I am building an app where I am fetching some data (e.g. persons, documents ...) from a server. I am building the app for iOS and Android. On Android i got it pretty decent looking ;), but on iOS I am not really sure how to properly design it(because I don't want to get it rejected by Apple). All of the apps, which I saw, that are fetching some data from a server just need one paameter and they are good to go. In my case I have a lot of parameters which can be used (for a person there is the name, email, postal address, phone, person type ...) and in the end you get a list (so I need a table view). Now I am not sure how to present that to the user. So far I have built a slide menu on the left (there is a navigation button which opens and closes it) and there I have placed all of the additional search parameters.
The main search criteria would be by name and I thought to use it with the search bar and the search display controller(so you dont have to open the slider for a search over the names). The problem is that I am also using sliding cells (e.g. to call, send sms, send email to persons), and when searching with the search controller I always get a blank table (it seems that the search contoller can't handle custom cells). Then I switched to using the search bar (without the controller), but there is the problem that I am mssing the scope bar und the whole animation thing (I assume that I will have to create all of it manually)
Has anyone built some app like that ? What are the best practices for doing so (I am comming from the android world, so I am not sure what the average iOS user expects) ? For reloading the table I use just the pull-down mechanism ? Is that enough or do i need some additional bar buttons ?
It would be great if someone has a working example (in the appstore would also be fine), or a link to some explanation on this matter.
Kind regards
Related
I'm using Slack's modals + their new BlockKit interactive actions. I have a modal dialog with several section's that include select menu accessories. When one of those accessories changes (ex: user preference goes from Yes -> No), I want to update the modal's view to reflect the change in some contextual text.
The docs outline two ways to update a model. Because I'm not using the traditional modal inputs, I have to update the modal via the API and not via response_action. Proof: I don't even receive a view_submission payload at all... I receive a blockkit_action payload.
The docs conflict a bit. In the above link they say that to update a view you must pass in the returned ID of the view when it was opened:
Remember the view.id that was included in the success response when
you used views.open earlier? We hope you kept it, because you can now
use it to update that view.
But when you look at the docs for the views.open and views.update, it appears there is a second option: external_id. The views.update docs say this:
A unique identifier of the view set by the developer. Must be unique
for all views on a team. Max length of 255 characters. Either view_id
or external_id is required.
Initially I got everything working really nicely by choosing an external ID of myapp-mymodal-[userID]. But as soon as I tried opening the modal simultaneously on my Desktop + Mobile client, I started getting internal_error responses and have been unable to open the modal since!
So I started looking into saving the view ID, per the first quote. My problem is: that ID changes every time the modal opens. I don't understand how I am expected to possibly keep track of the 0-2 "active" view IDs that might be taking place across a user's Desktop + Mobile clients (or more than 2 if they have an iPad, a second laptop, etc).
I tried to look for some sort of unique client ID that I could either use to include in the external_id or in my view_id persistence logic, but given that Slack's API appears to be sesssion-less I couldn't find any such thing.
How do others solve this problem?
Try using the private_metadata field in the View
I initially did the same thing you did, which worked, but I wanted to avoid that edge case if possible. What I figured out, is that I could pass the external_id that I created when opening the view into the view's metadata, and then retrieve it when I receive an interaction.
When I set the external_id I set it to the userID + the current time (so it's always unique, even if the user opens the modal from different devices)
externalID := UserID + time.Now().String()
and pass that both as the external_id for the view, and as a string into the private_metadata.
PrivateMetadata string `json:"private_metadata"`
When the user interacts with one of my blocks and Slack sends me the interactive message, I retrieve the metadata like this:
Request.Payload.View.PrivateMetadata
I wrote my Slack app in Go, but I tried to make it clear for any language. Let me know if anything is unclear or needs expanding on - this is my first time giving back to the Stackoverflow community.
TL;DR: I want to add images to the app over the internet through background downloading of some sort, but don't know where to start, or what the best method is.
My app displays images to the users which can be filtered etc. I have a "Cards" class that has fields for name, image, etc. I then have a huge area directly in my code where I create instances of the Cards class for each image. There is then an array of these class instances, which helps with displaying them.
My issue is that now I want to be able to update this block of class instances without having to push another build to the iTunes store. Essentially, I want to add "Cards" to the app (images with appropriate names and keywords associated with them). I need to be able to update the app every month (sometimes less) with new cards as quickly as possible.
I have heard suggestions here and there about JSON files and background downloading, but can't figure out which method I need for my situation.
As per my understanding you just want to update your app content in future without uploading a new build to App Store. Right ?
If you want to do so, make your app so flexible that you can show updated contents in your app.
Here is a short instruction which you can follow...
Develop an admin panel if you are aware of any backend scripting language like php. And you can add contents from this panel into your database.
Create an API which will fetch the content from your database
Make your app flexible so that it can show all the updated content getting from the API. If you have a list of content then you can use TableView/CollectionView with pagination.
