From all I have read here, creating a call tracking app on iOS seems impossible. However, after some investigation, I have found a couple of workarounds and would like to know if they are legal and would work at all.
So, at least, I will need one of these features:
access call log history. I've read that's impossible, but also I know that on many devices where iCloud backup is turned on, call history data is saved there, so using some API, for example, this, I can access it. Am I right?
receive notifications when the call is ended. I've read this is possible only in foreground, therefore makes no sense. But following this question, I see that you can initiate calls from the application, which allows at least to track outgoing calls.
Would this be enough or I am wasting time?
Unless you're running on a jailbroken device, the answer is no because there is no publicly available API that provides access to the call list and that is a good thing from a privacy point of view.
A quick search shows that CallKit is for integrating VOIP into the call list, so again the answer is no, CallKit will not be of any use to you.
The notifications are there so that your app can respond properly to calls that take place while it is active.
Related
I was wondering how social networking apps, such as Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp update their user interface in real-time when another user interacts with the user of the app. To use the best example I can think of: when you have a chat window open in WhatsApp, the UI updates automatically (without any user actions required) when the user you're chatting with interacts with you. Messages appear on your screen without refreshing and the "last seen" status at the top of the screen updates automatically when your chat partner either goes offline or comes back online. I can think of two ways to achieve this:
Remote push notifications: this approach strikes me as the 'cleanest' way to do this, but it's probably also the riskiest way. Using silent notifications (content-available) to pass data to another device at the moment a user does something, would probably save you a lot of HTTP requests and therefore would make your app consume a lot less data and CPU usage. The risk of this approach is that a user can easily disable ALL push notifications to save battery power (including silent notifications) and then your app wouldn't be able to get notified on events remotely.
Local UI refreshing: This approach is obviously the safest, but I think it's really 'nasty' and eventually everyone would feel the downside of it. Constantly refreshing the UI and re-retrieving data from the database to make sure the latest messages and statuses are displayed to the user would be safe in the way that your app doesn't have to rely on the device's battery and background mode settings, but the downside is that this will make your app consume a lot of data and battery power, which would be bad for the user's data plan and his device. I also don't think Apple would approve of an app that's consuming so much data and power.
I've just implemented a chat function into my own app, and I want to enable the same real-time UI updating that WhatsApp uses. What would be the best way to do this? Should I use one of the two methods above or can someone think of another way to do this? By the way, I'm a relatively new programmer who just recently learned how to develop iOS apps (Swift). I'm very far from being a pro, so please go easy on the explanations and work method capabilities. Thanks!
The chat apps make use of WebSockets to create a constant connection with the client and a backend server.
This article on Appcoda can help you start learning about Socket.io. It answers your questions and also helps you to create a demo app.
I'm trying to get into a new project, by creating an iOS application. But before I start I would like to understand some points:
is it possible to let an application make a phone call? So what I mean is, assumed we have a phone number and would like to call it. Would it be possible to use an (my) application to call this number?
is it possible to let an application speak during a phone call? So after the application started the call, would it be possible that some predefined statements are said in the call?
is it possible that this application hears, registers and analyses what the other person on the phone line is saying? (Leaving apart the privacy issue, assuming that the other person is willing to do that).
Could you please help me? If my question aren't clear, please tell me, I will try to explain it in another way.
Many Thanks
F.P.
iOS is very restricted in terms of the system behaviors third party applications can influence.
To answer your question bluntly, a third party application could prompt the user to initiate a phone / FaceTime call. Once the call is initiated however, your app would enter a background state and relinquish control to the system. The app would not be able to contribute or read any data related to the system phone / FaceTime call.
iOS 10 introduces a VoIP extension, CallKit, which allows third party apps to use the built in calling UI with a custom protocol. You could implement your own protocol (and host servers for handling the exchange of information) and build an extension to make it feel like a system call. You'd be responsible for all aspects of the custom call protocol and thus reading voices, contributing audio, etc. would all be possible (and up to your implementation).
Outside of iOS 10, you would have to built your own VoIP system and interface entirely from scratch.
For more info on CallKit:
WWDC Enhancing VoIP Apps with CallKit
CallKit Enabled Sample App
My goal is to listen only and not modify the outgoing call event and send GPS coordinates to server from background. I'm not even interested in phone number being dialed, what I only need to know is whether the current call is Emergency call.
I've accomplished this easily in android, by following this tutorial.
However some googling showed that, this is a big pain in the ios world.
The only solution I think is to write dialer app from scratch and manage all the events by myself (if that's even possible), but I think it's too overcomplicated
I'm completely new to ios and please let me know, how would you solve this problem guys?
There is no way this will be possible on iOS unless you were planning to release and app for jailbroken phones (and even then I'm not sure it is). The Core Telphony framework has the methods you can use: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/NetworkingInternet/Reference/CoreTelephonyFrameworkReference/index.html
My company is currently contracted to write a meditation app. While we have the app 90+% done the client has come up with a new requirement they would like implemented. Thankfully we have not agreed to the new requirement as we were not sure if it is possible or not.
They have seen in other apps (games were the only examples they were able to provide) where notifications (i.e. incoming email) did not appear and did not play a sound.
I have searched the old google god and have not been able to come up with an answer for my higher ups. Is there a way to accomplish this or is this something that is only available for games?
Thanks.
I don't think it is possible. The only thing that I would guess is that you would turn on do not disturb pragmatically. But there is no code for that, that i know of.
I want to write a feature in my app that checks local data daily (at a specified time eg. 12:00pm), and alert if needed. Really, I want something kind of like setTimeout() in Node.js.
Does Trigger.io's API give me a way to 'background' a small check, or fire an event at a specific time? Something via the OS,so that the app doesn't have to be running all the time?
I've searched through the API, but might be using the wrong terminology (as a non-mobile dev).
This isn't something currently supported, mainly because its difficult to provide a consistent experience across Android and iOS.
A common solution to this kind of problem is to have the check performed on a remote server, then use a push notification to notify the user if required. (see http://docs.trigger.io/en/v1.4/partners/parse.html#partner-parse)
The reason doing this on the device is difficult is that on iOS you cannot just run code in the background, it is possible to send a notification to the user at a specific time but this notification has to be set in advance.