I've been trying to see if it's possible to get information about app usage on IOS. For example, how much time a user spends on his/hers Facebook or Safari applications. How could one go about doing this within a react native application? Is it possible to do it with any framework?
No, it’s not possible. Apple is very strict about this.
An app cannot access other apps' sandboxes, for any reason. Everything an app can do is restricted to its own sandbox, and in no way can other sandboxes be accessed.
User security is very important for Apple.
If the app you are trying to get the data about has an SDK that can be integrated in your react native app, and the SDK has APIs to provide information about usage analytics for the user(which I don't think is possible with FB SDK), you could ask the user for authorization via the SDK and show them the usage analytics information. Although, chances of these APIs being in an SDK are slim, this might be the only way.
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I would like to get a statistics on how many people are using SDK that I'm providing. What functions they use the most and etc.
For apps I used firebase/fabric in order to track all that. But those services come with a responsibility (privacy policy). And if I just pack them into SDK that may conflict with people apps who don't want any tracking SDK being included in their Apps.
So the question is, are there any services that provides SDK tracking without violating privacy policy of user data collecting?
So far I was not able to find any of those specifically for SDK.
As a side question, If such analytics is taken place in SDK, should it be explicitly written in SDK description?. And should the people who integrate such SDK explicitly write in their app description that particular SDK is collecting their usage?
Apologies if this is a rubbish question, but it's something I've never had to give much thought and I'm short on time. I have a Web App which is required to run offline and on iOS. This Web App has a lot of content consisting mainly of videos. One solution we are thinking of is to utilise DropBox's or Google Drive's API's to download the content and access it.
The main issue with this is whether you can access a native app (DropBox or Google Drive) from a browser or Web App. Does anyone know if this is possible?
Ideas so far are:
Access Drop Box or Google Drive native app from a web app (not sure if this is possible and is the current question)
Wrap up the web app to make it a hybrid native app using something like Phone Gap (this is plan B but will have its own issues)
Convert to a Google Chrome App to get improved access to Google Drive API (not sure how this would function on iOS)
Start from scratch and build a native iOS app (a longer term solution)
Thanks
Chris
Late, but maybe helpful: www.cloudrail.com
It's a useful Javascript library to access the Dropbox and Google Drive API
We ended up making a hybrid app using PhoneGap for iOS.
I have a button in my app that opens a map app with directions how to drive there.
I have Apple Maps working and working on Google Maps integration. But if the user has other apps that can open directions I would like to give him a choice of all of them.
Is there a way to programatically figure out all the apps that can open maps/directions?
Nope. Not that I am aware of that will still allow you to get approved by Apple. iOS applications currently don't get to access this sort of information due to the sandboxed environment. You can see if any of the other popular maps applications have publicly available SDK's for you to integrate into your application.
I am using Google analytics for my Web application and iOS application.
iOS application is practically an equivalent of its Web counterpart (they have same views, same functionalities).
I would like to have a combined report analyzing usage of both iOS and Web app together.
That means sum of all pageviews, tracking user's actions...
Quantcast Measure is designed for cross platform (web and mobile app) audience measurement. It has both a web SDK and a mobile app SDK that allows to to combine your web and app audiences into one comprehensive report. Quantcast's profile of GoodReads is a good example of what it's cross platform reporting is about.
(Full Disclosure: I work at Quantcast)
Forget about your mobile application, just create a responsive design version of your web app.
You will still be able to determine what traffic comes from Mobile devices.
I want to write app that is heavily integrated with Facebook. I'm not sure what shoud I use - sdk provided by Facebook or new Social Framework provided by Apple. Do you know some pros and cons of them?
[EDIT]
I ended using Social Framework provided by Apple, because it's much easier to integrate, It will be develop in future, and I have access to device owner Facebook account, so user don't have to log in to Facebook when using my app. I want to do some custom stuff, so I get oauth token from ACAccountCredential and then I make requests with AFNetworing to Facebook's Graph API.
The Social Framework is designed for simple, site-neutral data manipulation. Examples might include getting the user's 'activity feed' (as described by the docs) or posting a new status or photo. It currently works with Twitter, Facebook and Weibo however, other than lack of features, the current main disadvantage is that it is limited to iOS 6, which won't be as much of a problem in the future.
On the other hand Facebook does have an iOS SDK that makes it reasonably easy to integrate Facebook into your app, and it is much more powerful than the Social Framework. Another benefit is that support goes back to iOS 4.3.
I'd recommend using the Facebook iOS SDK over writing your own custom one and using OAuth because Facebook has already done the work for you.
I've struggled with this decision for a long time and came to this conclusion. If your app doesn't care for iOS 5 and older phones, then the iOS Social framework is the way to go, as it allows the user to share with any of the popular social outlets (Facebook, Twitter, email, Weibo, SMS...) just like one can do in mobile safari. According to Apple, 89% of the iDevices are already on iOS 7. The percentage will be higher if you include iOS 6.