I have made an application for the iPhone but it is required to be released with multiple brandings. Eg Differernt:
App Name
Icons
Default.png
Text replaced for the app name in IB
Colour schemes for all images such as backgrounds, icons etc
I'm not sure of the best way to do this.
I was thinking of a plist file for each branding that would have the name of the files to load eg "brand1_background.png" for brand1 but that would get very messy with the text replacement. It would also mean that all brands images would be in the package making it of larger size.
Looking around a bit I could have an 'images' folder for each brand and drag it in to build that brand's app, however the text is still an issue.
I'm wondering how everyone else would handle this situation as I want to do it as right as possible.
There are 2 different aspects to this problem, which I'd describe as follows:
Stuff that can be changed dynamically
Stuff that can't be changed dynamically
The first category is super easy. If you have your colo(u)r schemes stored in some easily-readable format like a plist or whatever, you can just load up that file during app startup, and build UIColor objects from them and use those where appropriate. The same goes for images used within the app itself. This is not a hard problem.
The second category is trickier. This is stuff that has to be baked into the application because of code signing. This means that the things like the App Name, the icon, Default.png, etc, all have to be changed before the app is signed in the compilation process. So what I'd do is bake up a bunch of scripts to take your branding information (name, image files, icons, etc) and load it up, then generate your Info.plist file and whatnot. This should be done as one of the first phases of your compilation.
For what it's worth, I work on an application where we do exactly this process, and it works pretty well. It's a bit tedious to update when we change what resources get branded, but I'm not sure there's any decent way around that.
Create a target for each of your brandings. For each single target you can add different files (e.g. images) and set an app name. You can even use the same file names (but stored under a different location) and you can build your brand-apps pretty fast.
Related
I am building AppClip app based on existing project. My question is - Is there an easy way to target all files which my couple of screens are depending on?
For example
I need add OrderViewController to an AppClip. This screen depends from OrderViewModel. OrderViewModel depends from BaseViewModel and NetworkManager. And so on, and so on, and so on...
By "depends from" I mean File_A using inside code from File_B. And to compile a target with File_A I need to include File_B too, to a target. And as you can imagine there might be a lot of dependency files. But I am lazy. And looking for some magic ;)
You can add the files you need (OrderViewController, OrderViewModel, NetworkManager ...etc ) in your targets like the Main app and the app clip like that
then define the custom compilation conditions with any name you like in my case I made it
APPCLIP
after that use (compiler directives) to differentiate between the main app and app clip like that
#if !APPCLIP
extension AppDelegate:MessagingDelegate{
}
#endif
in the main app, I use MessagingDelegate but in the app clip I don't so, I write a case to check if the app is running app clip or main app
here are some resources that could help you
https://needone.app/compiler-directives-in-swift/
https://betterprogramming.pub/how-to-build-an-app-clip-on-ios-14-a5045fd68eb4
https://medium.com/swlh/ios-14-app-clips-95bfaf2b159c
I want to make "Open in.." function in my iOS application.
Is there any way to check if any app on this device is associated with file extension that i want to share?
If there are no apps on current device to open file with such an extension than UIDocumentInteractionController will not be displayed after clicking on "Open in.." button, but i want not to show this button in such case.
So the question is: how to check if any app on device can open some file with specific extension?
Update:
For example UIDocumentInteractionController has NSArray property icons.
It contains images of all aplications that can open the file with my extension. But if there are no applications it contans image of empty application.
So i can't check it using docInteractionController.icons.count == 0 for example. I am looking for other tricks.'
Thanks, in advance.
Although UIDocumentInteractionController does not offer a way to discover in advance whether there are any applications that can handle a document, -presentOpenInMenuFromRect: will return a flag indicating whether there were any applications that could open a document. This requires you to have already set up and presented the controller, which is not optimal.
There is a workaround for this, a little hacky but is functional: Before you invoke the "real" interaction controller, create a dummy one using a dummy document, and present it from the rect of the window's bounds. This guarantees that it will "appear" offscreen, so your user won't see it. At that point, you have the flag returned from -present, and you can immediately dismiss the dummy controller, and the proceed to show your UI appropriately.
On OSX, you can get a list of application bundle identifiers capable of handling a specific content type using LSCopyAllRoleHandlersForContentType. But on iOS, I don't think there is such a way.
If I find, I'll edit my answer.
Considering you are looking for other tricks, you can check if that one image in the icons array is the generic document icon.
If it is then you know that there is no app associated to handle that file type. But this approach will be OS version dependent as generic file icon may change.
From the official documentation:
To declare its support for file types, your app must include the
CFBundleDocumentTypes key in its Info.plistproperty list file. (See
“Core Foundation Keys”.) The system adds this information to a
registry that other apps can access through a document interaction
controller.
