iOS App Development For Dummies

Introduction 1 A Bit of History 1 The iPhone stands alone 2 Enter the App Store 2 The iPad joins the party 3 The Plan for This Book 3 iOS and Xcode Game Changers 4 About This Book 5 Conventions Used in This Book 5 Icons Used in This Book 6 Foolish Assumptions 7 How This Book Is Organized 7 Part I: Getting Started 8 Part II: Building RoadTrip 8 Part III: Getting Your Feet Wet: Basic Functionality 8 Part IV: The Model and the App Structure 9 Part V: Adding the App Content 9 Part VI: The Part of Tens 9 Beyond the Book 10 Where to Go from Here 10 Part I: Getting Started 11 Chapter 1: What Makes a Great iOS App 13 Figuring Out What Makes a Great iOS App 14 Making your app work well 14 Handling networking, social media, and location 15 Designing a powerful and intuitive interface that disappears 15 Using the iOS Platform to the Fullest 16 Exploiting advantages of the system 16 Accessing the Internet 17 Knowing the location of the user 18 Tracking orientation and motion 18 Tracking users’ fingers on the screen 19 Playing content 19 Accessing information from Apple’s apps 19 Copying, cutting, and pasting between apps 20 Multitasking, background processing, and notifications 20 Living large on the big screen 21 Embracing Device Limitations 21 Designing for fingers 22 Balancing memory and battery life 22 Why Develop iOS Apps? 23 Developing with Apple’s Expectations in Mind 24 Thinking About You, Apps, and Money 25 Enter the Cloud 26 Developing an App the Right Way Using the Example App in This Book 27 What’s Next 27 Chapter 2: Getting to Know the SDK 29 Developing Using the SDK 29 Using Xcode to Develop an App 30 Creating an Xcode project 31 Developing the app 31 The Workspace Window 33 Workspace areas 34 Displaying an area’s content 36 The toolbar and Tab bar 40 The Organizer window 42 Chapter 3: The Nuts and Bolts of an Xcode Project 45 Creating Your Project 45 Exploring Your Project 50 The project 50 The Project editor 50 The Project navigator 53 Setting Your Xcode Preferences 57 Building and Running Your Application 59 Building an app 61 The iPad’s Split views 63 The Log navigator 64 Running in the Simulator 66 Interacting with your simulated hardware 66 Making gestures 67 Uninstalling apps and resetting your device 68 Living with the Simulator’s limitations 69 Using Asset Catalogs 70 Adding the Image and Sound Resources and an App Icon 74 Part II: Building RoadTrip 77 Chapter 4: Storyboards and the User Experience 79 Introducing the Storyboard 80 Telling your story 81 Working with object graphs 83 Defining What You Want an App to Do: The RoadTrip App 84 Creating the Application Architecture 88 What You Add Where 89 Using Frameworks 90 Using Design Patterns 91 The iOS design patterns 92 The Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern 92 Working with Windows and Views 95 Looking out the window 95 Admiring the view 96 The kinds of views you use 97 View Controllers — the Main Storyboard Players 101 What About the Model? 104 It’s Not That Neat 105 Taking a Look at Other Frameworks 106 The Foundation framework 106 The CoreGraphics framework 106 Even more frameworks 107 Understanding the MVC in the Project 107 Chapter 5: Creating the RoadTrip User Interface 111 Creating Your User Interface in the iPad Storyboard 111 It’s about the view controller 112 Using Interface Builder to add the user elements 113 Working within the Utility Area 115 Inspector and Quick Help pane 115 Library pane 116 Understanding iPad Navigation 117 Adding a New View Controller 121 Danger Will Robinson 128 Adding an identifier to the view controller 129 View Layout 130 Adding the User Interface Objects 131 Autosizing with Auto Layout 136 Adding the Test Drive button 141 Massaging the Template Code 144 Getting Rid of Warnings 148 Creating the iPhone User Interface 148 Chapter 6: The Runtime, Managing Memory, and Using Properties 151 Stepping Through the App Life Cycle 152 UIApplicationMain 153 Handling events while your application is executing 158 Knowing what to do when the normal processing of your application is interrupted 160 An overview