I am a complete novice when it comes to iOS app development. I have designed and submitted my business app to the app store and it is going alone ok. Only thing is I have to change, add or subtract products as our business changes. Is there a way where I don't have to write new code and resubmit to the apple store. e.g. some server based drag & drop portal I could use instead of having to change through Xcode and resubmitting. it is a fairly basic tabbed based application with maps
Thanks for your help
If your products are stored in a database, you could build up a REST Webservice to access them from your app.
If you do not have the programming skills to do so, a possible solution could be to use a UIWebView in your app that loads HTML-pages with your products, so you just need some basic html skills to update the products.
Note that if there are any links to other websites your app probably has to be ratet 17+.
Related
i am in the process of making my app with firebase i am pretty much done with that except Firebase App Indexing. I am very exited with this feature because it could help me to increase my app get more traffic from the web but the problem is i really can't able to see how to implement this. According to Firebase Docs i just need to register my app with this pice of code
[[FIRAppIndexing sharedInstance] registerApp:your Apple ID from iTunes Connect];
I have done that but what should i do after that?
1.My app is firebase app that means i don't have any website to host my content except firebase realtime database. Does my content is available for crawlers? if not how can i make available to them?
2.If i can able to show my content in the google search results i don't wanna show all the content and i wanna show just some of my content for example i have a social app for sharing General Knowledge questions, i wanna show just the question like "What is the highest mountain" in the search results and if the user want to see the answer it should take them to my app how can i do that?
3.As per docs i came to know that i need to create univiersal links for my app content to direct users from google search but how shold i do that ? Lets say should i crate universal links when the user create question?? if so how can i do that ??
Thank you very much for the help.
This is not currently possible on iOS using Firebase App Indexing. The situation is slightly different on Android, but that is not applicable to your question.
On iOS, Firebase App Indexing is simply highlighting pages on your website in Google search results that have corresponding content inside your app. This is achieved by piggybacking on Apple's Universal Links standard, and there is no proactive 'crawling' going on inside your app. This means unless you have a corresponding web page for your app with 1:1 content parity, you can't really benefit from Firebase App Indexing on iOS as it comes out-of-the-box.
The best workaround is to generate little 'placeholder pages' for every piece of content in your app, which the sole purpose of opening your app (if it is installed) or redirecting to the App Store (if it is not installed). Ideally you'll need some sort of deferred deep linking system so that users still see the correct content after downloading. Fun fact: this is essentially how HotelTonight operates their entire business model. Unfortunately Firebase's implementation is not mature enough to support this full flow, and Google hasn't quite figured out how to rank app-only content properly yet in search results so you will probably need to pro-actively submit your placeholder pages to them.
Shameless plug: at Branch, we provide all of the above as a free service. You can read more about it here and take a look at the set up docs here.
we are about to finish our first app with parse.com. This first app is for the enduser. PushNotifications and everything are working fine.
Now we want to create an app for our admins to manage everything. We want it to be a separate app. Therefore I was wondering: will this be possible? Two apps connecting to one data collection on parse.
Especially regarding the PushNotifications. Admins should also receive a push notification on the new admin app (e.g. new member joins and needs to be activated).
Has anyone ever done something like this?
Or do we need to build the admin part into the main app?
The thing is we will need a third app, which is for business owners to manage their listing on our main app. So the same problem/question will apply then.
Looking forward to your feedback.
Txs!
Yes same Parse app ID can be used by different platforms/apps, that is basic concept of Parse. You can even use it in web, iOS, Android, etc with same parse app. This should not be a problem.
You might need to modify you parse data structure tough to suit your admin app requirement.
Check https://parse.com/docs/ios/guide#roles
I'm new to mobile programming. Recently my company has looked into creating a specific application for tablets (Android and iOS). So it was assigned to me to develop a thin-client based around using HTML5 for what we need to do.
Essentially the application allows a user to fill in a custom-designed form (which the user can build themselves, or pull down a predefined template from our server). This form is built using HTML5, Javascript, JQuery, etc. Some additional functionality is planned, such as being able to take a picture using the native device and attach it to the form that we send back to our server for storage (once we figure out how to do it in iOS. We've already done it in Android.)
However, I noticed the following on Apple's App Store Guidelines, under the Functionality section. Item 2.12:
Apps that are not very useful, unique, are simply web sites bundled as Apps, or do not provide any lasting entertainment value may be rejected
Can someone explain, or at least direct me to clarification of this when using the UIWebView construct? This application at its core is pretty much just HTML5. While it might have some additional bells and whistles, does this mean that if we try to submit this (when its completed) to Apple, that they will simply reject it out of hand? Implementing the majority of it in HTML5 was done purposely so we wouldn't have to re-code everything from device to device (and we will also embed it in one of our products, so if they want to fill it out on the desktop while in our system, they can.)
Any guidance would be appreciated, or even suggestions of where this question should be asked if SO is not the proper forum for it. Thanks again.
The key in the Appstore guideline is the word "simply":
Apps that are not very useful, unique, are simply web sites bundled as
Apps
If you keep a balance between locally stored and remote HTML content for your webviews Apple would not look at the app as a hollow shell pulling in remote content.
I need to release an update to an iOS app. I want to release the app update exactly with the launch of the web site.
So what I was thinking of doing is:
- developing the new version of the app (using internal in dev feeds)
- change the feeds in the app in order to point to the new feeds (at this point the app won't have any content because the feeds are not live yet)
- submit the app to the app store (wait for Apple approval) and manually release the app when the site goes live (and at this point the feeds will be live)
The problem is that when the app is in the review process I won't have any content. Is it a problem for Apple?
They can approve an app without content?
What if I write a developer note to them?
I need to do this because when the new site goes live the new version of the feeds it's no compatible with the old version (different formats). I know it's not the ideal solution but this was not my decision.
As Rich pointed out, Apple would likely reject the app if the news feeds are a big part of the app and do nothing. If your desire is to release the app exactly when the website is launched and the news feeds are live, then while you're submitting the app there is an option to have it released on a specific date.
You could load up the back-end of the website without loading up the front-end. So have the php files loaded to the server and accessible from the app feeding it json data or however you are transferring information. If your back-end is interlaced with the front-end, you may have to re-write the files, name them the same thing, upload them to the server, have them be serving data so that they can test them, and then when you want to launch the site, overwrite the files with the full version. However, I'd imagine that your files capturing data from the database are differentiated from the ones presenting dynamic content, otherwise you are breaking the MVC paradigm and should probably change the way your website is structured anyway.
I would like to identify whether an app is paid or free; programmatically, at runtime.
To brief on the context I'm working on, I'm developing an SDK which can be used by various third-party apps. I would like to identify if the app that is using my SDK is paid or free.
Any suggestions to find this?
You should make them configure your SDK writing their app id somewhere, and then your SDK have to check the app store webservices like this
https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=theAppID
There you can check the price
One thing you can do is this
https://itunes.apple.com/lookup?id=YOUR_APP_ID
and then fetch price & currency values from the returned JSON
There is a way tick into my mind,
Add a logic to get application name which using your SDKalso add some logic to send that name to you via API or any other way you preferred.
Once you get a new name in your server database, you can, open AppStore in iTunes, and search for the application there, and yes you'll get to know whether they are paid or free!
I know its tough if your SDKwill be going to fly with many apps, but not hard.
An alternate way, if there's some way that you get to know whether app is paid or free, then, you can do the same thing, send app name, and its price details.