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Learning to make an iPhone app: My Story so far.

  • 22-06-2011 08:18PM
    #1
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭


    Hello all,

    So I decided to make a thread/post that will first act as reference for me and secondly help out members who are planning to try and learn objective-C with a bit of programming knowledge.

    I'm a second year student in a CS degree and have done 2 years of programming, my second was using Java and my first year doing OO.

    I'm learning from some PDF's I found on the web, thenewbostons iPhone lectures and CS193p lectures from Stanford. So far I've watched 8 lectures, I'm pretty familiar with the Xcode program, and the interface builder.

    I noticed today that although I was watching the lectures I wasn't doing the homework assignments so today I fully did assignment one, and will be continuing on two tomorrow.

    Hopefully this will spark some other members to learn themselves. It's pretty cool to see an app after just a few hours of works. :)

    A screen of the first assignment, Design done myself :pac:

    Screen%20shot%202011-06-22%20at%2013.26.51%201.png


Comments

  • #2
    fasty
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 981 ✭✭✭fasty


    Nice one! Those Stanford lectures are excellent!


  • #3
    cgarvey
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,890 ✭✭✭cgarvey


    Good on ya, keep it up!


  • #4
    Woody_FX
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 215 ✭✭Woody_FX


    Fair play! If you ever get stuck do a search on StackOverFlow. It pretty much has an answer for every iPhone related question.


  • #5
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    Thanks all! I've been far too busy recently unfortunately so haven't progressed with this at all, I'll get back to it soon though. :)


  • #6
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    Well I've literally got sidetracked for ages, and then this evening I decided to mess around with JSON parsing, then I decided I'd chance it in objective-C. I always planned to make a network application so this is a good place to start from.

    So far I've got a JSON array with cell titles being pulled from my site and also 4 different images. I haven't figured out how to access JSON objects so can't do anything too interesting. But so far I've got this:
    List of 'galleries'
    167438.png

    When you try to view it :pac:

    167437.png


    What it's going to do in the end: I'm going to make a small application that will pull the event from my website API showing a different image for each event on click another JSON request will be made pulling the images from the site and displaying them.

    I'll also have a contact form and maybe a few more features :)


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  • #7
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    Been messing with this since 9am this morning( Yay for summer hoildays :D ) I've not got a table view, navigation controller and mapview up and running.

    Basically the app starts, shows a list of locations, on click you're brought to a new view showing a small map, and a brief description. Loads more to add but It's a start!


  • #8
    HeadBangersBall
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 32 ✭HeadBangersBall


    Nice one, keep it up :)


  • #9
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    Today I purchased a developer license, current got 13 locations in the app and I've got 2 other features to add to it. Have a few other app ideas too.

    Hoping to get this one nearly finished tomorrow( part of it requires submitting data to a PHP script and getting a .JSON file and parsing it).

    Have also tested the app on my phone and despite loading a lot of images on start and then a seperate map view it loads pretty quickly!


  • #10
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    Started messing with threads today to make JSON and Web Image requests smoother( so the view loads without stalling for JSON and image data) I got it done pretty smoothly but now I'm getting major issues with autorelease and the pools I'm using( required when you call a method on a new thread.) not looking good so far :pac:


  • #11
    fasty
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 981 ✭✭✭fasty


    ASIHttpRequest will do asynchronous web requests and call back to the main thread if you want to avoid too much thread pain!


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  • #12
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    fasty wrote: »
    ASIHttpRequest will do asynchronous web requests and call back to the main thread if you want to avoid too much thread pain!

    Cheers, I figured it out now after looking at the developer API I figured it.

    I have a section which allows users to post data that will then be displayed in a table view. Does anyone know if there would be any issues with taking the device UID and storing it in my DB for spam/administration purposes?

    I want to set it so if the user posts an offer, if they want to delete it 5 days later it will only work if the UID's match.


  • #13
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    Submitted the app last night in payment tier one ( as I'd like to try and cover some/part of the costs of the dev license) whether or not anyone is interested only time will tell.


  • #14
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    fasty wrote: »
    ASIHttpRequest will do asynchronous web requests and call back to the main thread if you want to avoid too much thread pain!

    Just wanna says a special thanks for this, I was having issues with NSData and NSUrl using the standard iPhone SDK request methods. I tried ASSIHTTP instead and I've now made my application much more error friendly(connection/server down etc) using ASSIHTTP. :)


  • #15
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    Ok, well here's my first app.

    It's a paid app aimed at UCC students, but it's free to look at the screens :)

    http://itunes.apple.com/ie/app/cork-ssg/id452859534?ls=1&mt=8

    Edit: I waited till v1.1 was accepted cause of a poor GUI in v1 :)


  • #16
    robbio87
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 61 ✭✭robbio87


    good stuff... well done, I've just gone through the same process on android. Its consumed my summer, but it's been fantastic!


  • #17
    Ricky91t
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,281 ✭✭✭Ricky91t


    My next free app, Weather Pic check it out here http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weather-pic/id455648408?ls=1&mt=8 :)

    Comments would be appreciated


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