I've read that it's possible to share information between iPhone applications using the Addressbook. In fact, TextExpander Touch seems to be able to do just this by looking at their SDK how-to:
http://www.freshblocks.com/tutorials/how-to-add-textexpander-touch-sdk-to-iphone-apps/
Can anyone provide a concrete example of how this is achieved? I've read that it involves creating a 'dummy' contact - but I don't see any such dummy contacts on my phone.
I would instead use inter-app communication using custom app URLs ala: http://mobileorchard.com/apple-approved-iphone-inter-process-communication/
I would imagine polluting a user's address book with dummy contacts would be severely frowned upon by Apple/rejection-worthy.
Related
I am a beginner iOS developer and I am trying to build an app which tracks the users SMS (Number) and Call data (Minutes/day) only but have no clue which framework to use. CoreTelephony is of no use as per my knowledge. Any help would be appreciated!
Call Statistics and SMS Statistics are handled by the cell carrier, but are also recorded by the phone and are visible in the settings application. However, there is no way for your app to access this information (as far as i know). It would be a privacy concern and probably won't ever be available. Im sure there is a way to do it on a jailbroken device, but it sounds like thats not what you want. What exactly does your app do?
I need to implement a message service into my app that works exactly like this:
users register with a nickname within the app
they can add contacts (just nicknames) and send them a message by just specifying their nickname
they can send a message whenever they want, and the message is stored on a server until when the receiver connects to internet.
when a message is received, a push notification is triggered.
So, the messages work pretty much like emails, however instead of using email addresses, we only use usernames. I'm also going to build my own back-end for it.
Which APIs should I use or which 3rd party framework can I use ?
And any tip ?
N.B. I need to make it work with iOS 3.0 as well.
and in the future I will develop an Android app, so the nicknames should be unique and I should be able to send messages from iPhone to Android devices within the same app.
thanks
I've successfully used the Three20 library and would recommend giving it a try. It's an open source spin-off originated by the author of the Facebook app. It features a bunch of additional GUI components that might be useful to your project, like a message composer that resembles the one used by Apple's email app.
Also, Three20 features a nice framework for handling navigation within your app. Currently, the biggest drawback seems to be that certain features don't play well with the iPad API.
The answer seems to be Push Notifications
Is there a way to programmatically access and modify the core data of the iphone?
I'm making an app for myself, not for the apple store, and I want to be able to access my list of contacts (to delete it) and the list of messages (also to delete it).
I want to make an application with the same behaviour has that feature which allows you to block the iphone in case of theft.
It's being hard to find information about this so any help would be nice :)
/thanks
That's not a particularly helpful answer, because it implies ABAddressBook is going to give you all of the information you want (it isn't). ABAddressBook will give you access to contacts. It won't give you access to messages. Access to SMS and email messages isn't available to developers, for various reasons (privacy, security, etc). So you won't be able to do anything with users messages, because you don't have access to them.
For contact info, use ABAddressBook
I'm new to mac/iOS development. I'm thinking of to develop a UI less application by using existing Apps/Libraries.
I want to know whether following things will be possible to make or not, it will be great if someone provides me some insight.
Here are my questions:
Is it possible to show/hook additional buttons on existing contacts
-> contacts view (some additional buttons under FaceTime button)?
Is it possible to route some messages to SMS inbox? where the user
feels like he received/sent the real SMS?
In short: no.
In somewhat longer: iOS applications run in a sandbox that rather severely limits their ability to interact with the outside world. This is for the purpose of protecting the user's security and experience using the device. It MIGHT be possible to accomplish both of those things if you were running on a jailbroken device and using non-public APIS (though frankly I doubt you'd be able to add buttons to the existing contacts list by any means at all). But such an app couldn't be sold in Apple's app store.
i want to create a application which sync my iPhone contacts to my server and vice-versa.
i read a article on google Get Google Sync on your phone . i want to this type of feature which directly update the contact without user interaction (however one time setting is desired).
any body have idea how the google sync work .
Please advice me that how can i achieve this task. any suggestion and link is greatly appreciated
I think it's important to separate the two overlapping approaches in your question.
Firstly, Google Sync is essentially a way to use Microsoft Exchange protocols and to setup a Mail / Contact / Calendar profile on an iPhone. The iPhone OS supports this feature, not an iPhone App in the App Store. Google Sync leverages this fundamental capability of the phone by exposing the data (mail, contacts, calendars) via these known protocols. If you want to expose data in this way to your users, setup a Microsoft Exchange server and ask questions on serverfault.
Secondly, there are iPhone apps. iPhone apps sold in the app store are not currently allowed to run in the background. This means you can't emulate functionality like iTunes or Mail where your music plays while you are browsing the web, or mail checking is done while you are playing a game of Mini Squadron. If you want this backgrounding capability, file a bug/enhancement with Apple.. However, you can interact with iPhone contacts (Address Book) via the API.. You can also of course "re-invent the wheel" and expose the data however you like via the internet, and consume that data from a custom iPhone App with the one caveat that users would need to actively launch your application to get to this data and it would not be integrated with the built-in iPhone Calendar, Address Book or Mail applications. Some good examples of that are some of the music community apps that have messaging systems built into them. Presumably that is all being done with web services.
EDIT: It is also worth mentioning that should you go the "iPhone App" route, you should at least consider if push notifications are right for you, and if so how you will handle it.
Have you seen the API-Docs?
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/ContactData/Conceptual/AddressBookProgrammingGuideforiPhone/100-Introduction/Introduction.html
Next there is an application I use called Funambol - it is a sync4j Server/Client. They have an open source application to sync contacts on the iPhone. Source is somewhere in their repository, informations here: http://forge.ow2.org/scm/?group_id=96
As slf told you your application must run in foreground. This may limit you.
Good luck & best regards,
Florian
The 3.0 SDK will allow your application to read contact data on the phone.
Web services will allow you to publish that data to your server, and receive updates.
You may also want to use coredata to store a hash of all contact data so you can tell what is new / updated and just send that data to your server.