I need to get NSTimeInterval value from last device boot. I found CACurrentMediaTime() which suits this task, but in my app I am not using Core Animation and I don't think that this is the best way to include this framework just to get this function. Is there another way to get time in seconds from last boot more elegant way?
The NSTimeInterval value since the last system restart can be acquired more directly via the following Foundation object and method:
[[NSProcessInfo processInfo] systemUptime]
The fastest low-level method is to read system uptime from processor using mach_absolute_time()
#include <mach/mach_time.h>
int systemUptime()
{
static float timebase_ratio;
if (timebase_ratio == 0) {
mach_timebase_info_data_t s_timebase_info;
(void) mach_timebase_info(&s_timebase_info);
timebase_ratio = (float)s_timebase_info.numer / s_timebase_info.denom;
}
return (int)(timebase_ratio * mach_absolute_time() / 1000000000);
}
Note that timebase_ratio is different for processors. For example, on macbook it equals 1 whereas on iPhone 5 it equals 125/3 (~40).
Try a C system call, times(3) is supposed to return uptime.
On MacOSX, uptime also returns such. So there has to be a way though that as well.
Related
There are a few questions on this already, but nothing in them seems to provide accurate results. I need to determine simply if the phone is connected to a cell network at a given moment.
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Reference/CTCarrier/Reference/Reference.html
This class seems to be documented incorrectly, returning values for mobileCountryCode, isoCountryCode and mobileNetworkCode where no SIM is installed to the phone. carrierName indicates a 'home' network or a previous home network if the phone has been unlocked.
I also looked up and found some people claiming the following to work, which uses an undocumented method of the CoreTelephony framework, but the results have been useless to me, reporting seemingly random figures, where perhaps it is not itself updating consistently.
-(int) getSignalStrength
{
void *libHandle = dlopen("/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreTelephony.framework/CoreTelephony", RTLD_LAZY);
int (*CTGetSignalStrength)();
CTGetSignalStrength = dlsym(libHandle, "CTGetSignalStrength");
if( CTGetSignalStrength == NULL) NSLog(#"Could not find CTGetSignalStrength");
int result CTGetSignalStrength();
dlclose(libHandle);
return result;
}
Thanks.
Edit: The app is connected to an internal wifi and must remain so, making a reachability check more difficult.
I'm playing with this function and I've noticed you're calling it in an interesting way. I'm calling it by adding CoreTelephony.framework as a compile-time link. For the function itself, you'll want to declare it's prototype somewhere (perhaps immediately above the method you call from):
int CTGetSignalStrength();
This needs to be declared since it isn't in a public header for CoreTelephony.
Now, I built a simple app that prints signal strength every second.
int CTGetSignalStrength();
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
while (true) {
printf("signal strength: %d\n", CTGetSignalStrength());
sleep(1);
}
}
I ran it on my iPad mini and it shows steady values until I picked it up, where the number went up. Wrapping my iPad in tin foil (tin foil is a debugging tool I have never used before) caused the number to go down. When I put my iPad in airplane mode, it kept repeating the last value, so this will not be an accurate measure for you.
If you want to test if a device currently has a cellular data network connection, you may be more interested in Reachability, specifically kSCNetworkReachabilityFlagsIsWWAN.
Ok I think I have the correct solution now, which was a bit simpler in the end.
The issue with the CTGetSignalStrength() method is that it works normally, but if you remove a sim, it reports the last signal before the removal. I found another method in the same framework called CTSIMSupportGetSIMStatus(), also undocumented, which can tell you if a SIM is currently connected. Using both as follows should confirm the current network signal.
First declare the methods:
NSString * CTSIMSupportGetSIMStatus();
int CTGetSignalStrength();
Then check connectivity to cell network like so:
NSString *status = CTSIMSupportGetSIMStatus();
int signalstrength = CTGetSignalStrength();
BOOL connected = ( [status isEqualToString: #"kCTSIMSupportSIMStatusReady"] && signalstrength > 0 );
In my iPhone application, I need to calculate the time difference between the time a message was created on the server, and the time my phone received it.
The server (Java) puts in a number returned by System.currentTimeMillis() as metadata along with the message.
How do I compare this number with the current time on the device? Could not find a suitable NSDate method to do this comparison.
Thanks in advance!
You might take a look at this SO answer and the -timeIntervalSinceDate: method.
You can use (NUInteger) ([[NSDate date] timeIntervalSince1970] * 1000)
I have been using mach_absolute_time() for all my timing functions so far. calculating how long between frames etc.
I now want to get the exact time touch input events happen using event.timestamp in the touch callbacks.
the problem is these two seem to use completely different timers. sure, you can get them both in seconds, but their origins are different and seemingly random...
is there any way to sync the two different timers?
or is there anyway to get access to the same timer that the touch input uses to generate that timestamp property? otherwise its next to useless.
