mobile device programming

Shake Animation Example

2012-01-31T17:28:00.000-08:00

This example let you shake or animation your view on some event described.

Algorithm:

1.) Create a new project by File-> New -> Android Project name it ShakeAnimationExample.

2.) You will see some default code into your main.xml, strings.xml and android manifest file.

3.) Write following into main.xml file:

Email Intent Demo

2012-01-31T17:27:00.000-08:00

This example will show you how to open email composer through your application.
Algorithm:
1.) Create a new project by File-> New -> Android Project name it EmailIntentDemo.
2.) You will see some default code into your main.xml, strings.xml and android manifest file.
3.) Now add 1 buttons into your main.xml or write following into main.xml file:

 xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"
    android:orientation="vertical"
    android:layout_width="fill_parent"
    android:layout_height="fill_parent" >
         android:text="Share" android:id="@+id/button1"
                android:layout_width="wrap_content" android:layout_height="wrap_content">>
>

4.) Your launcher activity EmailIntentDemo will have one default functions OnCreate().
5.) You must have to configure any email onto your device or simulator to get the output on this demo.
6.) To configure email goto applications and select “Email”, now follow the instructions given and configure your email onto device or simulator.
Steps:
1.) Create a project named EmailIntentDemo and set the information as stated in the image.
Build Target: Android 1.6
Application Name: EmailIntentDemo
Package Name: com.example. EmailIntentDemo
Activity Name: EmailIntentDemo
Min SDK Version: 4

2.) Open EmailIntentDemo.java file and write following code there:

package com.example.EmailIntentDemo; import java.util.List;
import android.app.Activity;
import android.content.Intent;
import android.content.pm.PackageManager;
import android.content.pm.ResolveInfo;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.View;
import android.view.View.OnClickListener;
import android.widget.Button;
public class EmailIntentDemo extends Activity {
    @Override
    public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) {
        super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
        setContentView(R.layout.main);
        Button shareButton = (Button) findViewById(R.id.button1);
        shareButton.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() {
                @Override
                public void onClick(View arg0) {
                        Intent emailIntent = new Intent(android.content.Intent.ACTION_SEND);
                        emailIntent.setType("text/plain");
                        emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_SUBJECT,"Email Intent Example");
                        emailIntent.putExtra(android.content.Intent.EXTRA_TEXT, "This is email is generated using EmailIntent Demo application to sow how we can directly compose a mail from our application.");
                        final PackageManager pm = getPackageManager();     
                        @SuppressWarnings("static-access")
                        final List<ResolveInfo> matches = pm.queryIntentActivities(emailIntent, pm.MATCH_DEFAULT_ONLY);     
                        ResolveInfo best = null;     
                        for (final ResolveInfo info : matches)
                        {
                                if (info.activityInfo.name.toLowerCase().contains("mail"))
                                        best = info;
                        }
                        if (best != null) 
                        {
                                emailIntent.setClassName(best.activityInfo.packageName, best.activityInfo.name); 
                                startActivity(emailIntent);
                        }
                }
        });
      
    }
}

3.) Compile and build the project.
4.) Run on 1.6 simulator for the output.

Simple Sqlite Database Interaction Using FMDB

2012-01-30T17:58:00.001-08:00

Introduction

In the age where Core Data is king, the database that started it all is often overlooked. I’m talking of course about sqlite. As you may or may not know, prior to core data, sqlite was the preferred method of storing relational data on iOS devices.
Although, most developers don’t interact with sqlite directly, they still use it under the hood as the primary data store for core data. This is great and all, but there are often times when raw sqlite is still the preferred storage method.
A few of these might include:

Caching
Preferences
Simple objects
Portability
Cross platform applications

Recently, I have had to make heave use of raw sqlite as a caching strategy in a new project that I’m working on. Being that we are developing a framework for other developers to include in their projects, we can’t always assume that they have their environment set up to use core data. When I was but a n00b iOS developer I did all of the crazy sqlite management by hand. See This post series, but don’t spend too much time there because it’s embarrassing.
Gross right? Now, there is a much easier way to manage and interact with your sqlite databases. This library has been around for quite some time and I wish I had known about it earyly on.

