In a few weeks I'll be releasing my iOS app to a group of beta testers. I'm allowing them to test from a Friday evening until the following Sunday night. I want to disallow any usage after that Sunday. I don't want to use NSDate because testers could change the date on their device and keep playing after the session ended. Any ideas?
The date option is probably good enough as most people won't bother changing the date on their device, it would mess up too many other apps. The only case to worry about there would be someone with a device dedicated to your game.
Another option though: add a network request to your server with some code that says if it's allowed to play or not, then you can just change the flag on your server.
If you don't want to set up a server or worry about network connectivity, you can do two things that make it stronger than using a single NSDate:
Record the NSDate whenever someone opens the app (and when they leave)
The next time they use the app, make sure the current time is higher than the previous open/close time. And make sure it is less than your future date.
This will give a shrinking time window that will be harder and harder to circumvent.
There are dozens of ways to prevent this, some more complicated that others. But the first two that come to my mind are:
Option 1: You can check the date on a server instead of the system time.
Option 2: If you want to avoid the network hassle... If the user opens the app after sunday, write a boolean in userDefaults (e.g. expired). When starting the app check both the date and the expired flag. Even if the user changes the date, the expired flag would be set.
If you do not wish network and server connectivity, use the keychain to store the last open date. The keychain is more secure and harder for people to change than the user defaults, which are a mere plist file in the app's library.
Here is the secure option. You make it know that the BETA version of your app requires internet access. So when application starts, it will send a request to the beta server asking if it's alright to play. By default, your app won't play unless it gets a valid response.
The server create a valid response, the server will send at least two pieces of information. The first piece is a flag indicating that the beta period is valid. And the second is the current date/time. The server will sign the response using it's private key.
The application when it receive the response will verify its a valid by using the server public key. The server public key should be in the application as a resource. After verifying the message is valid and authentic, it compare the date/time that was sent to the device's date/time. If the time differences is less than 10 seconds for example, the application know its a current message. Not a message that has been saved and replay using some sort of HTTP proxy.
First, check out this link for a good way to check your time against an NTP server:
https://github.com/jbenet/ios-ntp
Then, you can get the date by calling [NSDate networkDate];
Now, you should be able to do your restriction in your appDelegate. I have done something similar for restricting running an iPhone app on an iPad:
if ([[NSDate networkDate] compare:startDate] == NSOrderedAscending) {
UIAlertView *alertView = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:#"Beta Not Started" message:#"Beta starts [[STARTDATE]]." delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:#"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil];
[alertView show];
return NO;
} else if ([[NSDate networkDate] compare:endDate] == NSOrderedDescending) {
UIAlertView *alertView = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:#"Beta Ended" message:#"Beta ended [[ENDDATE]]." delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:#"OK" otherButtonTitles:nil];
[alertView show];
return NO;
}
Then, in your UIAlertViewDelegate:
- (void)alertView:(UIAlertView *)alertView clickedButtonAtIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex {
exit(0);
}
Hope this helps!
Is it possible to handle a request timeout with a UIAlert? I would like to inform the user that there has been a time out. I set 0.0 just for testing to see if it would occur. The log does not print out so i do not believe i am handling correcting
request.timeoutInterval=0.0;
and to handle it:
- (void)connection:(NSURLConnection *)connection didFailWithError:(NSError *)error {
if(error.code == NSURLErrorTimedOut){
NSLog(#"Time out");
}
}
I am using NSURLConnectionDelegate and NSURLConnectionDownloadDelegate
Thanks.
You can find a list of all the relevant error codes here. Note that -1009 is kCFURLErrorNotConnectedToInternet. To force a timeout, you need to have the ability to suppress the actual sending of the URL, or find one that just goes into a black hole.
Apple bundles Network Link Conditioner with Xcode (its in the networking tools I believe). There is a great article on this tool on NSHipster.