To me this indicates that the registry can only be accessed through UIDocumentInteractionController and so no, you would not be able to know in advance if there are any available apps for the file format (which would be totally in line with Apple's philosophy of not letting apps interact directly with each other).
UPDATE:
as you said the icons property contains an image even with no applications present. I checked and all the other methods and properties of the controller do not give an hint about the apps that may open the current file format.
You said in case that no app can open the specified file format there is an "image of empty application". Maybe you can extract that icon and when the array icons only has one image check if the extracted image and the icon are the same?
I have an application that is currently named "xxxx". The app runs and works perfectly without any problems. However, I have reached a stumbling point. When I try to load the application onto my iPhone, the pictures on my picker view seemed to have disappeared for some strange reason. I've done multiple hours of debugging and everything checks out normal. I then decided I wanted to change the product name from "xxxx" to "xxxx Redo". As soon as I did that, the application loaded perfectly normal (with the pictures in the Picker View as it should be).
In conclusion, it comes to find out that there is no actual bug in the programming aspect of it. However, my question comes up as to why does it not load the correct way with the original product name but then loads the right way when the product name is changed?
The second part of my question is if anyone knows of a way to fix the original application so that way it displays correctly again with the original name?
I have tried the following:
Cleaning the app
Trashing the .app file and rebuilding
Deleting the app on the iPhone and rebuilding.
These things sometimes just happen, you can try the following extra steps:
clean build folder in XCode (press alt while clicking Product menu)
reboot the phone (poweroff/poweron)
I have seen cases where it made a difference.
I've been trying to add a Portuguese translation to my app. At the moment it's all in English. (well, it started that way).
I'm using a Storyboard for the main part of the UI. There are also a couple of additional xib files for reusable UI in table etc...
Anyway, I set out on the path of trying to internationalise the app and managed to convert the Storyboard to Portuguese.
I then tried to set up some strings (just a couple to begin with) to make translations of those also.
I've now got an storyboard that's only in Portuguese (I lost the English version) and none of the strings are being translated properly anyway.
I've set all the string back to just use #"blah" now (I'd put NSLocalizedString in a couple of places).
So I should be back to square one (once I fix the storyboard).
Anyway, is there a list of steps somewhere of how to go about making an app localised?
Any help appreciated.
There are couple of tutorials available - this is one of the good ones: http://www.raywenderlich.com/2876/how-to-localize-an-iphone-app-tutorial
This will definitely help you to get started real quick!
However, if you are on iOS6 xCode 4.5 you should also check the new features regarding localization. Apple now has also gon the route to have just one XIB (not like before multiple XIBs, one per language - which was impossible to maintain)
Probably the most important point is to always use NSLocalizedString, so there is no need for multiple XIBs. And then it's real easy to just add a new strings file for each language.
All you have to do then is in the Project Editor select your project -> select the Info tab on the right -> scroll all the way down -> there you find the localizations, press the little + on the buttom to add a new language. That's it.
i am making an app for iphone and for that i am using certain free libraries.My problem is that i want to show their complete license of nearly 4-5 pages in my application bundle so that a user can open settings in iphone and see that licensing page at one time but i am unable to do it.I have read these Specifiers for making an application bundle .
PSGroupSpecifier
PSTitleValueSpecifier
PSTextFieldSpecifier
PSSliderSpecifier
PSToggleSwitchSpecifier
PSMultiValueSpecifier
PSChildPaneSpecifier
but i want to show a page full of text like Settings->General->About->Leagl
just like in iphone through PSChildPaneSpecifier .Please help me how to do this>???
Thanks
You can create the same effect as used by Apple's iWorks apps for the license > section of the settings, without using any custom preference controller. Note this works for iOS 5 on the iPad, I have not tried it elsewhere. Use a PSChildPaneSpecifier for the initial control in the root plist. This points to the name of another plist file which will be the displayed child pane. You do not add .plist to the name within the root.plist file, it is implied. This plist file must be within the settings bundle. Next, use PSGroupSpecifiers in the child pane as the controls. For each paragraph use another PSGroupSpecifier - so the thing will scroll. Only use the Title section of the PSGroupSpecifier. The next gotcha that I found, was that by putting the strings in the plist file, the text was clipped in portrait orientation, so a placeholder string needs to go in the plist file and a StringTable used to point to a strings file. Text read from the strings file is properly kerned and displays without clipping.
The iPhone's "Legal" page is a custom preference controller which you can't use (not even with undocumented methods – you need to write a preference bundle in system locations which AppStore apps can't reach at all).
If you'd like to display the license, show it in the app.
I think you are going to need to use something like a UITextView, just make it non-editable. You can make in unobtrusive in your app but I think that is the only way to have 4-5 pages.
I don't think there is a nice way of displaying this in the preferences bundle. Personally I would either provide a series of url links or bring the preferences into the app itself. There is a good framework on github here that you may be able to modify.