FMDB

FMDB stands for Flying Meat Database. What a great name… This project aims to be a fully featured wrapper for sqlite.
You can clone their repository on their github.
This tutorial will give you a brief introduction to using FMDB to create a database, create a table, insert, fetch, and delete data.

Project Set Up

The first step is to download/clone fmdb from the url above. Once downloaded drag everything inside of the src folder into your project except fmdb.m. That file contains unit tests and a main, which will cause some conflicts in your project.
The next step is to link in the sqlite library. To do this:

Click your project in the left column of XCode
Click the main target in the middle column. In our case it’s “FMDBTest”
Click the “Build Phases” tab in the third column
Expand the arrow next to “Link Binary With Libraries”
Click the “+” button
Search for libsqlite3.0.dylib and double click it

When you are all done, it should look like this:

Now, that we have the library in place, let’s write some code.

Creating A Database

Obviously where you create your database is up to you, but we are going to do it in the appDelegate.
In addition to working with existing databases, fmdb can easily create any number of databases for you on the fly. After importing FMDatabase.h in our AppDelegate.m file, we can add the following code to the application:didFinishLaunching method.

NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *docsPath = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *path = [docsPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"database.sqlite"];
 
FMDatabase *database = [FMDatabase databaseWithPath:path];

First, we resolve the path to the documents directory. Be careful, if you don’t need your database to be backed up, use the cache directory instead. When you send a path to the databaseWithPath method of fmdb, it first checks if the database exists, and if not, it creates it. Similarly, we could copy an existing database to the documents directory and source it the exact same way.

Opening The Database And Creating Tables

In order to perform any action on the database, it must first be opened. Here is the code to open the database and create a users table. Don’t worry about closing it right now, we will do that when we are all done.

[database open];
[database executeUpdate:@"create table user(name text primary key, age int)"];

Here we first call the open method of the database to open it. Next, we use the executeUpdate method to create the table. Make sure you use this method and not executeQuery when creating a table. This is a common error. The database should look like this after our update:

After we are all done here we close the database.

Inserting And Deleting Data

Inserting data using sqlite is very straight forward. You can either build your strings and pass them in directly OR use the sqlite format using “?’s” and letting fmdb do the work. Below is an example of each:

// Building the string ourself
NSString *query = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"insert into user values ('%@', %d)",
@"brandontreb", 25];
[database executeUpdate:query];
 
// Let fmdb do the work
[database executeUpdate:@"insert into user(name, age) values(?,?)",
@"cruffenach",[NSNumber numberWithInt:25],nil];

Generally, the second route is preferred as fmdb will do some of the sanitizing for your (such as add slashes to single quotes).
Now that we have some data in our database, let’s delete it. The following code will delete all users with an age of 25:

[database executeUpdate:@"delete from user where age = 25"];

And that should remove both of the records that we inserted.

Querying The Database

Querying the database is a bit more tricky than inserting and deleting. FMDB has some great utility methods for helping us out in certain circumstances, but for this tutorial, we will assume the don’t exist and show you how to fetch data out. If you are following along in a sample application, put this code before your delete code (so that we actually have some data to work with).
Below is an example of fetching all users from the database:

FMResultSet *results = [database executeQuery:@"select * from user"];
while([results next]) {
    NSString *name = [results stringForColumn:@"name"];
    NSInteger age  = [results intForColumn:@"age"];        
    NSLog(@"User: %@ - %d",name, age);
}
[database close];

We first query the database using the executeQuery method. This returns to us an FMResultsSet. Next we start a while loop that continues while there are results to be retrieved and fetch out each of our data points. Finally, we just print out each user.
And finally, our database gets close…

