[3/16/15, 7:38:28 PM] Isaac Wasserman: I want to make an app that uses similar mechanics to Madden mobile. I want to look at the code using Xcode, but it doesn’t seem like I can read it if it’s not a project. It contains .viv files.
You can't get the code from the app, the app is a compiled binary. On top of that it is encrypted so even getting the binary is difficult.
Even if you could that would be stealing unless you had explicit permission.
If you have connections with the developer they might give you the source, but that's about it. You can always take notes on what the app does that you want to replicate and then come up with your own solution to accomplish it.
Related
My goal is to build a swift iOS framework which uses two other frameworks (included as separate projects) and which shouldn't reveal the source code after built.
Is there some text/guide/documentation which would explain and navigate me through the process of building such a framework properly and correctly?
I built framework with aggregate target adding and linking frameworks on which my custom framework is dependent using run script as indicated here. I was able to add built of my custom framework to my custom app, together with other two dependencies (again as a separate projects), and run it on the device. However, I am not convinced by the correctness of my custom framework built.
Moreover, I was not able to upload the archive to the Appstore due to the various errors of "Unsupported architectures...", "CFBundleIdentifier Collision...", "Invalid Bundle...", "Invalid Binary" and so on. After sorting these errors out according to the various stackoverflow answers and installing the app from the TestFlight, the app crashed after launch and wasn't working at all.
I was checking various blog posts, stackoverflow questions/answers and Apple Framework Programming Guide but nothing gave me comprehensive understanding on building custom framework under conditions described above.
Everything I did was just following step-by-step tutorials without explanation of the purpose of the steps. I am sure I am missing the basics. Could you please help me and give me some guides?
I can understand you frustration. I, a while ago too searched probably for many documents on how to write a framework correctly but like you I also didn't find anything really that satisfying. From my own experiences I can give a couple of advices.
NO External Libraries
In my opinion DO NOT use external libraries in your own framework. I don't really know what your frameworks purpose is but most of the stuff you want to do can be done without using external libraries. Depending on other libraries is not a good idea especially if its a framework you are working on. Anytime these libraries get updated or even worse if they don't you will have to wait for them to be updated or find another library.So rather than this happening later on I think its better if you do it from the start. So loose the external libraries.
Universal Framework Binary
Second one is pretty easy. Generating a universal framework. I suggest you don't use a script. Most of the scripts I found were either outdated or they didn't work at all. Later on I found out that actually it was pretty easy to generate one on your own. You can do this by building your project once for a real device and one for the simulator.Then you can generate a universal binary by using the command lipo -create "Your simulator executable path" "your iOS device executable path" -output "your framework name". What this does is that it combines your two executable files and generates a universal one. Then you can just go and copy your simulator documents from the modules file and paste them in you iphoneos modules file. I am going to share a link were you can go through the walkthrough yourself. https://medium.com/wireless-registry-engineering/create-a-universal-fat-swift-framework-b7409bbfa18f
Use Objective-C(If you can)
This one is bit of a tricky one unless you know objective-c. What I would recommend is that you implement your framework using Objective-C and writing a swift wrapper around it. I would not have said this if you were creating an iOS app but in case of a framework I still think you should go for objective-c. This is because Objective-c has been around for over 30 years and most of the very old apps are in objective-c. If you want your framework to easily be used by older apps coded in objective-c I recommend you go with it. I have read tons of posts on how people have problems trying to use frameworks written in swift in their objective-c apps. Swift will be the first and probably only choice in the near future but not just yet. On the plus side if you still haven't you will have learnt Objective-C which will give definitely give you a better understanding on how things work. It will be challenging but I promise you it will be worth your while .I have a good read on this which you can checkout yourself. https://academy.realm.io/posts/altconf-conrad-kramer-writing-iOS-sdk/
Naming Conventions
This is a pretty straight forward one. I suggest you stick to apples naming conventions. This is because you will be sharing your code this time and people will look for familiarity when trying to integrate your framework. This will make your code easier to understand. You can check out these two links for more info.https://github.com/raywenderlich/objective-c-style-guide (obj-c) https://github.com/raywenderlich/swift-style-guide (swift)
Access Control
This in my opinion is an important one. When working on you framework think before you implement a class or a function. Consider if you would like someone else to be able to use that part of your code. You may want to limit the user while they use your framework and correct access control is the way to do it. You can easily guide the users so the users do exactly what you want them to do with your framework.
Document Your Code
This is a must if you want your framework be a professional one. You should be documenting every function and variable the user will use. Documenting and explaining what your code does makes a lot of peoples lives easy. You don't one anyone trying to understand what your code does for half an hour while you could have easily written a small explanation for what the parameters do and one that function or variable should be used for.
Test Your Code
Last but not least do write tests for your code. This does take some time but it assures you that your code works the way it should.
