I'm new in iPhone development, can you advice me how to serialize AdressBook records?
I have read stackoverflow - How do I serialize a simple object in iPhone sdk, but I still have questions:
should I extend ABRecordRef? Is it possible? Or should I implement own class NSObject?
(similar question was on Mac forums and was left without answer)
Thank you!
ABRecord is an opaque C type. It is not an object in the sense of Objective-C. That means you can not extend it, you can not add a category on it, you can not message it. The only thing you can do is call functions described in ABRecord Reference with the ABRecord as a parameter.
You could do two things to be able to keep the information referenced by the ABRecord arround:
Get the ABRecords id by ABRecordGetRecordID(). The ABRecordID is defined as int32_t so you can cast it to an NSInteger and store it wherever you like. You can later get the record back from ABAddressBookGetPersonWithRecordID () or ABAddressBookGetGroupWithRecordID(). But aware, the record could be changed or even deleted by the user or another app meanwhile.
Copy all values inside the record to a standard NSObject subclass and use NSCoding or other techniques to store it. You will then of cause not benefit from changes or additions to the record the user could have made.
Of cause you can combine both approaches.
Related
Working on an application that I want to check the plist store that the app will come shipped with and prepopulate core data with the objects from the plist. I think....I am looking for advice on this part of my application. As this is my first time coding and I have been learning Core Data/Persistence more recently I am not used to reading C++ or any of the code completely prior to Swift. I understand it somewhat but not enough to actually know the order of coding within swift.
That being said I created a plist file that contains an array of objects that each of those objects contains either strings or integers depending on the value that was necessary. Now in those objects I actually made a "serial" number as it were so that I could refer to specific objects easily or use it as a means to store that particular string and save only that so that it could be recalled from the plist. I have no idea whether I should actually upload all the objects to core data or just leave them in plist. Nor do I have any idea which way to begin this section of code.
From my basic understanding of plist and the fact that I saved the serial as a string I figured I could present the objects selected by storing the string alone to the core data model then have the core data model recall all objects from the plist that contain that serial and present it to the user. Basically any small sample coding in swift that can actually head me in the right direction would be a big help! Also is it faster to do it this way or would it be faster/better to upload the objects to core data on the first launch/updated lists? How would I go about this method if that was better? I spent the better half of the last few days trying to read through non swift code and haven't progressed enough I feel.
Sorry if this is n00bish I am self taught in swift and really trying to learn the best ways for all this as I have a lot of ideas that I wish to personally create/oversee!
I'm in the process of the building a simple iphone application and I had a few questions.
I need to parse through results from an API key search, and manipulate them in my program. The API is from rotten tomatoes, and I can't find a parser that works with ARC. I know the JSON kit works well for previous versions of XCode, but I really like ARC and have done my application to date using it.
1) Is there a solid parser for such results or is it something I'm going to have to do manually?
The basic structure of my app includes a search page and personal list of things, using a mutable array of objects to populate a table view.
2) whats the best way to design the classes and implementation? I know this is a vague questions so let me be more specific. I have one object with several attributes, and I want to both access a remote server and rotten tomatoes API, and store local data internally. So I have my storyboad with a controller for each tab view (there are two). Then I have my object class. Do i need to create a controller specifically for it or can I manipulate (create and delete) in other controllers?
I can give some more specifics about the application, I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed as it is my first time working with Xcode. Any help would be appreciated.
May i suggest you the NSJSONSerialization Class., it should work well with ARC as it is compatible with iOS 5 and above.
Or you can set the ARC flag to no in .m files that you would like it to be switched off. For that purpose you can refer a great answer here.
You can set a compiler flag on the implementations that aren't going to be used in ARC.
Use: -fno-objc-arc
About the first question, you can turn ARC off on specific files, this allows you to mix ARC enabled with non-ARC enabled classes in the same project,
Please refer to the answer of this question
How can I disable ARC for a single file in a project?
About the second question
Do you have two different classes that access the same api services?
If yes i suggest that you create a common remote-request class, this class will do the request for you.
For example:
Let say we have class1 (for tab1) and class2 (for tab2)
And we have classCommonRequest(for both the requests)
App delegate will hold a reference to the classCommonRequest
class1 and class2 can both access this class by using
YourAppDelegate *delegate = (YourAppDelegate *)[[UIApplication sharedApplication] delegate];
//get your refrence of request handler class
MyRequestHandler *request = [delegate myRequestHandler];
//then use functions in it
[request fetchSth];
If your question was more specific i could give you better answers :)
I hope this helped anyway
I would simply like to create a file that stays around after the program quits. I would like it to contain objects that I have initiated, is that possible? Or does it just have to have text in it? How can I access that file later? Also, is this done the same way on the Mac and the iPhone?
Take a look at Core Data or SQLite. Apple has some sample code for them, not sure about SQLite because they prefer you tou use core data.
I will direct you to this question. Adding core data to my iPhone app
Or use NSUserDefaults: Best way to save data on the iPhone
Yes! It's possible.
Derive your objects that you want to persist from NSCoding. On those objects, implement the initWithCoder and encodeWithCoder functions on those objects. In these functions, write all of your primitive types to the coder (or read them) using the functions here http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/cocoa/reference/foundation/Classes/NSCoder_Class/Reference/NSCoder.html
When you want to save your file, use an NSKeyedArchiver and pass in the object you want to archive along w/ the file name.
[NSKeyedArchiver archiveRootObject:root toFile:string];
More examples here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2805026/iphone-problem-in-saving-file-using-nscoding
I have used SQLitePersistentObjects in the past to give my Objective-C class objects an ORM-esque feel and behaviour. The objects itself translate into corresponding tables in the database, which in this case is a simple SQLite database file.
Archives and Serializations Programming Guide might be interesting as well.
I'm currently writing a Twitter client for iPhone and need a way to cache the public timeline. The data fetched is stored as 'Status' objects in an NSMutableArray.
The NSMutableArray stores 20 objects at a time.
What is the best way to do this?
You will probably want to use Core Data. You'll need to create an entity for each tweet, and then store that in your database. There is quite a lot of documentation and sample code on Core Data out there; start at Apple's Samples page.
If you don't want to play with one of the frameworks already mentioned (SQLitePersistentObjects and CoreData), you could implement your own using the NSCoding protocol on your status objects. The array should already implement NSCoding for archiving/unarchiving.
If you want to start quickly try SQLitePersistentObjects.
If you never plan to go over 20 objects you could (slightly) violate some rules from the gods of apple, and use NSUserDefaults - likely the easiest one to implement, but as the name implies, made for things like user settings, so don't use for big piles of info.
Disclaimer: If you know how to use the others, use them, this one is kinda the lazy way if you don't want to learn something better but more difficult.
using xcode I would like to achieve a public shared class that stores its own data. So, if I'm in one class I can call it from another and retain persistence.
For example,
I have multiple viewcontrollers for an iPhone project. When the app is opened, it checks with a seperate service if that player is logged in and returns some information. Let's call it GamePlacenta. I need to store certain information about the player in the GamePlacenta class, like user_id etc. But I need to be able to access it from any other class later on. I don't want to store it in text files, memory is good.
What do I need to be looking into?
You need to use a Singleton. It does exactly what you want it to--holds one set of data that you can access anywhere. Here is a great tutorial on creating one. It's just a few lines of code, and can store anything.
Sounds like you need a Singleton class. See this Wikipedia article.