Had some trouble with this myself. There isn't a lot of good documentation, so I went with experimentation. Here's what I was able to determine:
mach_absolute_time depends on the processor of the device. It returns ticks since the device was last rebooted (otherwise known as uptime). In order to get it in a human readable form, you have to modify it by the result from mach_timebase_info (a ratio), which will return billionth of seconds (or nanoseconds). To make this more usable I use a function like the one below:
#include <mach/mach_time.h>
int getUptimeInMilliseconds()
{
static const int64_t kOneMillion = 1000 * 1000;
static mach_timebase_info_data_t s_timebase_info;
if (s_timebase_info.denom == 0) {
(void) mach_timebase_info(&s_timebase_info);
}
// mach_absolute_time() returns billionth of seconds,
// so divide by one million to get milliseconds
return (int)((mach_absolute_time() * s_timebase_info.numer) / (kOneMillion * s_timebase_info.denom));
}
Get the initial difference between two i.e
what is returned by mach_absolute_time() initally when your application starts and also get the event.timestamp initially at the same time...
store the difference... it would remain same through out the time your application runs.. so you can use this time difference to convert one to another...
How about CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent?
I'm looking for a reliable way to get the time. It can't be tampered with and it needs to work offline. So no internet time , no user time setup in settings and no BSD uptime time since last reboot. I was wondering since GPS works using atomic clock, whether I could access that information.
Thank you
This works to get the GPS time:
#import <CoreLocation/CoreLocation.h>
CLLocation* gps = [[CLLocation alloc]
initWithLatitude:(CLLocationDegrees) 0.0
longitude:(CLLocationDegrees) 0.0];
NSDate* now = gps.timestamp;
It doesn't seem to be tamper-proof though.
I tried this code on an iPhone 4 in airplane mode (iOS 6.1), and even then it gives a time all right. But unfortunately this time seems to change with the system clock. Ugh.
Funny thing that I found (still in airplane mode) is that if you tamper with the system clock (after turning to off Time & Date's Set Automatically), and then turn Set Automatically back to on, the machine restores the real (original) time without a hitch. this works even after cycling the phone's power. So it seems that there is something like a tamper-proof time the device maintains internally. But how to access this?
P.S. A discussion of this from 2010. The author of the penultimate comment tried this in a fallout shelter: so it's clear the phone is not getting the pristine time from any external source.
Addendum, July 2013
Found a few more posts (here, here and here) about another kind of time measure: system kernel boot time. It's accessed through a call something like this: sysctlbyname("kern.boottime", &boottime, &size, NULL, 0);. Unfortunately it too changes with the user-adjusted data and time, even without reboot. Another function gettimeofday() is similarly dependent on user-defined time.
NSDate and it's CF counterpart are all based on the user controllable time, and thereby aren't tamper proof.
As far as I know, there is no open API for either GPS time or carrier time directly. However, you can check the mach_absolute_time to get untampered time since last boot up, and perhaps use it to at least be aware of how much time has passed since the app has been awoken (without having the potential for that time to be tampered with while the app is running).
mach_absolute_time depends on the processor of the device. It returns ticks since the device was last rebooted (otherwise known as uptime). In order to get it in a human readable form, you have to modify it by the result from mach_timebase_info (a ratio), which will return billionth of seconds (or nanoseconds). To make this more usable I use a function like the one below:
#include <mach/mach_time.h>
int getUptimeInMilliseconds()
{
static const int64_t kOneMillion = 1000 * 1000;
static mach_timebase_info_data_t s_timebase_info;
if (s_timebase_info.denom == 0) {
(void) mach_timebase_info(&s_timebase_info);
}
// mach_absolute_time() returns billionth of seconds,
// so divide by one million to get milliseconds
return (int)((mach_absolute_time() * s_timebase_info.numer) / (kOneMillion * s_timebase_info.denom));
}
Even if you can get hold of the time from GPS you should be aware that GPS time is not quite the same as UTC. The GPS receiver in the iPhone might take care of that for you though.
This gets you the current date and time:
NSDate *now = [NSDate date];
This will be as reliable as you can get. The internal clock on the iPhone will be updated when it can get access to an NTP server. If the phone uses GPS as a time sync source it'll also be used to update the same system-wide clock which is accessible via the above method.
The CoreFoundation equivalent is something like:
CFAbsoluteTime now = CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent();
Which returns the CoreFoundation equivalent of the normal UNIX seconds-since-epoch timestamp.
The gold standard of timekeeping are the various government time observatories in the U.S. and worldwide. They provide Atomic time. That is used world wide. Apple should be using that. If the want to sync w/ the cell towers, there should be an Alternate internal time. If the tower or GPS system malfunctions all are left with incorrect time.
