I am looking to integrate the ability to select images from the built in library into an iOS app.
UIImagePickerController seems like the obvious choice.
However, it only works as a modal view controller. For design reasons, the image selection in this app needs to be part of an UIViewController itself.
After some research on the web and searching the StackOverflow archives, it seems I will need to implement my own Image Picker from scratch using ALAssetsLibraryto access the images stored on the device. However this is quite a task (if done well).
Thus my questions are:
1) Is there already an existing library or class (or would someone be willing to share his/her existing code) for this purpose?
2) Alternatively, is there a way to extend the UIImagePickerController to add more interface elements to it?
For some of my own projects, I use the ELCImagePickerController, but this again is meant for modal presentation.
But since it's open source, you may be able to make modifications to allow it to be embedded in the way you want it to be presented.
Related
I am relatively new to Objective-C / iPhone programming, and have only created single view applications thusfar. I am interested in creating an app soon than will have a "wireframe" in a sense that allows me navigate the various views of my app using buttons. So I guess my questions are:
What do I need to do to make an app that has more than one view
How to I link them with UIActions in buttons to navigate the various screens (ex a back button to go to a previous screen)
and I may have more as I go, but this is a start.
Thanks!
Since no one really had a clear helpful answer, I will share my own conclusion. Xcode 4 offers a very intuitive and interactive way to create multiple MVCs and segue between them even providing the interface to travel between views. I found out how to use this feature from Paul Haggarty's iOS course on iTunes U. I highly recommend it.
Joey
You'd can use a combination of, multiple UIViewController and or UINavigationController's. Utilizing methods such as presentModalViewController:animated: and pushViewController:.
I was asked by a client to make a "skinnable" app and I don't really know what that means.
I googled like crazy and I didn't found a clear answer or an example.
If anyone has a clue about this, any tip would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Generally this means the app will allow the user to choose different looks for the UI, each of which will have a different color scheme, feel, etc.
What I actually did with my project. I decided to use multiple storyboards to give me greater control over the entire UI and UX of each theme. I programmatically link them all together via a master storyboard that links them all together. That's what I did, and it works very very well. Performance is great, while still maintaining high level of fine grain control over each theme. You can even keep your Header and Implementation files the same for individual view controllers, just so as you keep the names the same on the storyboard.
So for instance, one of my apps that I'm working on called Jam-mout (A music player) has multiple high quality themes. (Image attached). Each theme has it's own storyboard.
For iPhone apps, where the majority of the GUI design is provided by the operating system, you could do it by setting custom Navigation bar background images, custom button graphics, and different fonts/sizes/weights and whitespace. Make sure you're working with a designer who's familiar with the iPhone GUI (if you're not working closely with a designer this is going to be a nightmare).
I recently put together an app for a client who wanted a heavily customised GUI: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/gogoparis/id428497937?mt=8. A 'skinnable' app would have several sets like this, so the user could choose between several different overall styles. (I hope your client has an enormous design budget!)
my post here should help you get started:
What is the recommended method of styling an iOS app?
if you need live theme changes, each theme in this example could post notifications when the user selects another theme (or skin) - then you can update either the theme instance itself.
alternatively, you can create identifiers for themes which are mapped (NSCFDictionary) to a central theme factory. an example identifier for a specific view for use with the theme factory could be a string MONImageSelectorTableCellThemeIdentifier.
an example manager/factory which handles all theme loading and vends references to themes:
#interface MONThemeManager : NSObject
//...
- (MONTheme *)themeForCurrentlySelectedSkinForViewWithIdentifier:(NSString *)identifier;
//...
#end
beyond that, it's hard to answer your question in more detail without knowing your requirements. the implementation of skinning an app can range from very simple to very very complex. good luck.
Already some good answer here, but I'd add that if you use a ui toolkit such as Three20
you can skin everything using CSS as you might for web pages.
I do realise this is an old post, but I thought I'd share my penny on the matter:)
To make any Cocoa app skinnable you need you think of 3 aspects of the app:
1) Uniformity: By this I mean that on all windows, views (including buttons, text inputs etc...) you want to have a 'standard' that will apply throughout the app. This is the first thing you need to look at. Although iOS and OS X alike already have 'themes' as to put it i.e. Apples default way of shading and laying things out, you can override these (refer to the individual view / window etc... documentation.
2) Performance: With skinning etc... performance is always an issue when it comes to writing your own drawRect etc... methods. The code apple have in place for the 'default' is already optimised, so you need to keep a close eye on the performance of the app whilst you are doing this. Good examples are: Do I use an image with a gradient, or do I use NSGradient? Both of which have performance issues when it comes to rendering them, but it's a question of which is the better of the two
3) userDefaults: This is generally the area where you'd be getting your 'skin settings' pulled from. userDefaults is basically where you store all of the information which you generally set in a preference pane.
