We are looking at building a b2b application for the iPhone. A major concern is the possible delay in publishing updates to the applications. I would like to believe that all updates will be orderly, but the reality of a newly found bug for a client or an upcoming trade show could mean that updating the application NOW is critical. Even an "expedited" day wait would not be acceptable.
One option I have thought of is having a flag for each page that we send down when the user logs into our server. If the flag is set, then instead of the native screen for a given page, there would be a page with a UIWebView that would get the latest HTML from the web or stored HTML loaded at the time of login.
I would prefer storing the HTML and using it "offline" because a data connection cannot be guaranteed.
The questions are:
1) Does this violate any of Apple's licensing?
2) Is this feasible or is there a hole I am not thinking of?
It doesnt violate Apple's guidelines and as far as I know you are not missing anything here...in fact, we have the exact same problem in my company (which on top of the issue that you have, we have customers that would like to "brand" the app for their users, and thats how we accomplish that) and there are no issues with apple (for now...:)). Obviously, you need to think of user experience implications...hope that helps.
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I want to build simple web based app, where users, for example, could push the spacebar button, and then do something further, like answer a question, and while other users at the same time only sees that this question is not available any more for answer. When user submits answer, everyone see it.
All right, here is an example. I have seen TV shows, where four players have one button, if one or two of them know answer, they hit a button, and one lamp turns on and the first is allowed to answer, while other keeps their mouths shut. I want to build the same idea, but in the web.
But problem is that, I don't know where to start, what keywords I should search for help on google and so on. I see, that it might work on HTML5, maybe JavaScript and so on.
I have idea using Ajax, but request it every second to get latest actions made seems rubbish. Also I found one service called Pusher, but it has limited users in one time, which doesn't fit my needs.
I need just ideas. Thanks.
Before you read the rest, a disclaimer: I work for Realtime.co but I do believe I can help here so I'm not trying to "pitch a sale".
You can check out Realtime (www.realtime.co). It's basically a set of tools for developers to use real time technologies on their projects. It uses websockets but does fallback to whatever the user's browser supports (such as long polling, for example).
Behind Realtime you have a one-to-one/one-to-many/many-to-many messaging system that will transport your messages to and from your users.
There's also a plus which is the fact that the Realtime framework is actually cross-platform. This means that you can even have your web users communicate with iPhone users, Android, users, Windows Phone, desktop applications, server applications, etc..
You can learn about the JavaScript API here: http://docs.xrtml.org/getting_started/hello_message.html#javascript.
You only need to register at Realtime.co as a developer and start using the free license.
I really hope that helps.
Okey, I think I will go with node.js.
Writing all this previous post, made me think in right way :)
have developed some quite good basic Facebook App development experience, can hook apps up to databases, have different info installed and displayed on different tabs no probs. However, everything Ive been doing so far to date revolves around me manually going into my developer account and setting up each apps settings individually, one at a time. Am curious to figure out how people like tabsite have created an interface that captures users input data and displays on tabs (that part i understand) but also it registers new apps each time on the fly (this part am curious about how its done), allowing them to add individual app logos, tabnames etc without the user ever having to go anywhere near the developer set up. And how are tabsite getting data back from the developer such as app_id or app_secret??
Any insight much appreciated.
Regards Tony
As I recall there isn't a way to register an app using the API. They probably just use only one app, and then check the signed_request variable to get the Facebook Page ID, which they then link together with the data in the database.
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/authentication/signed_request/
You're allowed 2 tabs on a single page on their free account. But you can only add an app once. This implies they've either created a number of apps that are exactly the same(11 would be my guess as that's how many tabs their best plan offers) There used to be a way to do it using one of the old SDKS but as far as I was aware it was deprecated and is no longer available.
The fact that you say you can customise the tab image though, does imply that they're creating new apps, as far as I am aware you can only customise the image within the app settings in the developer app.
After a bit of investigation, this post may have more info
http://facebook.stackoverflow.com/questions/6264080/create-a-facebook-application-programmatically
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
I've searched the web for this bit to no avail - I Hope some one can point me in the right direction. I'm happy to look things up, but its knowing where to start.
I am creating an iPhone app which takes content updates from a webserver and will also push feedback there. Whilst the content is obviously available via the app, I don't want the source address to be discovered and published my some unhelpful person so that it all becomes freely available.
I'm therefore looking at placing it in a mySQL database and possibly writing some PHP routines to provide access to my http(s) requests. That's all pretty new to me but I can probably do it. However, I'm not sure where to start with the security question. Something simple and straightforward would be great. Also, any guidance on whether to stick with the XML parser I currently have or to switch to JSON would be much appreciated.
The content consists of straightforward data but also html and images.
Doing exactly what you want (prevent users from 'unauthorized' apps to get access to this data') is rather difficult because at the end of the day, any access codes and/or URLs will be stored in your app for someone to dig up and exploit.
If you can, consider authenticating against the USER not the App. So that even if there is a 3rd party app created that can access this data from where ever you store it, you can still disable it on a per-user basis.
Like everything in the field of Information Security, you have to consider the cost-benefit. You need to weigh-up the value of your data vs. the cost of your security both in terms of actual development cost and the cost of protecting it as well as the cost of inconveniencing users to the point that you can't sell your data at all.
Good luck!