Developing iPhone and iPad Apps that Leverage Windows Azure

You are building apps for the iPhone/iPad, yet you remain curious about what the cloud can offer. Is it possible to deploy scalable, mobile Web applications on Windows Azure? How about storing data in the cloud? Is it possible to use the cloud for push notifications to the device? In this session you’ll learn how to integrate iOS applications into an existing Windows Azure infrastructure, and what types of applications other organizations are building. You’ll walk away confident in knowing how to extend your existing applications to take advantage of features on the device together with services in the cloud.

Click here for video clip

Excluding file from compilation in Xcode

By default, when you create a new file or import a file into Xcode, if the file type is recognized as a source file (.c, .m .js, etc), the file is added to the Compile Sources folder in the application target.
You may not always prefer this default action – for example, if a JavaScript file is imported, Xcode does not know what to do with this file type so a compile warning is generated

Read More

Creating an UIImage with given text and size


static UIImage *createImageWithText(CGSize imageSize, NSString *text) {

// Create a bitmap graphics context of the given size
CGColorSpaceRef colorSpace = CGColorSpaceCreateDeviceRGB();
CGContextRef context = CGBitmapContextCreate(NULL, imageSize.width, imageSize.height, 8, imageSize.width*4, colorSpace, kCGImageAlphaPremultipliedLast);
CGColorSpaceRelease(colorSpace);
if (context== NULL) {
return nil;
}

// Custom CGContext coordinate system is flipped with respect to UIView, so transform, then push
CGContextTranslateCTM(context,0,imageSize.height);
CGContextScaleCTM(context, 1.0, -1.0);
UIGraphicsPushContext(context);

// Inset the text rect then draw the text
CGRect textRect = CGRectMake(4, 2, imageSize.width - 8, imageSize.height - 8);
UIFont *font = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:24];
[[UIColor whiteColor] set];
[text drawInRect:textRect withFont:font
lineBreakMode:UILineBreakModeTailTruncation alignment:UITextAlignmentCenter];

// Create and return the UIImage object
CGImageRef cgImage = CGBitmapContextCreateImage(context);
UIImage *uiImage = [[UIImage alloc] initWithCGImage:cgImage];
UIGraphicsPopContext();
CGContextRelease(context);
CGImageRelease(cgImage);
return uiImage;
}


Note: This is a repost of this

iPhone developement – Beginner’s Tutorials

Part 1:  Kickoff iPhone Development
This presentation tells the environment requirements and basic necessities to start with iPhone App Development.
Slideshare:

Part 2: A Closer Look
This session will give a brief introduction to memory management and a closer look to APIs and components
Slideshare:

Part 3: More than UI
This session deals with the APIs in Foundation framework.
Slideshare:

Horizontal UIPickerView

A situation can arise when you want to have some horizontal UIPickerView in your application.

Something like what in the picture shown below

Following code will draw one like that..

-(void)loadView:{
// Write code to create self.view
// Then...
pickerViewArray = [[NSArray arrayWithObjects:
 @"John Appleseed", @"Chris Armstrong", @"Serena Auroux",
 @"Susan Bean", @"Luis Becerra", @"Kate Bell", @"Alain Briere",
 nil] retain];
 myPickerView = [[UIPickerView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectZero];
 myPickerView.delegate = self;
 myPickerView.showsSelectionIndicator =YES;
 myPickerView.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
 CGAffineTransform rotate = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(3.14/2);
 rotate = CGAffineTransformScale(rotate, 0.25, 2.0);
 [self.myPickerView setTransform:rotate];
 [self.view addSubview:myPickerView];
} 

// UIPickerViewDelegate

- (UIView *)pickerView:(UIPickerView *)pickerView viewForRow:(NSInteger)row forComponent:(NSInteger)component reusingView:(UIView *)view{
	CGRect rect = CGRectMake(0, 0, 120, 80);
	UILabel *label = [[UILabel alloc]initWithFrame:rect];
	CGAffineTransform rotate = CGAffineTransformMakeRotation(3.14/2);
	rotate = CGAffineTransformScale(rotate, 0.25, 2.0);
	[label setTransform:rotate];
	label.text = [pickerViewArray objectAtIndex:row];
	label.font = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:22.0];
	label.textAlignment = UITextAlignmentCenter;
	label.numberOfLines = 2;
	label.lineBreakMode = UILineBreakModeWordWrap;
	label.backgroundColor = [UIColor clearColor];
	label.clipsToBounds = YES;
	return label ;
}

Courtesy: Syed Yusuf

Email syntax validation -iPhone Programming

Understanding that iPhone SDK dont support NSPredicate which is there for MAC Apps SDK i wrote an Utility Method to do a syntax validation of email.

-(BOOL)validateEmail:(NSString*)email

if( (0 != [email rangeOfString:@"@"].length) &&  (0 != [email rangeOfString:@"."].length) )
	{
		NSMutableCharacterSet *invalidCharSet = [[[[NSCharacterSet alphanumericCharacterSet] invertedSet]mutableCopy]autorelease];
		[invalidCharSet removeCharactersInString:@"_-"];

		NSRange range1 = [email rangeOfString:@"@" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch];

		// If username part contains any character other than "."  "_" "-"

		NSString *usernamePart = [email substringToIndex:range1.location];
		NSArray *stringsArray1 = [usernamePart componentsSeparatedByString:@"."];
		for (NSString *string in stringsArray1) {
			NSRange rangeOfInavlidChars=[string rangeOfCharacterFromSet: invalidCharSet];
			if(rangeOfInavlidChars.length !=0 || [string isEqualToString:@""])
				return NO;
		}

		NSString *domainPart = [email substringFromIndex:range1.location+1];
		NSArray *stringsArray2 = [domainPart componentsSeparatedByString:@"."];

		for (NSString *string in stringsArray2) {
			NSRange rangeOfInavlidChars=[string rangeOfCharacterFromSet:invalidCharSet];
			if(rangeOfInavlidChars.length !=0 || [string isEqualToString:@""])
				return NO;
		}

		return YES;
	}
	else // no '@' or '.' present
		return NO;

Our App in ‘Staff Favorite’ List

 

Our App in Staff Favorite List

Today we got a mail from the client that one of the app we created is listed in the “Staff Favorite” List…and appearing in the ‘Home page’ of App Store… its cool…

Moreover all our apps are listed in first page for ‘Valentine Special’ list as well.. Cheers…

UIAccelerometer

I started incorporating the accelerometer events in my app.
My app is quite similar to the SampleDrillDown (one of the example app provided by apple). I am having menus in my app, which are like
Category -> Sub category -> final item page

All the above navigations are through pushing view controllers.

I am trying to add accelerometer delegate methods to select any of the cell in tableview on tilting the device up or down, moreover tilting right will push the view controller and tilting left will pop.

• My concern is about how to set delegate for UIAccelerometer for such an implementation? 
• Also the method like “selectCellAtIndexPath” will simply highlight the cell, so i want to call UITableView’s delegate method  ”didSelectRowAtIndexPath” explicitly. ( to push corresponding viewcontroller)

I don’t think there is much harm in doing so..
But i would like to hear from someone who implemented this in much better way…

Checkout an abstract sample code

Conditional compilation – easy way !!

I achieved this by adding a #define in .pch file for each project.

and do #import based on that definition using #ifdef

This is the pretty cool and easy way  if your are sharing single source code set across multiple target/build/project

Just make use of different .pch file for different builds.

You want to create <n>  number of .pch file for <n> targets. Assign corresponding  .pch file for each target’s info