Another way (I believe) to get a timeout is to immediately after sending a request is to switch to another app, putting yours in the background. Wait 5 minutes, switch back, and look at the log. What you can do is in a demo app continually send out NSURLConnections - that is, once the first returns, send another. so there is always one outstanding. Now switch your app out - switch to another app in the simulator - wait, then return. You should be able to catch the condition this way, you can see the affect of changing the timeoutinterval value.
There was a long thread about timeouts in the private Apple forums for iOS networking - you may be able to find it. In the end, the system enforces a reasonably long minimum (as I recall), and you may be able to make it longer but not shorter. This hidden behavior has for sure baffled many people. The responder to the question was Quinn "The Eskimo", one of Apple's most experienced networking engineers.
I have encountered the following issue: when my app runs on a device and I tap BUY button, which triggers In-App-Purchase mechanism it takes up to ten seconds to show the standard confirmation UIAlertView, the one which says: "Do you want to buy...". I have never seen such a behaviour before. Usually it happens immediately. So first I thought it might be due to poor internet connection or something like this, but the simulator uses the same WiFi network and it works perfectly, the alert view is presented instantly as it should be. So the problem probably lies somewhere else. Did anyone solve this issue already?
This is button click:
- (void)buyItemTapped:(id)sender
{
[[InAppPurchaseManager sharedInstance] buy:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"com.mycompany.myapp.unit%d", [sender tag] + 1]];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:#selector(transactionFailed)
name:TRANSACTION_FAILED_NOTIFICATION
object:nil];
[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self
selector:#selector(productPurchased:)
name:PRODUCT_PURCHASED_NOTIFICATION
object:nil];
}
buy method:
- (void)buy:(NSString *)identifier
{
SKProduct *product = [self.products objectForKey:identifier];
if (product)
[self purchaseProduct:product];
else
{
UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:#"Error"
message:#"Invalid Product Identifier"
delegate:nil
cancelButtonTitle:#"OK"
otherButtonTitles:nil];
[alert show];
}
}
purchaseProduct method:
- (void)purchaseProduct:(SKProduct *)product
{
if ([SKPaymentQueue canMakePayments])
{
SKPayment *payment = [SKPayment paymentWithProduct:product];
[[SKPaymentQueue defaultQueue] addPayment:payment];
}
else
NSLog(#"Cannot make purchase");
}
This should have nothing to do with what an actual user experiences when they try to make the purchase. This is happening because you're running the app in the sandbox environment. In fact, using the simulator makes it even slower.
However, even when an actual user does make the purchase, the phone has to connect to Apple's servers, find the IAP, and then send the IAP data to the device securely. So, as you could imagine, it is normal that there is a little time before a confirmation message is sent back.
I recommend adding a loading screen in the SKPaymentTransactionStatePurchasing method, telling the user that you are in fact fetching the information. This could be as simple as changing the "Purchase" button to say "Purchasing...".
Again, this is 100% normal what you are seeing, but is mostly because you're using the sandbox and/or simulator. Apple has to do a lot of checks, and verify a lot of things before it can send back a confirmation message, so you should expect at least some minor delay (as if you were fetching information from a website).
Are you in the sandbox environment? If so,that is a normal situation.I am in china,it always takes more than 10 second when I test IAP on device.I think it is not your technical issue.Believe yourself.:)
A reason might be, that you are in the sandbox environment, which has occasional hiccups. Or your app could be doing some heavy lifting while performing the purchase, which slows down the device (but runs fast on the more powerful simulator).
I am programming an iPhone app, and I need to force it to exit due to certain user actions. After cleaning up memory the app allocated, what's the appropriate method to call to terminate the application?
On the iPhone there is no concept of quitting an app. The only action that should cause an app to quit is touching the Home button on the phone, and that's not something developers have access to.
According to Apple, your app should not terminate on its own. Since the user did not hit the Home button, any return to the Home screen gives the user the impression that your app crashed. This is confusing, non-standard behavior and should be avoided.
Have you tried exit(0)?
