Let's say a "plugin" is a collection of 5 sounds:
1.mp3 2.mp3 3.mp3 4.mp3 5.mp3
My app needs to support such plugins to switch between different sound-themes.
On Android ecosystem, I can simply create a new application that only contains those 5 mp3-files in the assets folder. It will be a plugin. Let's say its package name will be com.mysite.plugins.test
From my main application, I can list all installed apps (plugins) with package prefixes com.mysite.plugins.*. And easily access any of their assets.
I'm new to iOS world... And need something same. As far as I have researched, it's not possible... There can't be an app that contains only sounds, accessible from my main iOS app.
The only way seems to host sound-packages on my server (cloud) and download them from the main app.
However, this way requires payments for data transfer.
Am I missing some more elegant solution? Like hosting sound-packages directly on Apple servers?
Thank you!
Related
I am trying to setup offline support for our webapp. I would love to use a serviceWorker for that but unfortunately Safari does not support those, yet.
So I tried using the deprecated manifest file. But apparently only files from the same origin are allowed in there. We are loading our static files from a CDN (so the origin is not the same).
Is there any way to make a webapp with CDN files work offline on iOS?
One last idea would be to generate a index-offline.html file, include that one as a FALLBACK in the manifest. In there, I would point to the same files but this time not on the CDN but on our own server... But this does not seem like a nice solution to me.
Thanks in advance :-)
Jesse
As long as iOS does not support service workers, you cannot make offline work. Service worker is the core of a PWA and that can make offline work properly. We as still not sure if iOS will support offline capabilities.
We have a requirement where we need to build an iOS app 'A' that would have menu options for a number of functionalities and these functionalities will grow over time. So, the clients suggested that we do an iOS app 'A' that displays just the menu options and the options when clicked will each launch another iOS app (which implements that functionality) residing on the device. This would be a bad user experience considering the user will have to be moved out of 'A' for each link. At the same time, we cannot build all the features in 'A' since the size of 'A' would get too large.
Is there an elegant design solution for this kind of an application?
Launching a different app for each function seems a bit clunky at first, but on the other hand it does offer the flexibility of adding additional modules without having to rebuild and redistribute your application every time. If the modules are independent enough that a user wouldn't need to constantly switch between them, this might not be a bad solution.
You could use custom URL schemes to launch each module, and use (for example) an XML file to configure which modules are available and the URL scheme to launch each one. That way you could update the XML file remotely (have the application call a web service on startup to check for an updated configuration file). Your configuration file could be as simple as something like this:
<modules>
<module name="Module A" url="moduleA://myModuleA"/>
<module name="Module B" url="moduleB://myModuleB"/>
<module name="Module C" url="moduleC://myModuleC"/>
</modules>
and then the app could provide a button to launch each module. You can add additional tags for any other information you need about each module (e.g. an icon image or whatever).
When you add a new module, update the config file on the server and the app will find it on the next startup. Your app would have to redirect the user to the app store to download and install the new module if it's not already installed on their device.
Of course if your modules need to communicate with each other or share data, it gets more complicated. You can pass parameters between modules in the custom URL scheme, but if they need to share large amounts of data (like a database or something), then you'd need some other way to share that data.
Hope this helps.
Is it possible for an non-beta user of my app to send me their whole app directory for analysis purposes?
I know the way via the Xcode Organizer to download the whole app directory. But is this also possible for a end user to save/export a package of the app including all document files and send me this package via email?
The application directory and its contents are not end-user accessible without the use of a third-party tool such as PhoneView or iExplorer.
Yes. I am sure there are many cheaper ways to do this, but I find PhoneView really handy for browsing the device and copying complete app folders.
Another approach I suppose - easier for the user but tougher for you - is to implement file sharing so that the user can drag stuff from your app via iTunes. It depends on how much / what kind of data you need from the user how you would implement this.
I'm absolutely new to iOS App development (I haven't actually started yet, still in a design phase).
The task that I have to accomplish with my app is to download a zip from somewhere, extract anywere to local storage and display its content (html pages with javascript) in a embed webkit widget.
The questions are:
1) Will my app have access to any folder of my iPad storage memory?
2) Will my app's embedded Webkit widget be able to display local html pages (like file:///somewhere/over/the/rainbow.html ?
3) WIll that local page be able to use Ajax method (over httpxmlrequest) to dynamically load external scripts or xml (also locally stored - ie ./something.xml)?
Thank in advance for any help!
No it can't access any file. Apps are sandboxed on iOS. You can only access the app bundle's content and documents folder (a writable area unique to your app).
Yes - provided said content is in the areas mentioned in (1). This is how Phonegap-based apps work.
Yes - they can. We've done exactly this extensively in several of our apps.
I am maintaining an existing BlackBerry application (implemented as a MIDlet). The application contains a number of data files that get bundled with the app as resources. Some of these data files need to be updated for a new version of the app. When the user goes to install a new version of the application (via URL of Jad file), it prompts them with the following message
"Persistent data exists for the application. Would you like to retain this data? "
If the user selects "Yes", it looks like the app continues to use the old resource files.
This is so surprising to me. First of all, am I losing my mind or will an upgrade really not overwrite existing resource files? Is there any way I can force it to?
Thanks,
Jeff
I think that message is only relevant to existing RMS records. Are you positive that your app is still using old resources? That sounds unbelievably strange (even for RIM). Anyway, this should be easy to verify if you change some image resource you're using in one of your screens or something.