. Instead, my custom views implement layoutSubviews to fill the space available.
That said, once you understand app delegates, maybe you will find a situation where you need them to be different. If you are absolutely certain that your iPhone and iPad behavior will be so wildly divergent, you will need to:
Manually create a new class (preferably inheriting from the existing AppDelegate class)
In your main.m, send the class name of your new delegate to UIApplicationMain depending on the idiom.
See this answer to "Can I create App Delegate file in my project?" to see the changes to main.m.
You really should only be using one AppDelegate for a Universal application. You can use this to share common things that you'll do in there. What exactly do you need multiple AppDelegates for? If you need to do something specific to a device type (i.e. - iPhone or iPad) then you can do a ternary expression like below:
(UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiomPad) ? NSLog(#"iPad") : NSLog(#"iPhone");
Related
I have a question about universal app. My app will not have storyboards or xib file. There is possibility to write universal iPhone/iPad application without it? I found some tutorial how to create universal app with storyboard, but i don't want (i can't) use this feature in my project.
If it is possible What should i do? If i have to made changes only in ViewControllers? I'm start to do this, i'm not changing old project so i can do anythng - what should i learn/what should i remember?
I'm targeting to iOS 5.
EDIT:
I have a screen information in resource file and my rootViewController or any other ViewController will be created in compile time, so i can't have xib file for that, i can't put button on xib with Interface Builder becouse i don't even know how many buttons i will have there. I don't know how many screens i've got till i hit run in my project.
Not only can you write any type of iOS app without Interface Builder, it is actually much more testable and pliable. Some auto layout tricks are difficult (not possible?) in IB style projects, as well.
There is an incredibly impressive library called Masonry that wraps the NSLayoutContraint syntax. This makes it quite pleasurable to subclass views while not having to use ugly VFL or incredibly verbose NSLayoutContraint syntax (not even going to address frame setting...blech!). IB style apps also promote bad software development practices and anti-patterns (just dumping everything in a view controller presentation-wise. No Separation of Concerns!). Also, it is more difficult to work on larger teams (IMHO even small teams) while utilizing Nibs, Xibs, and Storyboards due to merge issues.
On top of all of that, you gain a much deeper understanding of the classes you are working with (UIView, UIResponder, etc.) when writing code in this manner (once again IMHO). There is an interesting article outlining some of these issues in more detail: http://doing-it-wrong.mikeweller.com/2013/06/ios-app-architecture-and-tdd-1.html This is by no means the only article that discusses this problem. Also, this will help for your app delegate: creating a universal window-based iphone app without generated xib file
This is certainly possible, I have only used storyborads once in the many apps I have published. As for not using XIBs, I am not sure why you would want to do that. You can lay out your views at runtime in the init method, but I feel like that is just making things unduly hard on yourself. You can set a XIB up for the iPad and one for the iPhone so you can tailor the UI specifically to each device.
Perhaps if you go into a bit more detail about why you are imposing this requirement on yourself we can discuss if it si worth the effort to go down that road.
Good Luck.
I am creating a Universal iOs application as part of an assignment (iPad and iPhone :) ).
Naturally, they have a UI which I have been accustomed to create through the NIB files, using the fancy drag and drop schemes. This obviously seems like a great strategy when you are making a dedicated iOS device application.
However, with the universal application, I notice that this strategy can be a challenge since the 2 UIs differ and human error can promote a lack of consistency in the two UI's + double the work!!!
I noticed the solution to the assignment I am doing has the UI created through the AppDelegate file, I have never really done this, and from this stems the questions:
What is the appDelegate files for anyways?
Is it the way to create the UI for the Universal application through the App delegate? Or do you people still create the UI's through the NIB files meticulously for both iPhone and iPad?
P.S: Side question: This assignment requires me to create a Windows based application vs a View based application which is what I have naturally learnt to do. I understand a Windows based App can grow into a view based application and vice versa. However, I do not understand when you should choose to create a Windows based application?
The AppDelegate in Cocoa is your central Singleton that controls the app workflow. It's used by the underlying Framework to start the application, signal runtime envrionment changes and terminate the app. Being a singleton, it's always there and easy to reference ([UIApplication applicationDelegate]) and it loads up your first view controller.
It's generally common to let the application delegate keep refernces to model and controller objects. But what you describe, the whole UI programmed through the appDelegate, is bad style.
No matter if you use NIB's or you code your UI by manually adding UIElements to the view in code, you should do so in ViewController. Generally, the appDelegate will call the first view controller and that viewcontroller will call all view controller afterwards.
Im trying to simulate a touch on as UIWebView, how can I programmatically fire a touch event at a certain location? (x and y coordinates)
Just call touchesBegan?
Ideally I'd like to do it without any javascript hack because in the future it may not be a uiwebview
It's not easy to synthesize a touch event on the iPhone: you have to use undisclosed API, so you have a high probability of breaking on every update of the iOS and getting rejecting from Apple.
