There is a sample code of apple named "reachability" which tells us the network status of the device, wifi or edge/gprs, but I couldn't see any documentation or sample code regarding gathering if the device is on 3g or not while accessing to internet. I also googled, but no hope. Is it possible to do that, if so how?
According to Apple representatives, this is not currently possible. See this message on the Apple forums (registration as an iPhone developer required).
Maybe there is a server side solution to your problem? I assume that your app requires a fast internet connection to operate - maybe you could measure latency, packet loss etc on the server side and take appropriate action if the connection is too slow?
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I am trying to prototype a solution to a problem and am currently exploring multiple routes I could try. Is it possible for one iOS device, running a certain app, to communicate directly with another iOS device, running the same application - without the need to be on the same LAN?
Solutions I am currently investigating are using Bluetooth and ad-hoc wireless connections.
Ideally, the application when installed would ask the user for the required permissions, and then would accept and/or send data to/from another client after a handshake had happened.
My concern with Bluetooth is that 'pairing' would need to happen with every device, rather than happen in the background once the user has installed the app. I have a feeling what I am talking about isn't possible from what I've been reading elsewhere on Stackoverflow.
Take a look at Bluetooth Low Energy.
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#samplecode/BTLE_Transfer/Introduction/Intro.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40012927
Here is another example,
https://github.com/KhaosT/CBPeripheralManager-Demo
You might also want to look into GameKit and peer-to-peer connectivity there.
I can't tell you anything about it, but you might try looking at iOS 7. If that's an option, I'd take a look. Can't talk about what it is because of NDA though.
Depending on what you need to communicate, you could try checking out this project, which lets you share arrays of strings between iOS devices over Bluetooth LE.
You don't need to "pair" the devices and it can still communicate while the app is in the background. SimpleShare
Hope it helps!
From the documentation of MultipeerGroupChat:
MultipeerGroupChat sample application utilizes the Multipeer Connectivity framework to enable nearby users to discover, connected, and send data between each other. This sample simulates a simple chat interface where up to 8 devices can connect with each other and send text messages or images to each other. Here you will learn how to bring up framework UI for discovery and connections and also how to monitor session state, listen for incoming data and resources, and send data and resources.
This is an excellent example at developer.apple.com here is the link
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/samplecode/MultipeerGroupChat/Introduction/Intro.html
Also this tutorial from Ralf Ebert demonstrates how to use Multipeer Connectivity framework for peer communication should help you.
https://www.ralfebert.de/tutorials/ios-swift-multipeer-connectivity/
According to Cocoa with Love Reachability is needed when an app requires WiFi (rather than cellular network), e.g. if app loads heavy videos and is not meant to be used over 3G.
My app uses internet no matter if WiFi or 3G and only downloads small data from web services.
Can someone clarify under which circumstances an app must do this reachability test?
Reachability is needed if your application needs to know 'when' it's ability to access the network has changed.
I've seen recommendations that say to always try to access your resource first, and if you fail - to use data from Reachability to find out why.
Since you're using internet connection only for small data downloads you really don't need to care if you're using WiFi or 3G.
True, there are some restrictions for cellular newtorks. Take a look at paragraphs 9.3 and 9.4 AppStore Review Guidelines. You need a developer id to view it so i think we're not allowed to quote it here.
In iTunes, you can see the charge status of the iPhone currently connected:
This updates as the phone charges, and even shows when the phone is done charging.
Is there a way I can discover the charge status programmatically from the Mac? Any programming language or API is fine.
I would recommend setting up a bonjour service in an App on the iOS device to communicate with the computer. The app will then communicate the changes in the batter status using the batteryMonitoringEnabled property of UIDevice. Take a look at the samples code here.
BatteryStatus Sample Code
And here is the class reference
UIDevice Class Reference
And finally Bonjour programming
Bonjour programming guide
As far as I know, the only official way to communicate with the iPhone over USB/Bluetooth is by signing up to the "Made for iPhone" program:
http://developer.apple.com/programs/mfi/
Unfortunately the documentation seems to be closed to registered members so I can't find out if the API for this is public or private. You could contact Apple to check before applying.
UPDATE : As mentioned, this might not work for Mac/PC <-> iPhone communication over USB. There are several apps that do things with the phone over USB (although usually for reading/writing files). I'd start by looking at the source code of those:
http://code.google.com/p/iphonedisk
This should put you at least in a position where you have a connection to the device and are able to send/receive commands. Everyone who's ever done this sort of thing has had to spend time reverse engineering the thing :) The jailbreak community might be able to provide some insight too, although having to actually jailbreak the device is probably unacceptable.
I'm working on an application that downloads some data from the internet using NSData's initWithContentsOfURL method. At startup I'm using some code from Apple's Reachability sample to check if a wifi connection is available; if not, then the app just shows an error message and refuses to really start (as requested by my client). All is working fine on iPod and iPad, but on iPhone, my client reports much, much slower download speeds, unless he turns on airplane mode, in which case download speeds are on par with iPod / iPad speeds. So it seems that even though a wifi connection is available, the iPhone is probably using the cellular network to download the data. Which is really weird. Does anyone have any idea about what I might be doing wrong?
I believe your answer is SCNetworkReachability which you already have access to since you are using Apple's Reachability code.
The SCNetworkReachability API allows an application to determine the status of a system's current network configuration and the reachability of a target host. One of the flags returned by the API, kSCNetworkReachabilityFlagsIsWWAN, will tell you if a network connection to the target host uses the carrier network. The Reachability sample code shows how to determine the active network connection.
You could also use this to enforce WiFi if that's what you want.
Have a look at UIRequiresPersistentWiFi
I am trying to cover my bases with reachability so that my app doesn't get rejected by the App Store. I am familiar with the Reachability class that Apple provides in sample code. My question is, how best to implement this. I've seen that checking if the WWAN is accessible is not always best because it may be turned off for power consumption. So do I have to somehow enable it before checking for a connection. Just looking for steps to take. My app doesn't need a constant connection. It does some polling on a given interval that will require a connection and makes other various requests. Just trying to figure this out so I don't get rejected. Any help would be great.
Edit: Will reporting errors NSURLDomainError errors suffice for reporting reachability? It currently displays No Internet Connection and Can't Find Host. Seems that this is the type of information that the reachability example is used for.
Assuming that your application needs a connection to the internet, you could check the connectivity to a website that is always up (like e.g. google.com). The reachability sample code already contains a method to do just that.
I have not worked with the Reachability API enough to know how it reacts to the system switching off the WWAN for power saving. The only thing that comes to my mind is that you could try to establish a connection to the network so the system switches the WWAN on. Then you can run your reachability code to check what kind of connection you are working with. As said, I have not tried it, just an idea.