Objective Sea

wopen 0.2

Sun, 19 May 2013 22:11:02 -0400

I’ve updated my wopen bash function to open the .xcodeproj file if no .xcworkspace is available.

Copy the alias from here https://gist.github.com/coryalder/5609996

Place in your .bash_profile or .bashrc file (~/.bash_profile).

Example usage:

cd projectdirectory
wopen

issues open projectdirectory.xcworkspace if that file exists, or open projectdirectory.xcodeproj if that file exists, and errors out nicely if neither do.

PhotoDog

Thu, 21 Feb 2013 01:05:00 -0500

My new app PhotoDog was approved late last night! I’ve spent much of the day sending out press releases, and organizing my social media presence (Instagram and Twitter accounts, mostly). I won’t write much about that here, as this blog is mostly for technical details, but one thing I’ve very proud of is that this marks the first production app that uses my UIActivity for Instagram. Presumably someone else has used it, it’s got a respectable number of stars and forks on GitHub, but this is the first App Store app using it that I know of.

I’ll be glad to see it get some battle-testing. :)

CocoaPods tip #0912: faster .xcworkspace opening

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 22:48:00 -0500

UPDATE: 0.2 available here http://objectivesea.tumblr.com/post/50874228125/wopen-0-2

My typical CocoaPods workflow:

Switch to terminal
cd to your project directory
Edit Podfile
type pod update
Quickly Cmd-tab back to Xcode to close the project before CocoaPods rewrites it
Type open .xcodeworkspace
Resume working

The step that trips me up the most of all of these, is ironically step #6. xcw is a hard sequence of letters to type at the best of times.

Solution! wopen

Put this in your .bash_profile or .bashrc:

function wopen {
    open ${PWD##*/}.xcworkspace
} # open Xcode workspace

Now typing wopen will open the .xcworkspace file of the same name as the current directory.

Typical usage: pod update; wopen

Best Practices: UIButtons and their IBAction/IBOutlets

Thu, 22 Nov 2012 00:14:16 -0500

Declare the UIButton outlet:

@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UIButton *cancelButton;

Declare the action method:

-(IBAction)cancelButtonAction:(id)sender;

Now when you are writing code you will never confuse the outlet and the action. You will always know what this means:

[self cancelButton];

or even worse:

self.cancelButton;

It’s a simple, easy to remember best practice. If you don’t follow this, or a similar convention (cancelButton/cancelAction) it WILL bite you in the ass one day.

AFNetworking - Cancelling operations

Fri, 16 Nov 2012 06:39:00 -0500

I recently ran into trouble trying to cancel operations in AFNetworking.

Two issues came up. The first was finding my previous query, to cancel it. The second was receiving some kind of notification that the operation was cancelled. The failure block isn’t fired when operations are cancelled.

Since my app uses GET requests, cancelAllHTTPOperationsWithMethod:path: was failing to find my operation. It was looking for a full path, query string and all. Since the query parameters are off somewhere else in my app, it was much easier to just override this method, and write code to match just the URL, ignoring the query string. Along the way, I improved on this StackOverflow question regarding trimming the query string off an NSURL.

The next bit required digging into the GitHub issues for AFNetworking to resolve. The default behaviour of AFNetworking is to call the failure block if the HTTP request fails, the success block if it succeeds, and do nothing if you cancel it. The logic is that if you are cancelling it, you can probably deal with the cancellation however you want. Details are available in AFNetworking/Issue#479. The workaround for this is to set the completionBlock property manually, instead of using setCompletionBlockWithSuccess:failure:.

Get the maximum value in an NSSet using KVC

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 03:24:22 -0400

Get the maximum value in an NSSet using KVC:

You can get the maximum value in an NSSet full of NSNumbers using Key-Value-Coding like so:

NSSet *set = [NSSet setWithArray:@[ @1,@2,@3,@4,@5 ]];
NSNumber *maxValue = [set valueForKeyPath:@"@max.self"];

Value of maxValue is now @5.

It took me ages to find the correct KVC syntax for this. Source is linked below, and has a bunch of other cool uses of KVC.

funwithobjc:

(This was prompted by a recent question on StackOverflow.)

Key-value coding is one of my more favorite things about Cocoa (up there with NSPredicate). Basically, it allows you to access properties of objects by name (ie, as a string) rather than invoking a method (er… sending a message)…

DMActivityInstagram A UIActivity class for sharing images to...

Sun, 23 Sep 2012 19:11:00 -0400

DMActivityInstagram

A UIActivity class for sharing images to Instagram.

iOS 6 introduced the new UIActivityViewController, which presents sharing options like Facebook and Twitter (as well as printing and copying). I wanted to adapt this for CatPaint, which currently uses ShareKit for sharing. My current Instagram sharer stopped working in iOS 6, and I figured now would be a good time to implement Instagram sharing using this new technique.

