I'm new to iOS Development and am trying to make an application that essentially sorts through a list of 300 names or so. I've got the Drill-Down part of the application down, aside from the detailView, but am now faced with a challenge.
What I would like to do is have users select from 3 fields with a UIPickerView to come up with shorter lists for every time a user is looking for a person. I'd like to use a .plist, but I also have an XML feed of the information. Before I waste all of my time structuring these data sources, does anybody have a good overview as to how I should approach this?
Also, I've asked some this question before, and they tell me to read up on introductory iOS development topics. I understand the mechanics of development, I just can't ever figure out how to approach a task properly. (I'm working on it!)
Thanks in advance. I'd share an image to help clarify, but my rep isn't high enough.
Snip: It looks like I misread your intention which makes my earlier comments irrelevant, you want to have the user select one of 3 options to shrink the list, if I'm not mistaken.
Some more questions for you, so I take it that this XML feed is going to be potentially changing between times that the user loads up the app? Will it only ever grow or are those 300 or so names that are loaded once set for good? The reason I ask so that you can maybe see my train of thought is whether or not using Core Data might be useful. You could easily store your large list locally, save time having to reload this large list frequently, and also you can use the built fetchedObjectController to search your collection of names. I'll keep thinking about it and once you get a chance to answer these questions we can continue.
Ill check back for an edit or comment, and see if I can give you an approach. Also, maybe edit your question with any of your own approach ideas and we could also start from there and refine them if needed.
Edit 2: From the information in the comments this is one of the ways that I could see this being done that make sense to me:
Since you seem to be able to control the information you receive from the feed I would set it up to send you only the contacts that need to be added/removed. You could handle this a few ways depending on your deployment intentions but I would go with the following:
Find a way to signal a first time run of the application, and as a result all contacts would be new, and you could populate your list fully with a slightly longer first time setup. Then any further changes could be quickly handled by smaller edits made to the local list.
You would need to set up Core Data for your application, which should be fairly straightforward in your case, and after this you can use the built in NSFetchRequest to do your searches that will then quickly return a list of narrowed down contacts. As for the physical picker that is just a matter of building the UI which will require some design from your end as you are the only one that knows what you are going for in that regard. Depending on the complexity of your app and what functionality you will want to include you could get away with 1-2 views that simply do the displaying of the contacts in a table and then the picker just reloads when appropriate.
I'm not familiar with the implementation of XML Feeds and receiving data from them, but I have done XML Response parsing into Core Data from a SOAP service before and they shouldn't be terribly different.
Regarding resource to get you started should you need them, I would recommend the following:
eBooks:
http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/Objective-C_2.0_Essentials
http://www.techotopia.com/index.php/IPhone_iOS_4_Development_Essentials_Xcode_4_Edition
Tutorials:
http://www.raywenderlich.com/
The eBooks I have linked are both absolutely fantastic and one of the few xCode 4.0 books that I was able to find that seemed to be of an actual usable quality. They both contain easy to follow and clear tutorials on simple and more advanced aspects of programming for iOS.
Ray's site is an immensely helpful resource as it contains both a very active forum base for iOS programming in addition to a constantly growing tutorial collection as there are 4-5 people that constantly are creating new tutorials that the community votes on and suggests every week. It contains some more advanced topics than the above books and I would recommend looking at it after doing a few walk through/tutorials from the books.
I'll stick around if you have any further questions, otherwise you can send me a notification via these comments, or just post another question and someone is bound to help you out!
-Karoly
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I am an absolute beginner in programming and I have set myself the goal of creating an app for our small association.
I would also like to create a kind of news feed on a page in which I can post local newspaper articles
can add manually. So selected articles. I know that it is probably very complex at the beginning, but I want to get an idea of how and what I need for it.
My question is, what hardware or software items do I need? Or how can that be done?
For now, I don't need any codes, I just need an overview of the means by which I can get there. And then I try to get used to it bit by bit.
I'm creating an app which generates a random question from a list (currently stored as a Numbers doc). Once that question is answered by the user, the unique question ID, the question itself and their answer is stored in core data.