Here's a link that demonstrates how to synthesize a touch event on the iPhone:
Here's another question on StackOverflow: How to send a touch event to iPhone OS?
It's worth pointing out the KIF framework here. It's intended to run in the simulator but part of the code is simulating touch evens in code. with luck, this will be a good starting point.
https://github.com/square/KIF
Specifically, look at stepToTapViewWithAccessibilityLabel in KIFTestStep.m and the line
[view tapAtPoint:tappablePointInElement];
What you need to do is first create the events you want, and then send them to SpringBoard over the "purple port" eg. mach port. To make them system wide you must forward them to each application over the port. That means you need to actually do what the windowmanager does and looking at which app is active, screen locked, etc.
There are a hand full of private framework APIs that work (IOSurface, GraphicServices, SpringBoardServices, etc.) to get you the pieces you need.
You will have to load these private frameworks at runtime using something like dlopen().
This is 100% possible without jailbreak as of iOS 6.1.4 (current ATM), but you will be loading private frameworks which is not allowed by apple for AppStore ;)
It is possible. Exactly how you mentioned, using GSEvents and sending them to the purple named port of the aplication you are trying to control/simulate. Of course you need KennyTM's GSEvent.h to accomplish this.
I've done this for iOS 4.3, just by changing some of the values that Kenny had (like kGSHandInfoTypeTouchDown), but now I'm trying to do it for iOS 5 and it's not working, till now.
EDIT: It is now working for iOS 5.1.
Without jailbreaking there is no real way to hook a gesture recognizer into all views of the entire system. First off, your app running in the background doesn't have the ability of executing this code.
Can any one suggest how I can build Universal app for iPad as well iPhone. What all things I should take care of ? How to take care of resource images used ? Is it possible to have same code base should work for iPad as well iPhone.
In the Target->Project->getInfo->Build->target family-> select iPhone/iPad
And make the conditions everywhere whereever you set frame and also the resolution of the image required by iPAD is high.. so as per condition check whether its running on iPad or iPhone and based on that set your frame and image.
hAPPY cODING...
After creating your universal app (see #Suriya's post above) you should figure out in the app delegate whether you have an iPad or iPhone. Here is a simple tutorial to do just that.
Yes, you will need separate nibs and images for an iPad app. But, no, not all the code has to change. You can simply use class inheritance.
Example:
You have a MyTableViewController.h and .m file that work on the iPhone. This table has a custom cell, MyTableViewCell. Now you want your iPad app to get the same information, but display a larger table and a larger table cell. You then subclass your iPhone classes like so: MyiPadTableViewController : MyTableViewController and MyiPadTableViewCell : MyTableViewCell . This way you have access to all of your created functions in the parent class, but you can override how the information is displayed.
If you have a function - (void)doSomething:(id)foo; in your MyTableViewController class, you can use it in your MyiPadTableViewController class without writing any extra code, or override it if necessary. The point is you don't have to change code in two places, so it makes life a lot easier.
I have an iPad app that I would like to make Universal, however this seems alarmingly difficult. I've changed things around so that I support both builds, but when building, I get lots of errors about using UIPopOvers. Here're my questions:
Why does UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() not compile or register on 3.1.3?
Can I conditionally have variables in a class definition based on UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM()?
If not, should I make two different view controllers?
Thanks!
Why does UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() not
compile or register on 3.1.3?
The UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM macro is only available starting with 3.2. Same restrictions for the userInterfaceIdiom property of UIDevice. This means that you can only get universal application starting with SDK 3.2.
Can I conditionally have variables in
a class definition based on
UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM()?
No. The UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM macro is only a runtime shortcut to get the current UI idiom of the device.
If not, should I make two different
view controllers?
If you have very different UI between the two devices, it is wiser to use two different view controllers, and to create the right one at runtime (in the application controller for example) by using the UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM macro.
I had pretty good luck with just selecting the target then going to Project->Upgrade current target for iPad.
My app is pretty simple, consisting mostly of table views and webviews, but it's worth making a backup and trying...
And yes, you have to submit it as a 3.2 app that can target 3.1.*
There are also a lot of other stuff that you have to do:
Make sure that it can be viewed at any orientation (got rejected the first time for this).
Make sure that you have all the new images created. you have to have 3 or 4 icons, instead of just one like an iPhone app needed. (iPad icon, iPhone icon, small icon for spotlight, etc).
And of course iPad sized screenshots for the store.
A really nice way that I use to test if it's an iPad or iPhone is to check if the device can use a split view controller, since for the forseeable future no device with a screen as small as an iPhone will be able to use the split view controller. I just created a function to do this for me:
+(BOOL)isIpad{ return NSClassFromString(#"UISplitViewController") != nil; }
Then anywhere in my app that I want to display something different depending on device, I just do a check for it:
int width = 150;
if([NabAppDelegate isIpad]){
width = 350;
} else {
width = 150;
}
UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(5,10,width,25)];
This is a lot better than checking against OS version like I've seen some suggest.