m searching for the solution to automatic background downloading with iOS 5.
I have seen in Settings of iPad, there are newsstand apps in the category of
Store - Automatic Downloads
apps like Popular Mechanics, etc.
I want to know,how to add my app in this category? Mine is also a newsstand app but even after making all the changes in plist for newsstand, m not getting my app in the automatic downloads.
First, what you must do is tell the application that you have a required background mode. This allows your application to download issues in the background. So go into your application's Info.plist and add the following (Assumes you right-click and open the plist as 'Source Code'):
<key>UIBackgroundModes</key>
<array>
<string>newsstand-content</string>
</array>
Now, the next part requires you to have push notifications enabled for your application and a server which will execute your pushes. If you don't have one, then I suggest you look at Urban Airship. It seems to be quite simple and easy to incorporate into your applications. I have never used it, but I have heard it has good free options.
After you have a way to deliver push notifications, then you must register your application to accept remote notifications. Place the following code in your AppDelegate's application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method.
// Register the automatic download remote notification
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] registerForRemoteNotificationTypes:UIRemoteNotificationTypeNewsstandContentAvailability];
This should cause your application to prompt the user when the app first launches and asks if they want to enable automatic downloading.
After all this, you must then code how you will handle a push notification. How you will handle them, is entirely up to you, but this is where you would tell the user they have a new issue or start the download automatically. This must be handled in two places. 1) in your AppDelegate's UIApplicationDelegate application:didReceiveRemoteNotification: method. 2) the AppDelegate's application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method, checking for the launch option of UIApplicationLaunchOptionsRemoteNotificationKey.
That is pretty much a quick summary of how you can get started. If you need some more direction, I highly recommend these tutorials (I didn't write them): iOS Newsstand Tutorial and Newsstand and Subscriptions.
Good luck!
You need to register for the push type to get the entry in Store / Automatic Downloads.
Related
Since few days i am searching for the functionality which will allow me keep user posted that application is running in background. I have attached a !image for what exactly i am looking for. i tried googling but could not get exactly what I need. when i tap on the flashing red bar it takes me back to the application.
Thanks in advance.
The red banner you pictured is provided by the system, is shown only if your application uses background audio recording (see AVAudioSession), and doesn't provide the opportunity for you to choose what happens when the user taps it.
Unless your app fits into one of a few specific classes, it doesn't actually "run" while in the background. Instead, it's "suspended" -- still in memory, but gets no CPU time. What happens outside of your app is thus up to the system, not to you... the only way to show a banner that will launch your application is to use a push notification service or UILocalNotification, but those banners are only shown briefly, and you don't get to control their duration. What you seem to be specifically asking for isn't possible using public API.
The kind of notification you want isn't supported by the current iOS for third-party developers.
If you want that kind of functionality then implement Apple Push Notification service through
this you can first give message to Apple push notification service. then Apple service
automatically generate notification for your App as you want.
I have a newsstand app that will offer a free subscription that updates daily.
I would like to use push notifications to download the issues in the background.
At first I was considering use UrbanAirship to manage the list of scribers and send out push notifications every day at the same time. Of course this is costly.
Instead would Apple allow me to send local notifications to the app each day at the scheduled time and then the app could go and download the issue in the background, thus avoiding the need for a server to send push notifications or manage a list of scribers or worry about security and certificates etc.
I am not sure about Apple's guideline for this. But I strongly recommend to not try out something like that.
In case your app is not running (not in background) the local notification will not start the download automatically. The Newsstand push notification include the content-available property (with a value of 1) in the JSON payload. Due to this iOS launch your application in background (if not in background) and you can add your content in Newsstand queue for download in background. Once download is complete iOS will close your application. There is no notification alert or any other thing comes which require user to take any action. I think this you cannot achieve through Local Notification.
Other challenges
- How do you make sure the new content is always available when local notification is received .
- How do you figure out what content to download.
Also check out my answer to this question.
Is there a way to bring my app to the foreground once a timer runs out? This is for a kiosk-type app that'll display some information at various points during user's session.
This is for an app that will only be installed on our enterprise devices, thus not be submitted to Apple for approval. I am also opening to exploring jailbreak options.
I'd appreciate any help/tips you guys can provide. Thanks.
Yes, you can technically use Xcode for jailbreak development (but you don't have to). If you want your app to be installed outside the normal sandbox, and in /Applications/, then you'd build with Xcode without code signing, fake code sign (or use self-signed certificate), and then copy/install the app to your device, using scp or something similar (maybe have a script for this).