Usage is simple:

DMActivityInstagram *instagramActivity = [[DMActivityInstagram alloc] init];

NSArray *activityItems = @[self.imageView.image, @"CatPaint #catpaint", [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://catpaint.info"]];

UIActivityViewController *activityController = [[UIActivityViewController alloc] initWithActivityItems:activityItems applicationActivities:@[instagramActivity]];
[self presentViewController:activityController animated:YES completion:^{}];

Hopefully this code will be helpful for other people implementing their own UIActivity sharers, and getting Instagram support in to their apps.

I would love if someone took an axe to the visual design of the resizer view. It’s not my best work (especially on iPad it looks funny).

The resizer view is only needed if your app creates non-square images.

This is not in use in a shipping app yet, but it will be soon.

Python syntax checking in BBEdit using Flake8

Fri, 10 Aug 2012 17:00:53 -0400

I adapted jshell’s PyFlake gist (https://gist.github.com/1157742) to work with flake8, and my python setup. Took a bit of tweaking to get the regex right. I’ve bound it to Cmd-Shift-L, and I’ve been using it early and often.

Check it out if you’re a BBEdit/Python person: https://gist.github.com/3317713

Interesting NSURLConnection quirk

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 05:47:04 -0400

You would expect this code always return a response, sometimes return data, and when there was no data, you could look at the response and the error to determine what happened. Not so! The response object is nil if it hits a NSURLErrorUserCancelledAuthentication (-1012).

NSData *data = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:&response error:&error];
if (!data) NSLog(@"Network error: HTTP %i - %@", [response statusCode], error);

Changed to the code below, for now. Not sure how to deal with it long term though, may have to move away from my sendSynchronousRequest from within an NSBlockOperation technique of network queuing.

NSData *data = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:&response error:&error];
if (!data || !response) NSLog(@"Network error: HTTP %i - %@", [response statusCode], error);

Addendum (setting up raspberry pi)

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 19:22:00 -0400

This is pretty cool / useful: https://github.com/pabloav/raspi-setup/

if only for https://github.com/pabloav/raspi-setup/blob/master/setup.d/05-airplay

Notes from my new Raspberry Pi (arrived yesterday). Raspbian...

Fri, 20 Jul 2012 18:04:00 -0400

Notes from my new Raspberry Pi (arrived yesterday).

Raspbian > Arch Linux Arm. Not sure what the deal is with Arch Linux, but it seems to be aimed at the nerdiest of linux nerds.
Setting up Wifi is not easy. My usb wifi dongle was fully supported, but it still took quite a bit to get online. This tutorial was the most helpful http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse

a) sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
    wpa-ssid your_ssid
    wpa-psk your_password

b) sudo ifup wlan0

It doesn’t say anywhere that resizing your SD card disk image will take fucking forever. Thought it was crashing because there is no progress indicator. It just takes ~10min (16gb card).
Should have bought a case. It’s not very portable as just a raw circuit board.
Now what? Before I got it, I had all these ideas of what I was going to do if mine ever arrived. Now that I have it, I’m a little stumped. Hopefully that will pass. Leaning towards using it to replace my media PC hooked up to the projector, or setting it up for git hosting (with mirroring to dropbox or s3, perhaps?)

Thing #244 I don't like about Xcode:

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 08:03:38 -0400

Because the structure of your project is abstracted from the on-disc project structure, I always end up with tidy projects and messy project directories.

Respond to a view controller popping off the stack

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 03:41:01 -0400

I spent quite a bit of time googling this, but couldn’t find a definitive answer. Basically, how do you detect and respond to being popped off a UINavigationController’s stack. viewWillDisappear: and viewDidDisappear: both get called when you’re pushing another view controller on to the stack… which is not what I want.

I found lots of misdirection involving UINavigationControllerDelegate, and UINavigationBarDelegate, and I almost subclassed UINavigationController. So far I think this is a better way than any of those. It’s simple and seems reliable.

-(void)viewWillDisappear:(BOOL)animated {
    NSUInteger ind = [[self.navigationController viewControllers] indexOfObject:self];
    if (ind == NSNotFound) {
        // do something, we're coming off the stack.
    }
}

Tip #293 for writing good Objective-C methods: Fail Early

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 03:56:43 -0400

Do this:

- (id)someObject:(DMSomeObject *)caller didSelectView:(DMObjectView *)view {
    if (caller != self.keyObject) return nil;
    ***<LONG METHOD REACTING TO A SELECTED VIEW, RETURNING AN OBJECT***
}

Don’t do this:

- (id)someObject:(DMSomeObject *)caller didSelectView:(DMObjectView *)view {
    if (caller == self.keyObject) {
        ***LONG METHOD REACTING TO A SELECTED VIEW, RETURNING AN OBJECT****
    }
    return nil;
}

Deeply nested if statements, coupled with blocks based apis or enumeration loops will have you lost in your own code. When possible, fail early for simpler code.