of the view controller life cycle 163 Working within the Managed Memory Model Design Pattern 164 Understanding memory management 165 Using reference counting 165 Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) 167 Working with variable types according to ARC 169 Understanding the deadly retain cycle 170 Observing Low-Memory Warnings 172 The didReceiveMemoryWarning method 172 The applicationDidReceiveMemoryWarning: method 172 The UIApplicationDidReceiveMemoryWarningNotification: notification 173 Picking the right memory-management strategy for your application 173 Customizing the Behavior of Framework Classes 174 Subclassing 174 The Delegation pattern 175 Understanding Declared Properties 176 What comprises a declared property 176 Using dot syntax 177 Setting attributes for a declared property 178 Writing your own accessors 180 Accessing instance variables with accessors 181 Hiding Instance Variables 181 Chapter 7: Working with the Source Editor 183 Navigating in the Xcode Source Editors 183 Using the Jump bar 186 Organizing your code using the #pragma mark statement 190 Using the Xcode Source Editor 190 Using Live Issues and Fix-it 192 Compiler warnings 193 The Issue navigator 193 Accessing Documentation 195 Getting Xcode help 195 The Organizer window 198 The Help menu 199 Finding and Searching in Your Project 199 Using the Find command to locate an item in a file 199 Using the Search navigator to search your project or framework 200 Using the Symbol navigator 201 You’re Finally Ready to Write Code! 202 Part III: Getting Your Feet Wet: Basic Functionality 203 Chapter 8: It’s (Finally) T ime to Code 205 Checking for Network Availability 205 Downloading the Reachability sample 205 Adding the code to check for reachability 208 Exploring the Changes in iOS 7 211 The dated interface 211 Losing the content 212 Setting the Master View Controller Title 213 Understanding Autorotation 214 Writing Bug-Free Code 215 Working in the Debug area and Debug navigator 216 Managing breakpoints 218 What you’ll find in the Debug area 222 What you’ll find in the Debug navigator 223 Displaying variables in the Source editor 224 Tiptoeing through your program 225 Chapter 9: Adding Outlets and Actions to Your RoadTrip Code 227 Using Custom View Controllers 228 Adding the custom view controller 228 Setting up the TestDriveController in the MainStoryboard for iPad 229 Understanding Outlets 231 Adding Outlets 232 Opening the Assistant editor 232 Creating the outlet 234 The Connections inspector 237 Working with the Target-Action Design Pattern 239 Using the Target-Action pattern: It’s about controls 239 Adding an action 241 How Outlets and Actions Work 244 Update the iPhone storyboard file 244 Chapter 10: Adding Animation and Sound to Your App 247 Understanding iOS Animation 248 View geometry and coordinate systems 248 Points versus pixels 248 A view’s size and position 249 Working with data structures 250 Coordinating Auto Layout, Frames, and Constraints 250 Animating a View 251 Finally, More Code 252 Implementing the testDrive Method 252 Understanding Block Objects 256 Rotating the Object 259 Working with Audio 261 Tracking Touches 269 Animating a Series of Images “In Place” 272 iPhone versus iPad 273 Part IV: The Model and the App Structure 275 Chapter 11: The Trip Model 277 What the Model Contains 277 Adding the Model Data 278 Using property lists 278 Adding a property list to your project 280 Adding the First Two Model Classes 290 Understanding the Trip Interface 292 Implementing the Trip Class 294 Initializing objects 296 Invoking the superclass’s init method 297 Initializing instance variables 298 Returning self 299 Initializing the Destination Class 300 Creating the Trip Object 303 More Debugger Stuff 305 Chapter 12: Implementing the Master View Controller 309 Setting Up a Custom View Controller for the iPad 309 Adding a Background Image and Title 319 Updating the iPhone Storyboard File 321 Chapter 13: Working with Split View Controllers and the Master View 323 The Problem with Using a Navigation Controller in Detail View 323 Using a Navigation Controller