I have been searching all around about how to integrate driving directions into MKMapView within my application. Is the only way to open the Apple Maps program and go from there, or is their a way of integrating within your own app. If not, I will probably go with google maps as soon as I can get an API key.
If you mean getting the same views for driving direction (a.k.a. turn-by-turn navigation) as the Apple Maps application, then no... as far as I know, there is no library for that (if not 3rd party).
However, as you mentioned, you can open apple maps or google maps giving the directions to the application and initiate such a function.
Also, good to know: If there would be such a build-in functionality in iOS6 (which, again I don't believe there is) its good to know it doesn't exist in pre-iOS6. Meaning it won't work on earlier devices. (hence you need to build a fall-back solution if you want to support those devices as well).
More information on iOS turn-by-turn: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#releasenotes/General/WhatsNewIniPhoneOS/Articles/iOS6.html
Quote from that page (which makes me believe turn-by-turn is not supported in the API's):
... Apps that offer routing information, such as turn-by-turn navigation services, can now register as a routing app and make those services available to the entire system.
The documentation search page doesn't give much more info either: http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/search/?q=turn-by-turn
For more information on how to open the maps app, check the answer here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/12789896/406677
So bottom line, you need to either create your own turn-by-turn navigation... or link to an existing application giving such support.
I hope that answered your question.
Related
I'm writing up an app for connecting people to videoconferencing options, and I want the ability to directly launch installed apps (on an iPhone/iPad) from the app.
The way to do this, is to register an app's scheme in the plist, then use that scheme in a URI.
I do that already with Google Maps and Zoom. Here's the Zoom page on that (the scheme is "zoomus").
I am trying to find the same scheme for the BlueJeans app, and I'm having a devil of a time, doing that. I don't want to embed their API. I want to call an installed app.
I may be able to figure it out by looking at their API (depending on how opaque it is), but I wanted to ask here, first, in case I missed something. I did root through their documentation site, and didn't have much luck. It's a fairly balkanized site.
So far, I see only that they support installing their API, which ain't happening.
I will also be looking for the answer elsewhere, and I have opened a support case with them.
OK. I found it.
Completely by trial and error (BlueJeans never responded to me).
It's "bjn".
i am in the process of making my app with firebase i am pretty much done with that except Firebase App Indexing. I am very exited with this feature because it could help me to increase my app get more traffic from the web but the problem is i really can't able to see how to implement this. According to Firebase Docs i just need to register my app with this pice of code
[[FIRAppIndexing sharedInstance] registerApp:your Apple ID from iTunes Connect];
I have done that but what should i do after that?
1.My app is firebase app that means i don't have any website to host my content except firebase realtime database. Does my content is available for crawlers? if not how can i make available to them?
2.If i can able to show my content in the google search results i don't wanna show all the content and i wanna show just some of my content for example i have a social app for sharing General Knowledge questions, i wanna show just the question like "What is the highest mountain" in the search results and if the user want to see the answer it should take them to my app how can i do that?
3.As per docs i came to know that i need to create univiersal links for my app content to direct users from google search but how shold i do that ? Lets say should i crate universal links when the user create question?? if so how can i do that ??
Thank you very much for the help.
This is not currently possible on iOS using Firebase App Indexing. The situation is slightly different on Android, but that is not applicable to your question.
On iOS, Firebase App Indexing is simply highlighting pages on your website in Google search results that have corresponding content inside your app. This is achieved by piggybacking on Apple's Universal Links standard, and there is no proactive 'crawling' going on inside your app. This means unless you have a corresponding web page for your app with 1:1 content parity, you can't really benefit from Firebase App Indexing on iOS as it comes out-of-the-box.
The best workaround is to generate little 'placeholder pages' for every piece of content in your app, which the sole purpose of opening your app (if it is installed) or redirecting to the App Store (if it is not installed). Ideally you'll need some sort of deferred deep linking system so that users still see the correct content after downloading. Fun fact: this is essentially how HotelTonight operates their entire business model. Unfortunately Firebase's implementation is not mature enough to support this full flow, and Google hasn't quite figured out how to rank app-only content properly yet in search results so you will probably need to pro-actively submit your placeholder pages to them.
