A lot of apps I see on iOS and Android will have tonnes of pages for different characters but all the page layouts are the same. Here is an example of an app that does this.
Now I'm sure they don't write every single page as a UIViewController (if it was for iOS) so what's the best way to go about making something like this? Do they the unique data in a database and then it read it for each individual view controller?
If possible, please relate it to Swift as that's what I'm learning.
I can't speak for android, however for iOS you'll be looking to subclass a UIViewController. This will allow you to create a class that has all the common functionality that all your screens require (layout, color schemes, buttons etc).
You will also want to configure this subclass to accept inputs of the properties that you'll want to change across each individual screen (character name, images, etc). You could easily do this through properties and overriding their setters. Or you'd want to look at subclassing again in order to further override the functionality of the base subclass.
I suggest have you a good look at the Apple Swift documentation on Inheritance & Subclassing.
In terms of data input for the view controllers (character names, images etc), it really depends on how complex this data is.
If it's only simple plain text and resource names, you'll want to look at storing them in a property list file (.plist) that you can load into your code as an NSDictionary or NSArray very easily. This answer should help you get started out how to read/write plist files.
More complicated data will probably require the use of a database, either through Core Data or an external library. However, I usually prefer using a custom storage object that you can write to disk though NSKeyedArchiver.
I'm not sure if I am understanding your question...
You usually have several different screens (or ViewControllers) but the data shown in them are dynamic.
You can instantiate a class (VC) with different data and load different images, text and every 'screen' will be unique (if you want).
You can use databases to store the data to be shown or you can manage data directly in memory data structures, array with dictionaries, for example.
Hope It helped you.
Related
I’ve been a procedural programmer for a long time and most of my iOS code is written with lots of if statements instead of sub-classing. I think I finally understand how to write object oriented code but I have a few questions.
I have a class, ScoringToolbar.m that is used in all of my games. It creates buttons for the bottom of the screen. Which buttons are created vary depending on the game and the options in the game. Here’s a typical screen.
Right now it is a long series of if statements. In addition to being hard to read, it’s definitely not proper object oriented programming. What I’d like to do is convert the class into a superclass and add a subclass for each game. My first question is: Is there a convention for naming the superclass?
Also, I’d like to keep the ScoringToolbar.m name for each of my sub-classes. If I create one sub-class for each of my apps (or group of similar apps) I can move the code from the if statements into it. Then each app would call its own subclass and create the buttons it needs. If I do that I won’t have to change any of the calling code. However, if I have lots of .m files with the same name, what do I do with the .h files. Do I have just one and make sure it works with all of the .m's. Or is there a way to tell Xcode to use a specific .h file in an app?
Or is this the wrong approach altogether?
I'm not sure subclassing is your best option. Your question about multiple .m files with the same name suggests this approach might get confusing. You might want to think of your ScoringToolbar as a control that your apps configure for their needs. In this way it wouldn't be much different than a UIButton. Each app would be responsible for creating an instance of the ScoringToolbar and setting it up to suit. It could do this in a method in an existing class or in a helper class. The ScoringToolbar takes care of rendering the UI (icons, colors) while the calling app indicates what options it needs (up/down votes, number correct/incorrect, etc).
I think subclassing is not a good option for you problem. You will end up with code which is hard to maintain and modify when your apps or no of apps grow big.
Have a look at some design patterns, if I got your problem correctly, builder pattern would be one of the options.
Or you can create configuration file for each game. For example you can have an array of dictionaries in a plist. Each dictionary will represent a UI element in the toolbar. For example you can store the image name, order, selector, position(?) and etc in the plist. When loading the application you can create the toolbar elements at run time using the dictionary options.
These are just a starting point but based on your requirements and extendability of your apps you can find better solutions.
Alrighty,
I am new to Xcode so I apologise if I am missing any key points here.
But, I want to have a large list in a UITableView type display. The list will be an array of strings with maybe 500 ish entries and a search bar to search for what ever entry you like. Once found you can tap the entry and it will load a detailed view of what ever it is. I would prefer to not have to have all of the data entry in Xcode and am wondering what would be the neatest way to store/read/write this?
I am leaning towards some sort of data file... but couldnt quite work out how to implement this into Xcode. I have searched around a bit but couldnt find anything which made sense (probably because i am quite new to Xcode).
This will be an App for iOS.