in the Master View 326 Adding a Gesture Recognizer 330 The Split View Controller 333 The UISplitViewController delegate 335 Localization 340 Back to the main feature 340 Adding the Toolbar 346 Adding the button when the view controller is replaced 350 A Few More Tweaks to the MasterViewController 354 And (a Little Extra) One More Thing 355 Don’t Forget the iPhone 356 Chapter 14: Finishing the Basic App Structure 357 Extending the iPad Storyboard to Add More Functionality to Your App 358 Adding the Weather view controller 358 Adding the Events controller 364 Adding the remaining controllers 367 Changing the Split View Controller to a Detail View Controller Relationship 368 Repeat for iPhone 372 Part V: Adding the App Content 373 Chapter 15: How’s the Weather? Working with Web Views 375 The Plan 375 The iPad storyboard 376 The iPhone storyboard 377 Setting Up the Weather Controller 379 Adding the custom view controller 379 Setting Up WeatherController in the Main_iPad.storyboard file 380 The Weather Controller 385 Managing links in a Web view 388 More Opportunities to Use the Debugger 392 Unrecognized selector sent to instance 392 Repeat for the iPhone Storyboard 393 Adding the WeatherController to the iPhone storyboard file 393 Test in the iPhone Simulator 394 Chapter 16: Displaying Events Using a Page View Controller 395 The Plan 396 Setting Up the EventsController 397 Adding the custom view controller 397 Setting up the EventsController in the MainStoryboard 398 Adding and setting up the EventPageController in the MainStoryboard 399 Extending the Trip Model 401 Adding the Events Class 403 The EventsController and Its PageViewController 406 Data sources and delegates 406 Data source 407 Delegate 407 The EventsController 407 The EventPageController 412 Adding Events Support to the iPhone Storyboard 415 Chapter 17: Finding Your Way 417 The Plan 418 Setting Up the Map Controller 419 Adding the custom view controller 420 Setting up the MapController in the Main_iPad.Storyboard 420 Test 426 Putting MapKit through Its Paces 428 MKMapView 428 Enhancing the map 429 Changing the Map Type 435 Adding Annotations 437 Creating the annotation 437 Displaying the map title and annotations 441 Going to the Current Location 446 Fixing the Status Bar 451 Update the iPhone Storyboard 454 Chapter 18: Geocoding 455 Understanding Geocoding on the iPad 455 Reverse Geocoding 458 Chapter 19: Finding a Location 465 Setting Up the Find Controller 465 Adding the custom view controller 466 Setting up FindControllerin the Main_iPad File 466 Implementing the Find Controller 469 Adding the Map View 469 Getting the text 470 Disabling cell highlighting 477 Finding the Location 477 Making the Map Title the Found Location 484 Adding the FindController to the iPhone Storyboard 485 Chapter 20: Selecting a Destination 487 The Plan 487 Setting Up the DestinationController for the iPad Storyboard 488 Adding the custom view controller 488 Setting up the DestinationController in the Main_iPad.storyboard 489 Adding a Modal View 494 Implementing a Table View 497 Creating the Table View 498 Adding sections 499 Displaying the cell 501 Working with user selections 503 Saving the Destination Choice and Selecting a Destination 511 Displaying the Destination table 516 Testing 517 Adding Destination Support to the iPhone Storyboard 518 A Word about Adding Settings 519 What’s Next? 519 Part VI: The Part of Tens 521 Chapter 21: Ten Ways to Be Successful with Apps 523 Make a Million Dollars in a Week 523 Build a Portfolio 524 Build App Icons 524 Design User Interfaces 524 Build Back Ends 525 Socialize with Apps 525 Talk About Apps with People Who Want Them 525 Promote Apps 525 Provide Support to Users 526 Fix Bugs 526 Chapter 22: Ten Ways to Be a Happy Developer 527 Keep Things Loosely Coupled 527 Remember Memory 528 Don’t Reinvent the Wheel 528 Understand State Transitions 529 Do the Right Thing at the Right Time 530 Avoid Mistakes in Error Handling 530 Use Storyboards 531 Remember the User 531 Keep in Mind That the Software Isn’t Finished Until the Last User Is Dead 531 Keep It Fun 531 Index 533