When the user requests a new question one will be generated randomly from the original document and it will then be cross referenced with core data to find out if the user has previous answered that question.
I haven't included the code of my app at the moment as I'm not really looking for specific coding help. As someone who is new to the world of code I'm just looking for a nudge in the right direction for me to go and do more studying.
JSON looks like a possible, but the more I read about that the more it seems that it is about an app communicating with a website. I don't really want the questions to be accessed by just anyone, so putting them on my website might not work? Could I do it with a file local in the app? maybe a CSV?
I'm anticipating the file may become quite big as I add more questions - so I'm not sure if that changes things?
Thanks so much in advance, and apologies if this isn't quite the right way to ask questions on here.
I'm just looking for a nudge in the right direction for me to go and
do more studying.
There are many options to solve your problem. Each option depends on your skill, time and if the solution is even necessary for the app you want to make. In the end it's you who decides on which solution solves your problem. There are a few options:
creating your own backend
have a local file in your app
or use a third party service like Firebase.
Each option has its own benefits. Just to list a few:
Local file:
You could have a local file in nearly any format (XML, JSON, .plist) etc. The downside is that your app isn't dynamic - you have to manually keep adding text to this file and update your app trough the App Store for your users to see these changes. If you're going with this approach, I'd recommend using a .plist or a JSON file which is saved in your project. How to implement this correctly is beyond the scope of the question, but there are plenty tutorials out there to help you getting started.
You could put your data in a .plist file. This is nothing more than a dictionary with key-value data (same principle as JSON where each key has a value). An example:
question1 is the key, of type String, containing the value "How are you today". It's easy to read from this .plist since it's the same principle as JSON.
Also, JSON is just a format, it's used often to communicate with websites, but it's not limited to sites only.
Custom backend
This means that you make a backend on which your app can communicate with. You'd have to host your backend, write logic / code on your backend and so on. This can be very time consuming, especially if your app isn't that big/demanding. I wouldn't recommend this unless you have the experience, time, patience and need for this solution.
Third party
This can be a nice solution. Using a third party service like Firebase means that you have your data online. The Firebase library has been well tested and has great documentation to get you started. It's secure, fast, simple but .. it does take a little bit of time to learn how it works - but the end result is that you have a dynamic app where you can add, delete, edit questions and so on. This data can be protected if you wish - which means only authenticated users can access this data (Nobody else will be spying on your data :))
I don't really want the questions to be accessed by just anyone, so
putting them on my website might not work?
Read custom backend and Third Party.
Could I do it with a file local in the app?
Yes. Read Local file.
maybe a CSV?
That's possible but I wouldn't recommend it, but that's a personal opinion. I find it outdated and it's more difficult to work with than JSON.
I'm anticipating the file may become quite big as I add more questions
- so I'm not sure if that changes things?
What is a big file? Nowadays reading a "big" JSON file is probably nothing more than a few MB at most. Your phone reads this in no time. This won't be an issue for your phone or app.
I would like to create a text based RPG game for iPhone. In this user will have some questions with answers, and navigate to the next page depends on the answer in which the user selects. As per the requirement I have to store the entire story in the app itself. And I need to access each event in the story, when the user selects. So which kind of database can I use?
Please share your ideas.
Thanks.
I'm not so sure you need to create some type of off-device database. If the game has predefined answers and questions then you should probably load the app with each of these on the device.
I'm sure there are plenty of ways to go about this, the simplest being if/else statements. This would obviously be a hindrance and easy to mess up if the storyline is long.
One thing that comes to mind would be to design the story using a Tree representation. The starting point would be the root of the tree, and from there the user would progress down the tree until it eventually reaches a leaf (end). Depending on the number of options a user has for each page, this really wouldn't be too tough to implement if you have any knowledge of this type of data structure.
But, this is just off the top of my head. I would definitely consider the use of a Tree data structure though.
This is pretty wide question, but I'm hoping to get a push in the right direction (technologies and methodology).