Alternatively, [[NSThread mainThread] exit], although I have not tried that it seems like the more appropriate solution.
exit(0) appears to a user as crashes, so show a confirmation message to user. After confirmation suspend(home button press programmatically) and wait 2 seconds while app is going background with animation then exit behind user's view
-(IBAction)doExit
{
//show confirmation message to user
UIAlertView* alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:#"Confirmation"
message:#"Do you want to exit?"
delegate:self
cancelButtonTitle:#"Cancel"
otherButtonTitles:#"OK", nil];
[alert show];
}
-(void)alertView:(UIAlertView *)alertView clickedButtonAtIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex
{
if (buttonIndex != 0) // 0 == the cancel button
{
//home button press programmatically
UIApplication *app = [UIApplication sharedApplication];
[app performSelector:#selector(suspend)];
//wait 2 seconds while app is going background
[NSThread sleepForTimeInterval:2.0];
//exit app when app is in background
exit(0);
}
}
Check the Q&A here: https://developer.apple.com/library/content/qa/qa1561/_index.html
Q: How do I programmatically quit my iOS application?
There is no API provided for gracefully terminating an iOS application.
In iOS, the user presses the Home button to close applications. Should your application have conditions in which it cannot provide its intended function, the recommended approach is to display an alert for the user that indicates the nature of the problem and possible actions the user could take — turning on WiFi, enabling Location Services, etc. Allow the user to terminate the application at their own discretion.
WARNING: Do not call the exit function. Applications calling exit will appear to the user to have crashed, rather than performing a graceful termination and animating back to the Home screen.
Additionally, data may not be saved, because -applicationWillTerminate: and similar UIApplicationDelegate methods will not be invoked if you call exit.
If during development or testing it is necessary to terminate your application, the abort function, or assert macro is recommended
Its not really a way to quit the program, but a way to force people to quit.
UIAlertView *anAlert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:#"Hit Home Button to Exit" message:#"Tell em why they're quiting" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:nil otherButtonTitles:nil];
[anAlert show];
Go to your info.plist and check the key "Application does not run in background". This time when the user clicks the home button, the application exits completely.
Add UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend property on application-info.plist to true.
After some tests, I can say the following:
using the private interface : [UIApplication sharedApplication] will cause the app looking like it crashed, BUT it will call - (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application before doing so;
using exit(0); will also terminate the application, but it will look "normal" (the springboard's icons appears like expected, with the zoom out effect), BUT it won't call the - (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application delegate method.
My advice:
Manually call the - (void)applicationWillTerminate:(UIApplication *)application on the delegate.
Call exit(0);.
Your ApplicationDelegate gets notified of intentional quitting by the user:
- (void)applicationWillResignActive:(UIApplication *)application {
When I get this notification I just call
exit(0);
Which does all the work. And the best thing is, it is the useres intent to quit, which is why this should not be a problem calling it there.
On my Audio-App it was necessary to quit the app after people were syncing their device while the music was still playing. As soon as the syncing is complete I get a notification. But quitting the app right after that would actually look like a crash.
So instead I set a flag to REALLY quit the app on the next backgrounding action. Which is okay for refreshing the app after a sync.
My App has been rejected recently bc I've used an undocumented method. Literally:
"Unfortunately it cannot be added to the App Store because it is using a private API. Use of non-public APIs, which as outlined in the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement section 3.3.1 is prohibited:
"3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs."
The non-public API that is included in your application is terminateWithSuccess"
Apple say:
"Warning: Do not call the exit function. Applications calling exit will appear to the user to have crashed, rather than performing a graceful termination and animating back to the Home screen."
I think that this is a bad assumption. If the user tap a quit button and a message appears that say something like: "The application will now quit.", it doesn't appear to be crashed. Apple should provide a valid way to quit an application (not exit(0)).
You should not directly call the function exit(0) as it will quit the application immediately and will look like your app is crashed. So better to show users a confirmation alert and let them do this themselves.