Distance function for sqlite3

Tue, 03 Apr 2012 02:40:01 -0400

Distance function for sqlite3:

This is amazingly useful.

Pictured above, Apple violates all good sense and decency.

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 19:45:19 -0500

Pictured above, Apple violates all good sense and decency.

Follow up: App Store Spam

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:25:00 -0500

Just a little follow up regarding my post from Dec. 9th regarding the spammy behaviour of one App Store developer App Store Spam - 28 identical apps.

It looks like he’s trimmed his armada of white noise apps from ~28 down to 8. I have no idea if this was voluntarily, or if he was forced to remove them by Apple.

I haven’t contacted the developer directly because I’m not a damn journalist. In this context I’m just an annoyed App Store user trying to find a good white noise app.

On that note, I still haven’t found a good one for iOS. I was contacted by the developer of Shleepy. He says he made his app free because he wasn’t making any money off of it anyway.

Shleepy is great, but it only has customizable white noise. I prefer something with rain / ocean sounds as well. On the mac I’ve been using Chill Lite and it’s been working wonderfully so far. I expect I’ll upgrade to the pay version soon.

The way iTunes handles podcasts has been dead to me for some...

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 23:07:00 -0500

How iTunes presents podcasts

How I want my podcasts presented.

The way iTunes handles podcasts has been dead to me for some time now.

New Smart Playlist… -> ☒ Match all of the following rules: -> Media Kind is Podcast -> Plays is 0 -> ☒ Live Updating

Problem approximately solved.

"Hi, I have an app that I feel is pretty good, but has a shit name (Saline). I’ve been thinking about..."

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 23:04:22 -0500

“Hi, I have an app that I feel is pretty good, but has a shit name (Saline). I’ve been thinking about re-releasing under a new, more search friendly name. Would you consider that spam too? I agree this George dude is over the line though.”

- unled in response to my previous post

I absolutely don’t think that would be spamming the App Store. Even if you keep the old one in for a bit to do a little A/B testing. As long as you drop one after a bit, or differentiate the two apps in some meaningful way (i.e. functionality).

Personally I would just submit an update that re-brands my app, rather than put a new app in the store.

I don’t hate marketing, I just know that marketing means you walk a fine line between promoting a product and gumming the world up with spam.

App Store Spam - 28 identical apps

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 18:57:00 -0500

In August, iOS developer George Talusan put 22 identical copies of the same app in the App Store. That’s 22 times, under 22 different names.

When I discovered this, a few months ago, I reported it to Apple immediately. Since then, he has put the same app in another 6 times, with a slightly modified UI. Apple does not seem to have responded.

I stumbled on this honeypot of apps while looking for a white noise generator during a bout of insomnia. The screenshot looked attractive and it was free, so I downloaded it. I’ve tried a few other noise generator apps, and this one was definitely not a good one. The sounds were alright, but it stopped playing sound the moment my phone went to sleep. Most other noise generators will continue playing. That said, even if this app was god’s gift to iPhones, it wouldn’t excuse the 28 copies spamming the App store and Clogging up your search results.

(Three variations on the one UI, depending on when this duplicate was last updated)

Some of the copies of the app are free, and some of them are $0.99 or $1.99. They all seem to have an in-app purchase to unlock the full feature set.

He’s since fixed the issue of background audio in some, but not all, of the duplicates. I’m sure it’s hard work keeping 28 apps up to date.

It’s in the store under the names Virtual Earplugs, Ambient Soundscapes, Power Nap - Soundscapes, iEarplugs, Noise Block, Brain Tuner - Focus, Nap+, iRelax - Soundscapes, Napbot, Meditator, Mood Tweak, Toga Sound, Dreambot, Babywaves, Hushbaby, iDream -Sleep Maker, iPacifier, SleepAid - Soundscapes, Mood Mod, Tuneout - Sound Blocker, Soundwaves, and Focus+. In December he added Soundscaper, Soundscaper Pro, Sound Oasis, Sound Oasis Pro, Sleep Maker and Sleep Maker Pro.

These apps are listed in the categories: Utilities, Productivity, Travel, Business, Medical, Lifestyle, Heathcare & Fitness, and Education.

This is a pretty big failure in the app approval process, and I’d be willing to bet it’s not an isolated incident. Each of these has been looked at by a real human being, who no doubt had access to their account history. It doesn’t take a genius to spot that these apps are all IDENTICAL. From what I can see without buying them all the only thing that varies between them is the icon, the name, and the app description. Either they have no directive to stop stuff like this from happening, or they have no system in place to catch it.

I’d love to hear about other examples of this kind of App Store SEO/spam.