Shameless plug: at Branch, we provide all of the above as a free service. You can read more about it here and take a look at the set up docs here.
I have a tab controller that will show nearby stores. I know that 40% of my users have never (or can't though policy) install Google Maps.
How can I fall back to Apple maps if Google Maps isn't installed?
To make things just a little more complex, the "nearby stores" is a tab in a tabbed application.
Well, for starters, the only way you're displaying a Google Map inside your app is by including Google's library -- thereby making moot the question of "is Google Maps installed here".
If you are speaking in terms of opening the Google Maps app if it exists and falling back to the Apple Maps app, you'd use UIApplication's -canOpenURL: method, passing in the scheme for Google's Maps app, which is comgooglemaps://.
Good luck!
Is is possible to dynamically figure out the position of an app's icon on the home screen of an iphone/ipad?
Sorry I don't have enough credit to comment yet so I'm posting here.
To my knowledge no you cannot natively or easily do this. I know of no open source or other libraries. The reason being that your app exists in its own world, it is not in touch per say with the rest of the device. It can get permissions to read and write data but it doesn't know of itself.
Does that make sense?
When you open a website it cannot know which tab it is in the browser. Instead it knows how it was accessed and what device (physically) is using it. It knows the user-agent, the time, the browser, etc because that is information sent to it in the request. In turn the phone on launch gives data to the app in how to handle it but not for example how many other apps are running, or where it is on the screen. It's not normally considered relevant to run time. In addition it's a security feature in preventing an app from deleting or altering other apps, as well as itself. If you have an iPhone you will notice that SIRI cannot turn off google maps navigation or any other non-apple specific app. Only apps natively comparable and private party ones (ex apples) are accessible because Apple did that intentionally. They all know of their own existence and each others. However non-native in the sense of apps that do not come preinstalled and manufactured by the company creating the device are less trustworthy, in addition there are no guarantees about how they will be run by the device, where they will be, or what other apps will be there.
It is true that an app can request for another app it may be comparable with but it is up the user to handle that information.
May I ask for curiosities sake why you are trying to do this? Are there any other workarounds?
However in terms of it being physically possible, yes. I doubt that apple allows independent developers to do this however. But an example of this occurring may be gridlock where a user can move their apps around differently on the screen. The app in this case has the ability to access app position. But I believe in this case app position is about the UI and not about nested files. apps cannot to my knowledge modify information outside of their own file. Imagine if you had an app that could edit other games scores.
It is not possible to dynamically find out the position of an app's icon on the Home Screen (even for jailbreak apps). Apple wants you to respect the user's privacy settings.
Extra Info - There is popular JavaScript library that adds a promo bubble to the bottom of your mobile web application, inviting users to bookmark the app to their device's home screen.
I've been looking for a good iOS Facebook API/SDK Wrapper, can't find any.
I need to be able to (with a few lines of code, not the insanely needed by Facebook's API):
Login user
Logout user
Get user's likes
Invite Friend to app
Maybe post to user's wall (this has been causing problems to other apps so not sure will actually implement)
Get user's friends
Get user's basic info (e-mail, name, etc.)
Is there any wrapper simplifying the absurd vanilla API?
https://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/apis/
This should help and it is Facebook's official api.
Here's the documentation: https://developers.facebook.com/docs/ios/
You might be able to use portions of ShareKit for this (be sure to abide by their license): https://github.com/ShareKit/ShareKit/tree/master/Classes/ShareKit/Sharers/Services/Facebook
This doesn't do everything you asked, but it's a (clean) starting point at least: https://github.com/mobitar/Zuckerkit
This does a bit more, but hasn't been updated in a year: https://github.com/sinnerschrader-mobile/S2M-Facebook-iOS
I found this lib: https://github.com/lucascorrea/SCFacebook
It seems to use a not that outdated version of the iOS SDK (3.18 vs. current 3.21), is available on cocoapods and seems to cover many of your required API features.
I haven't used the lib my self, but i am considering it next time i have to develop an iOS App which needs to connect to facebook.