Any ideas?
I understand that you want to create a UITableView displaying static data and your problem is that you don't want to store the data in your code. Depending on how complicated the structure of your data is you could save it in a sql database, store it with coredata, keep it in a xml file or keep it in a file in a custom encoding. I don't quite now where your Problem lies. You can just load the file/database, parse it in an object structure and display it in the tableview. There are a couple of advantages of using a database to a file:
You can create connections easily and handle them without a lot of effort
You only need to load in the memory what is really needed at the moment.
Core data will be fine for you. However if you don't need all of its extra functions and the list will be static (eg, non changing and will be read into the code at runtime in its entirerty) then you can probably use a plist. Plist data can be read directly into arrays.
I am making a simple iPhone app that will basically be an editor.
As such, I need some way to store the documents the user creates.
Since on iPhone, the concept of the filesystem is not present for the user, I searched around to see what I should use.
I found this question & answer that basically says to use Core Data, but I recently found out about NSFileManager.
My question simply is, for user-created documents, what is the best storage system to use? Traditional files by using NSFileManager? Core Data? Something else?
Personally, I would use CoreData because it will abstract away all of the file-management code for you. If you are making simple text documents then this isn't such a big deal, but if you are working with a complex document architecture (i.e., a collection a numerous objects) then it can save you a lot of effort.
If the user wants to export their document it is very easy to write a function to do so with your CoreData objects.
The only downside to CoreData is that if you are using non-standard attributes it can get a little bit tricky, but it is certainly not a deal breaker in most cases.
People create document formats without CoreData all of the time, so there are plenty of examples out there, and it will just come down to personal preference. There really isn't any generalized right answer to this - it a design decision that should be evaluated on a per-app basis.
If all of your data for displaying the file is contained in one long string (like HTML) then I would recommend that you use the file manager, since it will be easy to get a list of files in a certain directory to display to the user for opening. However, if they are not self contained (like NSAttributedString, which has many stored formatting regions along with the actual content) then you should use CoreData, as it will be easier to keep all the pieces together.
I'm developing an app which needs to show some logos. These logos are just 8kb PNG files, and I'm just going to handle a little amount of them (10-20 at most). However, these are downloaded from the Internet because they might change. So, what I'm trying to achieve is, making the app to download them (done), storing them into the file system, and only downloading again whenever they change (might be months).
Everyone seems to use Core Data, which in my opinion is something designed for bigger and more complex things, because my files will always have the same name plus don't have relations between them.
Is the file system the way to go? Any good tutorial?
Yes, the file system is probably your best option for this. You say that you've already implemented the downloading. How have you done so? With NSURLConnection? If so, then at some point, you have an NSData object. This has a couple of write... methods you can use to save the data to a file on the filesystem. Be sure to save the files in the right place, as your app is sandboxed and you can't write anywhere you like.
The advantage Core Data brings is efficiency. Using NSFetchedResultsController to display your logos in a tableview gets you optimized object loading and memory management. It will automatically load only the items which can be displayed on one screen, and as the user flicks through the table it will handle releasing items which move offscreen. Implementing that on your own is not a simple task.
If you want to build and display your data without Core Data, you'll probably want to use NSKeyValueCoder, which will allow you to easily write an array or dictionary of objects (including nested arrays, dictionaries, and images).
By best I mean most efficient.
So don't go on about subjectiveness.
I have a list of websites and I want to store the list on the iphone locally, there must be an URL, title and a small image (like 32x32 max image size). I don't think I should be using CoreData for this. Should I be using a plist?
EDIT:
Efficient's definition I though was obvious. Take up the least amount of room, use lowest memory/CPU.
Sorry I forgot to say About 10-15 max items. And they just get loaded into a table view when the app first loads or when that view is brought back by a nav controller.
If you can, leave the images in the resources, and put the url, title and imagename in a pList. Alternatively, you could just create a "Site" class with the three properties, and generate an array of Sites in code. (Or an Array of Dictionaries)
You say not to "go on about subjectiveness" but you don't provide your definition of efficient for this.
You don't specify how many websites you want to store or how you want to use them or what is important to you - storage size, i/o perf, ability to query in specific ways etc.
It doesn't sound like a plist would be a bad fit but I guess my earlier point is just that way you are going to read, write data is generally equally or more important in setting context for questions like this.