Ok, I have an iphone app (which I am developing) that works with a web service (c#) through http requests. The web service connects to the underlying database, extracts the necessary data depending on the request and feeds it back to the application.
Now, I need to implement a search system in the app. The user searches for some words, and I need to provide the most relevant results. The search must be performed on different tables in the database. Each table can be searched in a number of columns. For example, when searching through the people table I need to search in the first name, lastname, company, and other fields. Other tables have other important columns.
I have so many questions that I don't even know where to start.
How do I make my sql queries to make the search, but still be fast enough. Do I need to make some extra tables with indexed content somehow?
How should I add relevance factor to the results so I can ultimately filter only the most relevant results? For example, if an user searches for Smith, maybe there is a person named Smith or even a Company. They should be displayed before any other content that can have smith in the description.
I know the question is a little vague/wide but I can explain more if somebody desires.
Thank you
This kind of depends on which language/rdbms you are using on your server. You might checkout various DB search solutions like Sphinx which will do all of that indexing for you and provide a simple Search API. Sphinx for example allows you to prioritize columns, define character mappings (ß->s, ä->a) etc.
In the end I have decided to use Lucene. It's a wonderful piece of technology and even if I had some doubts in the beginning, after reading 3/4 of the book called "Lucene in Action" it was clear to me that it had everything I needed (and much more).
I know it's not a fully-functional searching system (with all the elements needed), but merely a library handling the core of a search system. It will need some work to integrate it with my application/webservice/database. I will let you know how it goes :)
Thanks for your input!
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I'm working in a small company and weeks away from deploying a web-app that will be used a lot. Everyone at one location will have to learn to use it, and although I think it's pretty easy and intuitive I may be biased.
I've written a help guide with plenty of screenshots that's available on every page, but I'll still need to train everyone. What's the best way? How do you take a step back and explain code you've been working on for weeks?
First try to avoid the training:
Perform usability testing to ensure your web app is intuitive. Usability testing is a very important aspect of testing and it is often ignored. How you see your system will probably be very different as how a new user sees your system.
Also add contextual help as often as you can. For example when I hover over a tag in stack overflow, I know exactly what clicking it will do, because it tells me.
Also this may seem obvious, but make sure you link to your documentation from the site itself. People may not think of looking in your documentation unless its right in front of their eyes.
About training documentation:
Try to split up your material into how your users would use the system. I personally like the "trails" option that Sun created for their Java tutorials. In this tutorial you can do several things, and you can chose on which trail you'd like to go.
Support random reads in your help documentation. If they have a task to do in your web app, then they should be able to get help on that without reading a bunch of unrelated content.
Make sure your documentation is searchable.
About actual training sessions:
If you are actually performing training sessions, stay away from explaining anything related to your code at all. You don't need to know about the engine to drive a car.
Try to split up your training sessions into very focused aspects of your system. If you only have 1 training session available to you then just do one specialized use case of your system + the overall description of the system. Refer to the different parts of documentation where they can get help.
Letting the community help itself:
No matter how extensive your documentation is, you'll always have cases that you didn't cover. That's why it's a good idea to have a forum available to all users of the system. Allow them to ask each other questions.
You can review this forum and add content to your documentation as needed.
You could also open up a wiki for the documentation itself, but this is probably not desirable if your user base isn't very large.
Few ideas:
Do you have some canned walk-through scenarios? Don't know if it is applicable for your product, but I built a pretty substantial product a couple years ago and developed some training modules that they'd work through - nothing long, maybe 15 minutes tops for each one.
I put together a slide presentation that hit the highlights to talk about what it does. I would spend about 10 minutes going through the app's highlights to familiarize them with it before doing the hands-on stuff.
People don't tend to read stuff, unfortunately. You could put hours and hours into a help document, and still find that folks simply don't read it or skim over it. That can be frustrating. Expect that answers that are in your guide will be the topic of questions your users will have.
Break up any training you do into manageable chunks. I've been to a full-day training exercise before and the trainer broke it into short pieces and made it easy for me to get the training topic in my head. You don't want to data-dump on them because their eyes will gloss over and you'll lose them.