Look at other good frameworks
You should definitely checkout other open source libraries and look at what they have done. Usually there is no point in reinventing the wheel unless you are doing something absolutely different but even then there are very familiar ways to do things. I can suggest you check out the mantle sdk(https://github.com/Mantle/Mantle). Another one is the very popular Alamofire sdk(https://github.com/Alamofire/Alamofire) and also the Realm sdk(https://github.com/realm/realm-cocoa). These are good examples of frameworks. Take a look at them. Look how they have done things. It will give you an insight on how your framework should look like.
I know all of these points may also be valid if you were writing an app but what makes these a must is the fact that you will be sharing your code with others. You may manage by not doing some of these while implementing an app but for a framework things do change a little bit. It is always a pleasure to work with easy to use frameworks which make coding a pleasure. These types of small things will make your framework preferable. Happy coding.
How easy is it to open up an app submitted to Apple's store?
I'm going to submit a new app to the store soon, and want to protect the app file from being opened up to the source-code. So for instance, if I were to download my own app, how easy would it be to pull out all the .h and .m files and recreate it in Xcode?
Does Apple encrypt it somehow?
What steps can I take to mitigate the code being viewed?
EDIT: Allow me to rephrase the question a little better - can I take decompiled code and make it human-readable?
An IPA is just a zip. But you don't even need to access the IPA.
Just get iExplorer and access all available assets of your installed apps from your Mac.
The m files however build a compiled binary and can not be read (if you consider de-compiled code as not readable, as I do)
Adding on the answer, it is possible to decompile the binary, but the only thing that would be directly removable from the binary itself would be the headers (or to my knowledge of what I've seen). Then the application would be reverse engineered from there. That would probably be the only thing I'd be worried about when it comes to people stealing my code.
I'm working on research that requires me to be able to load an iOS app from a custom piece of code running on the device. I more or less want to modify the current sandbox and then run an existing application in it. I would rather not modify the application, although I realize at some point I'll at least have to re-sign it.
Mocana can apparently do this with their "MAP" technique, but I've not seen any papers or presentations explaining the technical details of how this is accomplished.
I was attempting to dlopen an application's executable and then dlsym on it's main. That moderately works, but requires a debug version of the application. Trying to use an archived version is problematic since the symbol table is separate. Not sure if there is a way to merge the symbol table with the executable. Tried unsuccessfully with lipo, but no real luck (says the architectures are the same and won't merge).
Any direction or good publications would be appreciated.
I was looking into making a custom toggle switch option in the iOS settings.app menu to turn a home cooked function on and off. I was wondering if it's possible to do such a thing. If so, how?
Yes, this is possible, but it works a little differently for jailbreak apps, installed in /Applications, than it does for normal App Store apps.
Take a look at this documentation here. I haven't used it in a while, so if there are things that are out of date, post a comment here, and I'll try to update my answer with code, etc., from one of my working jailbreak apps that does this.
Note that if you want the Settings switch to execute your custom code, rather than just storing a preference value, you'll need to use the PreferenceBundle Approach described in the link above.
You'll also need to make sure the phone has PreferenceLoader, by Dustin Howett, installed on it, for this to work. If you're distributing your app to users (via Cydia, or something like that), you can make sure that PreferenceLoader is automatically installed along with your app. To do this, add this line to your app's DEBIAN/control file:
Depends: preferenceloader
PreferenceLoader is free, has been around for a while, and seems pretty stable, so it's not a bad dependency to have at all. Most jailbreak users will likely already have it.
I've developed and application for iPhone. It works fine on os4 but it does not work on os3.1. In fact works but there are some problems; after splash screen a what screen appears. while I leaving the application I can see the application is opened successfully but just see while exiting.
So I wonder if there is a tool which says which apis have problems with os3.1? So I have a chance to replace them.
If you want to check a specific API, just run this in your code somewhere with an appropriate response. For example, to see if print is supported, run this...
if (NSClassFromString(#"UIPrintInfo")) {
}
Set your project's Base SDK to iphone-os-3-1, then build. All the error messages about classes, methods, and functions that don't exist must designate things added since iphone-os-3-1, since your project built and linked fine against the iphone-os-4-0 SDK.
If you don't have the iphone-os-3-1 SDK, try this instead:
Open your project's Build Settings.
Find the "Preprocessor Macros" setting.
Edit it and add __IPHONE_OS_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED=30100
Now, try building. This should cause everything introduced after iOS 3.1 to be labeled unavailable, producing the same errors as if you had switched to the iphone-os-3-1 SDK.
It's a good idea to get a second installation of Xcode for this situation, in this case you need 3.2.1 with SDK 3.1.3 - I wish I could help you with a download link since it is no longer shown on Apple's page, but I have googled in the past and found direct, official download links which will work as long as you are signed in with your developer account, so good luck.
The annoying bit is that you need to go through your project files and set "Base SDK" to 3.1.3 and then back once you have completed the exercise. But it is the easiest way to flag what you can't do in 3.1.3. "sudo rm -rf" (I feel nervous even typing that) has an excellent method there but you need to have an inkling of what might be safe and what might not before you implement it or else you end up with code 10x the size it needs to be.
Apple really needs to sort out this issue - hopefully by flagging methods that are prior to your specified "Deployment Target", in the same way that deprecated methods are flagged.