I am creating iOS app where user authenticates through facebook and allows my app to store some data like (name,email,gender,location) . I want to use this data later in my app for specific purpose.
What are the best practices of storing/retrieving this kind of data?
I have read about CoreData and NSCoding. Are those the best
alternatives if there will be huge data in future?
Should i retrieve this data from facebook everytime user accesses
the app instead of storing in my app?
I think CoreData is the best way to go.
developer.apple.com/CoreData
Related
I'm new to Swift & Firebase and I haven't really figured it out yet. Currently I'm thinking about adding a Database to store data for the user to fetch in case he switches device.
So far I've stored data with UserDefaults. Now that I'll probably be using a Database, do I still need UserDefaults? What if the user is not able to get internet connection and closes the app, before he gets to synchronize his data going online - will there be a danger of data loss?
Or is it best to keep both - UserDefaults and the Database?
A UserDefaults from Apple documentation:
An interface to the user’s defaults database, where you store key-value pairs persistently across launches of your app. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/userdefaults
UserDefaults is a great solution for keeping unique values between app sessions. For example user settings, preferences (Simple, dummy data).
To share data between 2 devices you can use Firebase Storage. Another option is a CloudKit.
Synchronisation - this is more about what you need and how you would like to handle it. You can base on online data, so there would not be need to synchronise (you are always up to date). Or make periodically synchronisation, but you would need to think about best solution for local database.
It depends on what you are doing. Using user defaults is certainly fine for holding defaults but not information. What if 2 people use the same device, then you have user defaults for one user and a database for the other. I personally would use just one. If you are learning Firebase I would suggest 2 tutorials:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F42CzqIBxHQ&t=406s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMudKhNY0sI&t=627s
and the question I just had answered about reading and writing to a secure database: User already authenticated in app and Firebase realtime database returns failed: permission_denied
When the app has access to the devices contacts, and you need those contacts to populate a PickerView, does it pull the contacts to a Firebase DB and fetch those contacts to populate the PickerView? Or does it do it within the phone(maybe Core Data)?
Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
If does and I can use Core Data, can I use it hand in hand with Firebase, or does it even store it somewhere? I'd like my users to be able to select which contacts they want to add to the app.
Thank you in advance.
I think it would be best to pull from the device's Contacts, using the Contacts Framework - in Xcode this is the Contacts.framework package. The Apple site offers some sample code that you might be able to take advantage of in your application. For that you'd need permission from the user by enabling a NSContactsUsageDescription in your info.plist. That describes to the user why you'd need access to their contacts.
As far as storing the data in a Database, I'm not sure that would be a wise decision nor one that makes sense. Consider the reasoning behind that, does this information need to be on some remote database? if your answer is no, then chances are that you don't need to do that extra work. You might however register new users that use your application with something like Google's Firebase if you want to manage any messages between users (for a chat app for example).
Hopefully that answers your question and helps you out in some way.
I am creating a fairly simple game in Swift and I am unsure of which data persistence method would be best suited for the project. This is my first "real" project so please excuse my ignorance.
I have to be able to store the following data for users:
- On/Off states for game sound
- The users' high-score
- A game currency unit that users may purchase In-App
- An indicator of whether Ads are enabled or disabled in the game
Also the user has to be able to restore all data from iCloud (I know that's a whole separate issue). Can I accomplish this with just NSUserDefaults/plists or is this more up the alley of Core Data?
NSUserDefaults is great for storing very small amounts of data. In your case this may be a good choice.
There is NSUserDefaults. Yes you can save those small settings.
There is also iOS keychain to store the sensitive data like amount of currency but I don't think it is that important to keep it in the keychain.
If you are interested in the keychain check out this repository.
Locksmith
Finally if you try to save the settings in the iCloud you can use the iCloud key value storage.
iCloud Preference storage
New to Parse backend and coding all together...
Developing my first iOS app and I'm contemplating how I should store the data in Parse.
So I want to get advice from you lovely, experienced developers. What's the best way to structure my Parse class(es) if I want to store comments, follow requests, favorites, etc. That would make it simple when querying in an Alert tab within my app.
You probably don't want to store all the alerts on parse but rather send one alert via a notification and it's payload and store it locally.
I an building my first iOS application and I need to store the user registration details of the user using the application. The details include his mobile number and a unique id( uuid ) which I use to contact with the backend. It would be great if I could get a suggestion on where to store this user details.
Should I be storing this in the NSUserDefaults or should I be using Keychains to store this data or even may be a using a user model in the database ( I would need a database in any case to store a few other details ). Just to add on, I also would like to perform a few validations like if the mobile number is of proper format and so on before I could actually save it. Also can any one please suggest on the security aspects of different storage mechanisms possible here?
Any help on this would be much appreciated.
The most secure way would be to use keychain services as the data is encrypted but in your scenario it seems a bit over kill. I would recommend either just using NSUserDefaults or an sqlite database I wouldn't really recommend storing in a plist as this can be accessed really easily.
But this all depends on the data you are getting, if it was just uuid and mobile number then NSUserDefaults would do probably, whereas if you were getting usernames and passwords and other personal data I would looking a mix of keychain and sqlite database.
Also you could use coredata file to store user data but seems a bit over kill as well for for such little data.
Just a little note you are actually not allowed to get the iPhones mobile phone number programmatically, getting this would use Private APIs that Apple would reject your app for using.
2.5 Apps that use non-public APIs will be rejected
So you would have to ask he user for this.
Database selection is totally depend on the architecture and security, if you just need to store the few information like login details and some field then Keychain for login details and plist for data is best option, but if your application also working with services and fetching and saving lots of data and continuously updating it then a serious database structure required. In that scenario core data and sqlite both are good option depends on your preference
Following ways you can save details.
In NSUserDefaults
In coredata file.
In sqlite database
Plist file.(Not recommended)
You can save data at server site using webservice.
Any one of these you can use according to your requirement and data.
Cheers :)
If you store information on the UserDefaults, a jailbroken device can see the information you have stored, it is a plist after all. If you are going to keep sensitive data on your device, user defaults itself is not a good option. Possible alternatives:
Use keychain: Keychain is a tool to keep usernames & passwords securely on a device; so you may need to find a way to convert all the info you have mentioned ( a dict, I presume? ) into NSData and put into/get from the keychain but it's been explained on other threads. Additionally, keep in mind that when the app is deleted, keychain data will persist on the device.
UserDefaults & encrpytion: If you can encrypt the data yourself, than using UserDefaults might be a better option. Its more straightforward than keychain and it will be deleted if you delete the app from the device (which may be the thing you want, or not. It depends)