You can google search on tools like "Theos", "Logos", or "iOSOpenDev", too. More here
Also, see this page for information about fake code signing with Xcode.
In terms of bringing an app to the foreground, there's at least a couple ways to handle that:
One would be to use Cydia to install the (free) utility open. With open, you can issue a command line call to open any app, by using its bundle ID (e.g. open com.mycompany.MyAppName). If you want to do this programatically, issue that command within a system() call:
#import <stdlib.h>
int returnCode = system("/usr/bin/open com.mycompany.MyAppName");
Another alternative is to see this answer by #WrightsCS. Make sure to read the comments, too, about where this goes.
Update: in terms of putting your app into the background, you can kill your app completely with either exit(0) or [[UIApplication sharedApplication] terminateWithSuccess]. Or, see this answer for a solution to programmatically simulate a home button press, which will send the app to the background without killing it.
You won't be able to use NSTimer, because timers don't fire while your app is in the background. However, you can use GCD blocks to run your background work, and make the system() call with open to bring you back to the foreground.
See this answer, probably scrolling all the way to the bottom of his post
or look at this similar answer, which was actually posted at the bottom of the question
Jailbroken options for bringing your app to the foreground:
Hook into SpringBoard using MobileSubstrate. You can find classes and methods with promising names, such as [SBApplicationIcon launch] and [SBApplication launch]. Another possibility is using SBSLaunchApplicationWithIdentifier() from the SpringBoardServices private framework.
Options for suspending the app:
You most likely can do this again by using MobileSubstrate to make SpringBoard close a particular app for you. Maybe you can simulate a home button click by calling [SBUIController handleMenuTap] or something similar.
I know this question may be a little bit common and over asked but I cannot find any precise information... so :
Is it possible to have some kind of thread running when the app is in background so I can perform basic sync with my webservice ?
App is in background : I mean the user clicked the Home button, or switched to another app
basic sync : photo upload and download with AFNetworking. I know it has method to continue an HTTPRequest while app is in background, but this is not my point.
My goal would be to make some kind of sync manager, reading a list of photos to update created while the user was on the app, and perform those changes.
I know that the manager could be killed by the OS, but since my server uses atomic transfers it is not a problem. I just need a way to relaunch it... Push ?
I think apps like Google Latitude or Mail and those kind of apps uses what I am looking for but I cannot find any relevant details on it. And using iOS5 is not a problem but waiting for iOS6 would not be a solution.
Thank you for your replies !
PS : well I almost forgot. the app is designed for an enterprise program, so maybe rules are different ? I don't think there is any check for in-house deployment so it might lead to new possibilities...
Apple's Mail client has a background daemon which keeps it running but you can't have that with your own applications. Once an app enters a background state, it must halt it's operations. You can request for a little more time when backgrounded to finish off any transfers or writes to disk (see the Executing a Finite-Length Task in the Background section on Apple's Multitasking Guide)
Google Latitude has events generated based on location. This is a special type of backgrounding introduced by Apple for certain types of applications (see Implementing Long-Running Background Tasks section on Apple's Multitasking Guide) but this can't be used for HTTP syncing. It can only be used for audio, location, voip, newstand content, bluetooth and external hardware attachments.
Push doesn't seem like a solution because it only generates an alert. It doesn't trigger any action until the user triggers the opening of the notification.
You'll want to read Tech Note 2277 Networking and Multitasking.
Basically you have a couple of options:
If you can convince Apple that your app is a VoIP app then you can register a VoIP socket and the OS will resume your background app whenever there is activity on that socket.
Your main option though is to register a background task for any outstanding activity that you have to do when your app is put in the background. You typically get 10 minutes to finish up that work.
Mail is a special app with privileges you don't get.
Apps like Latitude typically register themselves for location updates, specifically to be woken up when there are major geo-position changes. Apps that record GPS tracks do similar things.
Found it !
Using Suhail Patel 's link on Apple's Multitasking Guide I added the voip tag to UIBackgroundModes in Info.plist and use setKeepAliveTimeout:handler: method of UIApplication to relaunch it if needed once the app is going to sleep.
I hope this will help a lot of you !
Of course this app won't be allowed to be on the App Store but for in house development this is in my opinion the best way to do so.
Thanks everyone for showing me the right direction !
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.