If I were you I'd look into the class reference of it:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Reference/Foundation/Classes/NSUserDefaults_Class/
Furthermore, here's a nifty example of using userDefaults:
http://mobile.tutsplus.com/tutorials/iphone/nsuserdefaults_iphone-sdk/
Hope this helps!
I'm still fairly new to the iOS development scene, so I'm not totally sure where to look for open source controls, etc. The app I want to build will have multiple collections in it. I'd love to have a view where I can swipe up and down to browse between collections, and then swipe left and right to scroll though that particular collection -- all on one screen.
The app I've seen that basically resembles this is the "Popular" screen on the Mobli app for iOS.
I'd be grateful if anyone has seen something similar already built that I could base it on instead of trying to program a new view from scratch w/ my still limited knowledge.
The ScrollView sample project from apple does this, you might want to to take a look at it.
As for reusable components, those are few and far between. It's difficult to protect a XIB in an external library, and beginning developers tend to have trouble getting static libraries to work in their project anyway. Github is where I look for OSS code I can use.
This is Cocoa Touch (et al), iPhone, XCode only.
After completing my first commercial iPhone app, I'm struggling a bit to find a way to start and expand an app from scratch which gives the most linear development (i.e., the least scrapping, re-write or re-organization of code, classes and resources) as app specs change and I learn more (mostly about what Cocoa Touch and other classes and components are designed to be capable of and the limitation of their customization).
So. File, New Project. Blank window based app? Create the controllers I need, with .xib if necessary, so I can localize them and do changes requested by the customer in IB? And then always subclass each class except those extremely unlikely to be customized? (I mean framework classes such as UIButton, CLLocation etc here.)
The question is a generic 'approach' type question, so I'll be happy to listen to handy dev practices you've found paid off. Do you have any tips for which 're-usable components' you've found have become very useful in subsequent projects?
Clients often describe programs in terms of 'first, this screen appears, and then you can click this button and on the new screen you can select... (and so on)' terms. Are there any good guides to go from there to vital early-stage app construction choices, i.e. 'functions-features-visuals description to open-ended-app-architecture'?
For example, in my app I went from NavBar, to Toolbar with items, to Toolbar with two custom subviews in order to accommodate the functions-features-visuals description. Maybe you have also done such a thing and have some advice to offer?
I'm also looking for open-ended approaches to sharing large ("loaded data") objects, or even simple booleans, between controllers and invoking methods in another controller, specifically starting processes such as animation and loading (example: trigger a load from a URL in the second tab viewcontroller after making sure an animation has been started in the first tab viewcontroller), as these two features apply to the app architecture building approach you advocate.
Any handy pointers appreciated. Thanks guys.
Closing this up as there's no single correct answer and was more suitable for the other forum, had I known it existed when I asked :)
If you want to know the method I ended up with, it's basically this:
Window-based blank app
Navigation Controller controls all, whether I need to or not (hide when not used)
Tab Bar Controller if necessary
Connect everything <-- unhelpful, I know.
Set up and check autorotation, it might get added to some view later.
Add one viewcontroller with xib for each view, you never know when they want an extra button somewhere. It's easier to copy code than make the max ultra superdynamic adjustable tableviewcontroller that does all list-navigation, etc.
Re-use a viewcontroller only when just the content differs in it, such as a detail viewcontroller.
Minimize code in each viewcontroller by writing functions and methods and shove them in a shared .m
Everything that's shared ends up in the App delegate, except subclassed stuff.
Modal viewcontrollers are always dynamically created and never have an xib.
It seems like the built in UIImagePickerController cannot accept sources other than its device camera Roll.
I would like to get the functionality of picking and enlarging pictures within my own app. Also I would like to allow the user to select the pictures and save it into their camera roll (so they can later use it as wall paper)
1) what is the recommended way of building a custom UIImagePickerController that supports what I need ? Is there another built in controller I am missing?
3) Is there a way to take a UIImage and save it to the desktop background of the device directly? Or is it a two step (first save to camera roll), then have the user load the picture from there to save as wallpaper
Thanks in advance!!
At this point, it seems that the only way to build a custom UIImagePickerController functionality is to subclass, and then muck with the view hierarchy directly. This allows you to move, hide, and replace UI elements and access the non-public classes that control the operation of the camera, but as you probably gather, this technique is both unsupported (in that it may, and probably will, break with future updates) and not recommended (in that it may, and probably will, get your app rejected from the App Store if detected).
As far as your second point (somehow numbered 3), John is right: there is no call in the public SDK to accomplish this. You could probably hack something together if you're clever, but remember the warnings in my first paragraph...
Regarding #3) there is no public call in the SDK to save an UIImage to the desktop.
I don't know about the rest of your questions though.
Just today I started a open source UIImagePickerController clone, it is not perfect but it works quite ok. Feel free to fork http://github.com/jeena/JPImagePickerController