Ultimately, if your app is highly usable, it should be a piece of cake. If it isn't, you'll find out. You might want to have a few folks you know run through your training ahead of time and give you constructive criticism on it. Better to fix it before the big group is trained. You'll be more confident in the product and the training materials (whatever they are) and you'll likely have a better training experience.
If applicable, provide an online help/wiki/faq for them. Sometimes that is helpful.
Best of luck!
You should really have addressed this issue a lot earlier in the development cycle than you are doing.
In my view the ideal scenario for corporate software is one where the users design their own application and write their own documentation and I always try to strive for this. You should have identified key users early on and designed the system with them (I try to get my users to do basic screen designs and menu layouts in Excel or similar - then I implement that as static pages and review before writing a line of significant code, obviously they won't get the design right first time, but it's your job to guide them - and ideally in a way where they think they came up with the correct design decisions, not you :-) ).
These users should then write the user documentation from this design in parallel with you developing the system. I have never seen help documentation delivered by a IT department/software company used significantly in a corporate setting. Instead what happens is the users will create their own folder of notes and work-arounds and refer to this (in fact if you're ever doing system analysis to replace an existing system finding the 'user-bible' for the old system is a key strategy). Getting the users to write their own documentation up-front simply harnesses what will happen anyway - but this is vastly easier if the users feel they have ownership of the system because they designed it themselves in the first place.
Of course this approach needs commitment and time from your users, but generally it's not that hard a sell. It's trite, but working as a facilitator so the users can develop there own system rather than as a third party to give them a system pretty much guarantees user acceptance.
As you are where you are you're too late to implement all of this, but if you can identify a couple of keen, key, users and get time from them to write their own documentation then that would be a good move. If you can't get even that then you need to identify an evangelist who you can train to be the 'departmental' expert and give them 110% of your energy to support them.
The bottom line is that user acceptance is based on perception, and this does not necessarily correlate with how usable an system actually is. You have to focus on the group psychology of this as much as the reality of the system, which tends to be tricky for developers as we're much more factually based than most people.
I'll be looking into something like this too in the next few months.
In your case, hopefully the UI has already undergone user acceptance testing. You say you work in a small company. Is it possible to get the least tech-savvy person there to try it out? In fact, get them to try it out without any guidance from yourself except for questions they ask. Document the questions and make sure your user-guide answers them.
The main thing for me would be logic and consistency. If the app's workflow relates logically to the task it has been designed to accomplish and the UI is consistent you should be OK.
Create a wiki page to describe the use of your system. Giving edit rights to the users of your system lets the users:
update the documentation to correct any errors in the initial release of documentation,
share any tips on usage they may have found.
share unusual uses for the system that you may not have thought of.
request features.
provide any workarounds they've found while waiting for the new functionality to be implemented.
Try a few users first, one or two in a small company. Mostly watch, help as little as possible. This tells you what needs to be fixed, and it creates an experienced user base - so you are not the "training bottleneck" anymore.
Turn core requirements/use cases/storycards into HowTo / walkthroughs for your documentation.
For a public training, prepare a 10..15 minute presentation (just that, not more!) that covers key concepts that the users absolutely must understand, than show your core walkthroughs. Reserve extra time for questions about how to solve various tasks.
Think as a user, not as a techie: - noone cares if it's a SQL database and you spent a lot of time to get the locking mechanisms right. They do care about "does it slow me down" and "does something bad happen when two people do that at the same time". Our job is to make complicated things look easy.
It may help to put the documentation on the intranet in an editable form - page "comments", or wiki maybe. And/or put up a "error wiki" for error messages and blips - where you or your users can quickly add recomendations, workarounds and reasons for anything that does not go as expected.
Rather then train all those people I have chosen a few superusers (at least one person from each department) and trained them to teach the rest of the employees. It is of course vital that those super users are
well respected in their departments
able to teach
like the application
The easy way to ensure that they like the app is to have them to define the way it should work :-). Since they should work with this app each and every day they are the prime stakeholders, no matter what management states