Swift 4.2
func askForQuit(_ completion:#escaping (_ canQuit: Bool) -> Void) {
let alert = UIAlertController(title: "Confirmation!", message: "Do you want to quit the application", preferredStyle: .alert)
alert.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "Yes", style: UIAlertAction.Style.default, handler: { (action) in
alert.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
completion(true)
}))
alert.addAction(UIAlertAction(title: "No", style: UIAlertAction.Style.cancel, handler: { (action) in
alert.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
completion(false)
}))
self.present(alert, animated: true, completion: nil)
}
/// Will quit the application with animation
func quit() {
UIApplication.shared.perform(#selector(NSXPCConnection.suspend))
/// Sleep for a while to let the app goes in background
sleep(2)
exit(0)
}
Usage:
self.askForQuit { (canQuit) in
if canQuit {
self.quit()
}
}
This has gotten a good answer but decided to expand a bit:
You can't get your application accepted to AppStore without reading Apple's iOS Human Interface Guidelines well. (they retain the right to reject you for doing anything against them) The section "Don't Quit Programmatically" http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/UserExperience/Conceptual/MobileHIG/UEBestPractices/UEBestPractices.html
is an exact guideline in how you should treat in this case.
If you ever have a problem with Apple platform you can't easily find a solution for, consult HIG. It's possible Apple simply doesn't want you to do it and they usually (I'm not Apple so I can't guarantee always) do say so in their documentation.
Hm, you may 'have to' quit the application if, say, your application requires an internet connection. You could display an alert and then do something like this:
if ([[UIApplication sharedApplication] respondsToSelector:#selector(terminate)]) {
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] performSelector:#selector(terminate)];
} else {
kill(getpid(), SIGINT);
}
We can not quit app using exit(0), abort() functions, as Apple strongly discourage the use of these functions. Though you can use this functions for development or testing purpose.
If during development or testing it is necessary to terminate your
application, the abort function, or assert macro is recommended
Please find this Apple Q&A thread to get more information.
As use of this function create impression like application is crashing. So i got some suggestion like we can display Alert with termination message to aware user about closing the app, due to unavailability of certain functionality.
But iOS Human Interface Guideline for Starting And Stopping App, suggesting that Never use Quit or Close button to terminate Application. Rather then that they are suggesting to display proper message to explain situation.
An iOS app never displays a Close or Quit option. People stop using an
app when they switch to another app, return to the Home screen, or put
their devices in sleep mode.
Never quit an iOS app programmatically. People tend to interpret this
as a crash. If something prevents your app from functioning as
intended, you need to tell users about the situation and explain what
they can do about it.
In addition to the above, good, answer I just wanted to add, think about cleaning up your memory.
After your application exits, the iPhone OS will automatically clean up anything your application left behind, so freeing all memory manually can just increase the amount of time it takes your application to exit.
- (IBAction)logOutButton:(id)sender
{
//show confirmation message to user
CustomAlert* alert = [[CustomAlert alloc] initWithTitle:#"Confirmation" message:#"Do you want to exit?" delegate:self cancelButtonTitle:#"Cancel" otherButtonTitles:#"OK", nil];
alert.style = AlertStyleWhite;
[alert setFontName:#"Helvetica" fontColor:[UIColor blackColor] fontShadowColor:[UIColor clearColor]];
[alert show];
}
- (void)alertView:(UIAlertView *)alertView clickedButtonAtIndex:(NSInteger)buttonIndex
{
if (buttonIndex != 0) // 0 == the cancel button
{
//home button press programmatically
UIApplication *app = [UIApplication sharedApplication];
[app performSelector:#selector(suspend)];
//wait 2 seconds while app is going background
[NSThread sleepForTimeInterval:2.0];
//exit app when app is in background
NSLog(#"exit(0)");
exit(0);
}
}
I used the [[NSMutableArray new] addObject:nil] approach mentioned above to force-quit (crash) the app without making a tell-tale exit(0) function call.