I'd like to detect from within my app whether the iPhone has been rebooted since last time my app was started. I need to do this because my app uses the timer since last system reboot to clock a user's time and I want to detect reboot so I can invalidate the time.
Is there anywhere I could extract the information from the system console log like reboot , crashes ? The organizer in xcode can access it , maybe I can too.
If not , can you think of other ways to get this information?
This seems like it would work:
get the time since last reboot, and for this example, let's store it in a variable called 'tslr' (duration in milliseconds I guess, BTW, how do you get that?)
get the current time, store it in variable 'ct' for example
compute the last reboot time (let's call it 'lr'), we have: lr = ct - tslr
store 'lr'
Next time your application gets started, load the previous value for 'lr', compute the new one, and if they differ, you have detected a reboot (you'll probably have to tolerate a small difference there... a couple milliseconds perhaps).
I think it would be pretty tough to fool that... the user would have to tamper their phone time very precisely, and they would have to start your application at a very precise moment on top of that, exactly when the new 'lr' would be identical to the previous one... pretty tough to do, the probability of them being able to do that is very close to 0 I think. And you don't need any internet connection to do that...
The new 'lr' would be identical to the previous one in the following cases only:
phone was not rebooted, and time was not changed
time was tampered with, AND the user managed to start your application at the precise millisecond to fool your algorithm (chances of that happening more than ultraslim)
// Returns true if device has rebooted since last time
private func deviceRebootedSinceLastTime() -> Bool {
let userDefaults = NSUserDefaults.standardUserDefaults()
let systemUptime = NSProcessInfo.processInfo().systemUptime;
let timeNow = NSDate().timeIntervalSince1970
let dateOfLastReboot = NSDate(timeIntervalSince1970: timeNow-systemUptime)
var didDeviceRebootSinceLastTime = false
if let storedDateOfLastReboot:NSDate = userDefaults.objectForKey("deviceLastRebootDate") as? NSDate {
if Int(dateOfLastReboot.timeIntervalSinceDate(storedDateOfLastReboot)) < 1 { //
print("Reboot time didn't change - date: \(dateOfLastReboot)");
}
else {
print("Reboot time has changed - from: \(storedDateOfLastReboot) to \(dateOfLastReboot)");
didDeviceRebootSinceLastTime = true
}
}
else {
print("Reboot time is saved for the first time")
didDeviceRebootSinceLastTime = true // first time we save value
}
userDefaults.setObject(dateOfLastReboot, forKey: "deviceLastRebootDate")
userDefaults.synchronize() // don't forget this!!!
return didDeviceRebootSinceLastTime;
}
Zoran's answer is the right way to go; it's the closest you are going to get without a network connection. (neither the cellular subsystem, nor the syslog are accessible for security reasons)
If you are looking to prevent malicious users from generating fake time data, have some central server (or trusted local server for enterprise deployments) track time-related events for you.
Get and save the time either from the iPhone or from NIST and the current runtime from the BSD uptime function. For NIST time see How can I get the real time in iPhone, not the time set by user in Settings?
When you want to check for a reboot get new values of these, compute the elapsed time for each and compare the elapsed times. Based on the difference you should be able to determine a reboot.
Here is one I made. It takes the current time in GMT and the time since last reboot to extrapolate a date for when the device was last restarted. Then it keeps track of this date in memory using NSUserDefaults. Enjoy!
Note: Since you want to check this since last time app was started, you need to make sure you call the method anytime the app is started. The easiest way would be to call the method below in +(void)initialize { and then also whenever you need to check it manually
#define nowInSeconds CFAbsoluteTimeGetCurrent()//since Jan 1 2001 00:00:00 GMT
#define secondsSinceDeviceRestart ((int)round([[NSProcessInfo processInfo] systemUptime]))
#define storage [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults]
#define DISTANCE(__valueOne, __valueTwo) ((((__valueOne)-(__valueTwo))>=0)?((__valueOne)-(__valueTwo)):((__valueTwo)-(__valueOne)))
+(BOOL)didDeviceReset {
static BOOL didDeviceReset;
static dispatch_once_t onceToken;
int currentRestartDate = nowInSeconds-secondsSinceDeviceRestart;
int previousRestartDate = (int)[((NSNumber *)[storage objectForKey:#"previousRestartDate"]) integerValue];
int dateVarianceThreshold = 10;
dispatch_once(&onceToken, ^{
if (!previousRestartDate || DISTANCE(currentRestartDate, previousRestartDate) > dateVarianceThreshold) {
didDeviceReset = YES;
} else {
didDeviceReset = NO;
}
});
[storage setObject:#(currentRestartDate) forKey:#"previousRestartDate"];
[storage synchronize];
return didDeviceReset;
}