Is it possible to call an IBAction from a remote server? It would make my life easier. I have a quiz app for the iPhone, and there I have an IBAction/arc4random consisting of the quiz questions and answers. My little problem is that I'm only updating the app with more questions every time I submit a new version. The rest of the app stays exactly the same. If I somehow instead could update an .m file somewhere on a server, I wouldn't have to submit a new version every 1000 questions. Is that even possible?
Thankful for answers.
If you use a service like Parse.com you can build a database and just pull questions remotely similar to a web service. That's what we're doing in our Trivia app.
The short answer is NO. You can't change or call a code in your app from the remote server. You can however create a database with your questions/answer and pull database from your server by the app.
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I'm going to build realtime push notification feature for my web application ( a small social network) and I don't know where to start.
This is what I want to build: there are like buttons, comment forms, ... Users click like, write their comments and (relatively) immediately, on the owner's browser shows the number of new likes and comments, ... Something like that.
I've read about socketIo on nodeJs, MeteorJS but unfortunately, they need WebSocket supported by mordern browsers. I've just read about Comet technic and find it pretty easy to apply. But i'm not sure it will performs well because Comet relies on long-polling connection (correct me if I'm wrong).
In addition, I think facebook is using Comet for its push notification feature. Through console tab on firebug plugin I can see there's alway a holding connection to facebook.
So can anybody show me a technic, a model to develop a feature like that?
A promising idea is to work with the HTML5 notification API; it's perfect if you want notifications to pop on the user screen as long as his browser is running (even if you're surfing another website or if all windows are closed).
http://www.paulund.co.uk/html5-notifications
However, if what you want is to update different parts of your page asynchronously (without refreshing or pushing a button), you should use together :
Ajax calls;
Listeners and observers.
When you Ajax calls retrieve particular types of json data (for example), it can trigger appearance of a badge (listener) with a number of new notifications, or so...
With JQuery installed, you should be fine...
Even though it's often not the case, sometimes, for simple tweaks, it's easier to code the job done...
You can start here :
How implement a "observer" in Jquery without plugins? (it's old, but interesting)
Or see this page :
browser instant updates with ajax/jquery
(incredible how often google queries return stacko' pages)
You should check out MQTT. It basically works on the Publish-Subscribe model and is very easy to use. This protocol has a small footprint and consumes less bandwidth. Facebook's Messenger uses MQTT too.
you can use an ajax call coming into (for example) a php script on the server, which keeps the connection open and only replies if and when something needs to be displayed to the user. should nothing happen within a certain time, the connection gets closed and the client fires a new ajax call.
note that this only addresses the client/server communication, you would still need a notification method inside the server to wake up the php script if you want to avoid having a script constantly polling the database, but there are quite a lot of soultuions to this and they depend on what language you use on the server.
I have got an idea, it is simple but it may work. Why don't you hide notification bar as Div tag and design it with css to make it look like notification bar. Then whenever some user likes or comments about the page, write php or js function and connect it to like or comment submit button that will reveal page owners invisible div to visible. And I believe , depending on what you use, I would probably prefer php session() to Identify if page owner is online and can get notifications. moreover, if you need to track statistics of the page, you may create a small database that holds, page id and user comments. You can use this database to push multiple notifications on that hidden Div. you can use Jquery to make it move like Facebook if you want to. I m not %100 percent sure if this is the most optimized way to do that but it is possible. By the way, I surfed some to see what people use to do that. surprisingly I couldn't find something as well.
I created an iphone application that uses database. Here is the problem, this application should work offline. I am not going to use a remote database but i have to update these datas every 2 month. How can i update the datas that was already stored in application? What is the best way and keywords?
Thank you.
The question isn't the easiest to decipher..... but from what I gather...
If you don't have a web service to call (I guess this is what you mean by remote database??), then you're only option is to release an updated version of your app every 2 months with an updated database.
I'm trying to create functionality in my app that would allow me to release news updates (Via a server) to those using the app, similar to what is found in Doodle Jump:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7143/6463110847_d485681dac.jpg
Any sample code or ideas would be helpful.
You'll probably need to create an API/web service that your app calls on launch (or when entering foreground)...you could populate that with a database that just gives the entries since the last sync...or just returns some response that you've set up. The response should be JSON or XML formatted (I vote JSON) and then in your app, you call it, parse the response, and place/manipulate it however necessary
http://mobileorchard.com/tutorial-json-over-http-on-the-iphone/
There are a lot of options here. In any case you will need a web server that hosts these news postings. The route that I would take is some kind of blog site, where you can easily manage posts. Then upon launching the app you make a web service call to said blog and get the news posts. You will need to keep track locally of which posts were read by the user in order to keep the badge count correct.
You could also roll your own server, but I don't really see the point for something so simple.
Another option is a web-service such as Parse
This question is too vague for code samples as we would be essentially writing the entire solution for you in order for it to make sense.
If you have further questions into how to leverage these web services, how to load the feed, how to display it etc... Break it up across multiple questions.
There's a service doing this called Converser, if you're still looking.
Say I have a TODO list iphone app, that can be edited/viewed from both a web application and the iphone application.
When on the iphone, when a user views all his todo lists, or sub-items, I would think that each time the user views a particular list it shouldn't be hitting the web applications API every-time, but rather cache locally the values and only hit the web when things change.
What strategies are there for this type of scenerio?
I agree with you in your dirty-otherwise-do-not-contact-the-server point. And I think this point is pretty straightforward and easy to implement.
However, be careful in this scenario: it gets dirty but at the same time, the device cannot reach the internet. In this scenario, I suggest you check the internet accessibility on a frequent basis (even when your app is in the background), and try to reach your server and update whenever possible.
This is a tricky problem. I'm currently working on an app that needs to perform a similar synchronization, and I haven't decided how I want to handle it yet.
You're right in that you don't want to be hitting the web repeatedly. It would slow the app down considerably. Keeping a local cache is the way to go.
One drawback is that the user could change/add an item on the web and you wouldn't see it on the phone. You'd need to have a refresh button (like in the Mail application, for example) to allow the user to get the changes.
Then you have an issue with conflict resolution. Say the same item is edited on both the phone and on the web. How does the user pick which one to keep, or do they get duplicated?
I think the best way to do this is to replicated your server's schema in CoreData. Then load a given element from the local DB, and in the background go out and check that element for updates if the device has an internet connection. You're hitting the db each time, but the user is not slowed down by the process.
You should not query the internet everytime you view the list.
But when you make updates to it, or edit it, you should update the server as well. That will make your life a whole lot simpler. That way when the user updates an item that he deleted in the web server, the server will just throw that request out...
Can anyone tell me How does the Sync Button on many Iphone app. works (like 'Le Monde').
The button download and replace all files of the application? only look for change (new entry) on the database and add them?....
Thanks,
Typically a button like that is making a web service call, depending on the call you may be updating or replacing the information currently on the device.
Some web services will allow you to ask for information since a certain date:
/FetchArticles?afterDate=200911011952
Some will just provide you with a set amount of information.
Most of the time the calls to a web service will return light enough data that you can just replace what you had with what you fetch, but sometimes the data is a little heavier(images, video, etc...), so you'll want to hang onto what you already have and add to it.
Without knowing more about your App, or if it even uses network resources it's hard to provide any more help.