If you still face any problem then let me know. I will see deep into your problem.
I've built a Rails app, basically a CRUD app for memos/notes.
A notes title must be unique. If a user enters a name already taken a warning message is shown prompting them to chose another.
My question is how to make this latency for this feedback as close to zero as possible. When creating a note little UX speed bumps like this will get annoying for user quickly.
Of course the main bottleneck is the network. Inspired by Meteor (and mini-mongo) I was thinking some kind of local storage could be a solution?
I.E. When app first loads, send ALL JSON to the client with ALL note titles. The app (front end is Angular JS) could check LocalStorage (or App Cache, Web SQL?) instead of incurring a network round trip. The feedback would be instant.
I've used LocalStorage in the past to augment an app, but in the scenario it'd really seriously depend on it. I'm not sure how confident I'd be building on something that user might not have. Also as the number of user Notes/Memos I have doubts how feasible it is to send a JSON object down the wire with ALL the note titles. That might get pretty big. On the other hand MeteorJS seems to do this with no probs.
Has anyone done something similar or have any pointers? Thanks!
I don't know how Meteor works here, but you're right that storing all note titles in localStorage is not a good idea. Actually, you don't need localStorage here, you can just put it in a JS array, because you need this data only once (when checking new note title).
I think, there could be 2 possible solutions:
You can change your business requirements and allow non-unique title. Is there really a necessity for titles to be unique?
You can verify note title when user submits form. In this case you can provide suggestions for users, so they not spend time guessing vacant title.
Or, if titles must be unique only within a user (two users can have same title for their notes), you can really load all note titles in JS array and check uniqueness while users types in a title.
Or you can send an AJAX request checking title uniqueness as soon as user finished typing the title. In this case you can win some seconds.
Or you can send an AJAX request as soon as user typed in 3 symbols. The request will return all titles that begin with these 3 symbols, so you don't need to load all the titles.
I'm pretty new to objective-c, so i came up with this..I've found other similar questions, like mine, but there were all different at some point..
So, i have a tableview which contains cells, and the cells are containing data (NSManagedObjectModels). I have this app on 1 device, and I'd like to share these cells, i mean data, with other people, who are using the exact same app (i'd like to use only wifi or network connection).
Just like in Reminders (in iOS pre-installed app) when i create a new list, i have the option to share it with someone else(s), and the person who i've shared with, can see the list i created-immediately.
Is there a simple, or any way to accomplish that?
The simplest way would be to send a push notification to all users with a URL linking to data you want to share.
But even that means that you'll have to have a server store away details of push tokens (so you can push to each device) and then provide some way for users to group different devices...
I would look the sessions on CloudKit and see if from that you can see a way to do what you want, otherwise look at libraries that provide easy server integration to make passing data up to the server easier.
I'm working on a home automation project. Here's what I want to do:
The app starts and it'll have a button to load an XML file.
The XML will have information about the rooms in the house like "Living Room, Dining Room, Kitchen etc.". It'll also have information about the equipment, like "Home Theater, TV, Blu-Ray Player, etc. in this case with a relation with the room that they belong" and so on with IR, RS-232 cmds, etc.
I'll install this app in different houses, so I intend just to change the XML file as the house changes.
I intend to generate the UI from the information contained in the XML file. E.g. The house has only "Living Room and Dining Room". The tab bar will show only those two tabs.
So, my questions:
Will Apple reject my app?
Can my customers just download the app from the App Store, and change and load the XML file? I mean, there's a package in the .app file, is it possible to open it and change the .xml file inside it?
Is it possible to change the UI as the XML information changes?
EDIT: more questions:
#competent_tech is saying that dynamic generation of code isn't allowed, but I'll change the code within the .storyboard or .xib .nib files, isn't it?
About the Contacts: I think is a little bit different idea, because in the contacts app, e.g.: there are 10 fields to fill out, like first name, last name, e-mail, phone number, etc. As a user, if I don't fill out the e-mail field, it'll still be there anyway. My plan is kind of different:
The house has 2 equipments to control: - Tab bar with item 1 and item 2.
The house has 3 equipments to control: - Tab bar with item 1 and item 2 and item 3.
Do you still think this is possible?
Can you recommend a book about this? I couldn't find anything useful myself.
Unfortunately, only apple can answer the rejection question.
However, from what you have described, there shouldn't be an issue since this is configuration-based changes instead of code changes. Apple specifically prohibits download of code and dynamic generation of code.
You can liken it to Contacts: iOS doesn't come configured with contacts, they allow you add them and configure different things about them. This sounds very much like what you are doing.
You should be able to download an XML file from a website or web service and use that to configure the app. We use a web service to retrieve data into the local Sqlite database to configure nomenclature and UI component visibility based on the current user and it works quite nicely.
With generating code they mean executable code, not the generating of views or viewcontrollers. If that is forbidden too, you could distribute your app via addhoc, but you need one developer program per 99 clients.