I have worked a bit with URL schemes and have managed to access a custom app that i created using another app. My requirement is to block my custom apps once the battery level goes less than a certain level.
Is there any way to do that? What data will I have to pass through the URL scheme?
By block i mean either disable or uninstall completely. Just seeking some control.
You cannot completely block your application from launching if it's being opened through URL scheme. I suggest checking whether your app is launched by opening a scheme and then just display an alert view with a notice that your app requires the phone to have more battery power (or be charging).
i think you should use push notification, it can handle your requirement
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I have an application that runs in the background, I need it to pseudo randomly take a picture using the forward facing camera and send that to a database.
A possible solution I thought of was to use URL schemes to open another application, which will take the picture and send it, then use another URL scheme to open the background application back up. Does anyone know if this is possible?
Or perhaps there is a better solution.
It is not possible for an iOS application in the background to initialize, utilize, or grab photos from the camera hardware, let alone store or upload them to a local database.
Not only is this a security risk, but it poses a potential privacy invasion, and is just plain creepy. Besides, background apps only stay alive for 10 minutes or so, so even if this activity were possible, sustaining it would be impossible.
However, it is possible to use the camera directly from an active app without having to delegate the task to another application (perhaps you are thinking a little too much like an Android developer :p). Take a look at UIImagePickerController.
There's a very limited set of actions background applications can do—GPS, audio, phone & VOIP calls, and a couple of others. Accessing the camera is not one of those allowed actions, so you can't take a picture in the background.
As an alternative, you could set up a notification system to alert the user that it's time to take a picture (for whatever reason), and if they choose to open the app it could do your required actions then.
I am developing an iPhone app, that will not be distributed on AppStores. I have tried to search for private api but no luck. When the user tries to quit the app, I want to prompt the user to enter the correct password so as to enable him to exit the app. How can I achieve this? Thanks in advance.
Cheers!!
It sounds like you need something similar to iOS "Kiosk Mode" as described in this answer:
Put an iPhone or iPad into 'Store Demo' mode
Using that description in conjunction with the following steps might achieve precisely what you want:
Have a "Quit" button
Show a password dialogue when it is pressed
If it was correct, read an out of bounds array location (or do whatever) to crash the app
With that config installed you'd get stuck in whatever app you launch next, though.
You can't! You'll have to password protect the launch instead.
If you want to prevent the user from quitting your app, you'll need to physically cover the home button. This isn't a bad solution if your goal is to do something like a kiosk or a point of sale system, where you probably want to mount an iPad in a secure enclosure to prevent tampering or theft anyway. There are quite a few such enclosures on the market in a variety of styles.
For a normal app, though, there's really no solution -- iOS isn't designed for whatever you're trying to do.
The only way I could think to do what you want (which is to prevent access to certain apps) would be to replace the SpringBoard application (this is the method used by Apple itself in the App store models of the iPhone and iPad that restrict the things you can do on the devices). #owenfi pointed at one way to do that without jailbreaking, but in general it is limited: you won't be able to "exit" the app, you will basically just be able to run a single app.
I'm working on passing a couple simple things (like timestamps and settings) between apps installed on one iPhone, and I was wondering if there's any way to use inter-app URL handling in the background. The goal would be to pass a URL to another app without having it open, or even to simply have the receiving app detect when something else checks for the ability to open that URL.
Any chance that (or something similar) is possible in an app-store-friendly way?
I don't think thus is possible, but you could achieve this by setting up a webservice that "communicates" between the individual apps.
Under iOS there are several built in hooks for launching service-specific apps based on a passed URL for example handling http:// (to Safari), handling addresses (to google maps) and phone numbers (to the built in phone app). Several apps make it a standard practice of implementing the rarely used ability (for most apps) to register your own service prefix. Two handy apps that come to mind that implement this are facebook:// and skype:// and it is a handy way to add quasi-integration with their app into yours. Skype even does this on most desktop os's so you can literally run the command line skype://555-1234. You can also check for these registered service prefixes and expose useful menu choices in your apps but I digress.
As with all of these service handlers built in or not, the problem under iOS is that you lose the user and the flow of their experience ends with the phone app (for example). Yes you can embed web views to handle some cases but things like the phone app still win out.
I propose that it would be great that if iOS apps were handed a trailing URL as part of their arguments (even if they accept and might handle say two args already) that by convention when our app is exited we launch the trailing URL we may have been optionally handed. If fully supported in some manner this would allow for multi-app integration and an extended user experience flow-wise. I'm imagining being able for example to launch a phone call and have the user return to my app when it is finished by launching my app again using the URL I passed it such as "myapp://return-context-values". Obviously this could be taken further.
Does such a mechanism already exist in some way? If not I'd like to hear your thoughts on the idea.
Check out x-callback-url.com, it proposes precisely what you're suggesting.
And yes, I think it would be great. You're much more likely to pass a request to me if you know you'll get the focus back, and vice versa.
In the home page of my iphone app, there is a button added. When that button is clicked some other iphone app needs to be opened in a new viewcontroller (with out closing the parent app).There will be a back button on this view controller. When the back button is clicked, the new viewcontroller which is showing the another app needs to be closed and our parent app's home page needs to be shown.
Please give me some ideas on how to do this. I googled for this i didnt get any solutions.
Thanks,
Raja.
-- the following applies to iOS versions previous than 4.0 :)
Actually, there can be only one iPhone application running at once (with exceptions of Safari, Phone and some other system applications). The iPhone Human Interface Guidelines say so:
Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits.
However, if you only need to e.g. show a webpage, you can do it using UIWebView
Also, if you need to open another application, you should use URLs as pointed by Steve Harrison. This will, however, close your application. The recommended behavior in this case is to remember your application state and restore it when the application is run again, as Nithin writes.
According to apples documentation, they are not allowing any applications to be run in the background, except system generated ones. So you will be unable to do the thing you are going to implement. However, there is one thing that can make the same result.
You told that you are calling other application to run on a button click. Before initiating that application, save the current state of your application, may be using sqlite3 or core-data, and then open the other one. While returning back, load the pre-saved data from the database or wherever you have stored it. Every time you start the application, you check for the persisted data, if exists, load it or otherwise load your basic view
I don't think that you can run other iPhone apps within your own one. It doesn't make sense. You can open another iPhone app via a URL (see here and here), but this will close your app.
Like it has been stated: running two apps is not allowed by apple. You can however implement this apps features into you're app and have both get and save data to the same server...
Or like Nithin said: this functionality is available on JB iphones. Look into "backgrounder" for implementing one solution for normal users and one for thouse that has jailbroken.