Why? Because my app uses certificate pinning on all network API calls to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. These include the initialization calls my financial app makes on startup.
If certificate authentication fails, all of my initialization calls error out and leave my app in an indeterminate state. Letting the user go home and then back into the app doesn't help, as unless the app has been purged by the OS it's still uninitialized and untrustworthy.
So, in this one case, we deemed it best to pop an alert informing the user that the app is operating in an insecure environment and then, when they hit "Close", force quit the app using the aforementioned method.
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] terminateWithSuccess];
It worked fine and automatically calls
- (void)applicationWillTerminateUIApplication *)application delegate.
to remove compile time warning add this code
#interface UIApplication(MyExtras)
- (void)terminateWithSuccess;
#end
The user should decide when an app exits.
I don't think it is a good user interaction when an app quits. Therefore there is no nice API for it, only the home button has one.
If there is an error: Implement it better or Notify the user.
If there have to be a restart: Implement it better of Notify the user.
It sounds dumb, but it's bad practice to exit the app without letting the user decide and not notifying him. And since there is a home button for the user interaction, Apple states, there should not be 2 things for the same function (exiting an app).
Exit an app other way than the home button is really non-iOS-esque approach.
I did this helper, though, that use no private stuff:
void crash()
{ [[NSMutableArray new] addObject:NSStringFromClass(nil)]; }
But still not meant for production in my case. It is for testing crash reportings, or to fast restart after a Core Data reset. Just made it safe not to be rejected if function left in the production code.
It may be appropriate to exit an app if it is a long lived app that also executes in the background, for example to get location updates (using the location updates background capability for that).
For example, let's say the user logs out of your location based app, and pushes the app to the background using the home button. In this case your app may keep running, but it could make sense to completely exit it. It would be good for the user (releases memory and other resources that don't need to be used), and good for app stability (i.e. making sure the app is periodically restarted when possible is a safety net against memory leaks and other low memory issues).
This could (though probably shouldn't, see below :-) be achieved with something like:
- (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application
{
if (/* logged out */) {
exit(0);
} else {
// normal handling.
}
}
Since the app would then exit out of the background it will not look wrong to the user, and will not resemble a crash, providing the user interface is restored the next time they run the app. In other words, to the user it would not look any different to a system initiated termination of the app when the app is in the background.
Still, it would be preferable to use a more standard approach to let the system know that the app can be terminated. For example in this case, by making sure the GPS is not in use by stopping requesting location updates, including turning off show current location on a map view if present. That way the system will take care of terminating the app a few minutes (i.e. [[UIApplication sharedApplication] backgroundTimeRemaining]) after the app enters the background. This would get all the same benefits without having to use code to terminate the app.
- (void)applicationDidEnterBackground:(UIApplication *)application
{
if (/* logged out */) {
// stop requesting location updates if not already done so
// tidy up as app will soon be terminated (run a background task using beginBackgroundTaskWithExpirationHandler if needed).
} else {
// normal handling.
}
}
And of course, using exit(0) would never be appropriate for the average production app that runs in the foreground, as per other answers that reference http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/qa/qa2008/qa1561.html
Swift 4.2 (or older)
Library called Darvin can be used.
import Darwin
exit(0) // Here you go
NB: This is not recomanded in iOS applications.
Doing this will get you crash log.
In iPadOS 13 you can now close all scene sessions like this:
for session in UIApplication.shared.openSessions {
UIApplication.shared.requestSceneSessionDestruction(session, options: nil, errorHandler: nil)
}
This will call applicationWillTerminate(_ application: UIApplication) on your app delegate and terminate the app in the end.
But beware of two things:
This is certainly not meant to be used for closing all scenes. (see https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/ios/system-capabilities/multiple-windows/)
It compiles and runs fine on iOS 13 on an iPhone, but seems to do nothing.
More info about scenes in iOS/iPadOS 13: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/app_and_environment/scenes