Conclusion

This concludes our sqlite using fmdb tutorial. As always, if you have any questions, please leave them here or write me on twitter.
You can download the source for this tutorial here

Making UITableViews look not so plain

2012-01-30T17:57:00.001-08:00

As most of you probably know, UITableView’s are incredibly useful and versatile views to be using in your applications.
If you have ever tried to customize a UITableView though, you know that as soon as you start adding lots of UIViews, UILabels, and UImageViews to a cells ContentView, that these tableviews start to scroll slower and slower, and become choppier and choppier.
What we are going to explore today is how to remedy that situation.
To download the entire XCode project, you can find it at: http://github.com/elc/ICB_PrettyTableView
We are going to build a simple contact viewer, that will display the phones contacts. For each contact, if they have a first name, last name, email and phone number, they will be displayed within one cell, with different colors. The reason this is useful is because it provides the basics for customizing UITableViewCells that can really start to make your application look nice, and still scroll well.
If you don’t want to have simulated data inside the simulator, check out this post for copying data from your device to the simulator: How to import contacts into the iphone simulator
In this example, we have a standard UITableViewController. We are going to have a couple class variables defined in the header

#import 
#import 
 
@interface ICBTableViewController : UITableViewController
{
    ABAddressBookRef _addressBook;
}
 
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *contacts;
 
@end

ABAddressBookRef _addressBook is defined in our header, so that we don’t have to release it until we dealloc. And the contacts is so that we can hold on to the data for our tableView.
In the main table view controller file we are going to override the – (void)viewDidLoad to provide some initial configuration of the tableView, as well as loading or generating our data. (We will generate fake data for devices or the simulator that don’t have address book data)

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    self.tableView.backgroundColor = UIColor.blackColor;
    self.tableView.separatorStyle = UITableViewCellSeparatorStyleNone;
 
    ABAddressBookRef addressBook = ABAddressBookCreate();
    NSArray *tempArray = (NSArray *)ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(addressBook);
    tempArray = [tempArray sortedArrayUsingComparator:^NSComparisonResult(id obj1, id obj2) {
        NSString *name1 = (NSString *)ABRecordCopyCompositeName((ABRecordRef)obj1);
        NSString *name2 = (NSString *)ABRecordCopyCompositeName((ABRecordRef)obj2);
        return [name1 compare:name2];
    }];
 
    if ([tempArray count] > 0) {
        self.contacts = tempArray;
    } else {
        NSMutableArray *tempMutableArray = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:100];
        for (int i = 0; i < 100; ++i) {
            NSMutableDictionary *dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
            if ((i % 9) != 0) {
                [dict setObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"FirstName%d", i] forKey:@"firstName"];
            }
            if ((i % 3) == 0) {
                [dict setObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"LastName%d", i] forKey:@"lastName"];
            }
            if ((i % 3) == 0 && (i % 2) == 0) {
                [dict setObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"emailTest%d@test%d.com", i, i] forKey:@"email"];
            }
            if ((i % 7) == 0) {
                NSString *string = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", i];
                while ([string length] < 10) {
                    string = [string stringByAppendingFormat:@"%@", string];
                }
                [dict setObject:string forKey:@"phone"];
            }
            [tempMutableArray addObject:dict];
        }
        self.contacts = tempMutableArray;
    }
}

As you can see here we have a couple of self.tableView methods we have called to setup the background color, and also the cell separator style.
If you are running this application on a device, or simulator that has contacts, this method will also make a copy of the address book as the data to display. If there is no data in the address book, we create some fake test data just for displaying.
Also don’t forget to include our – (void)dealloc method for releasing our _addressBook variable.

- (void)dealloc
{
    CFRelease(_addressBook);
    [_contacts release];
    _contacts = nil;
}

We have to supply the tableView with our number of rows

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
    return [self.contacts count];
}

The next portion we have to override is the – (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath so that we can supply the tableView with our cells.

// Customize the appearance of table view cells.
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{   
 
    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"ICBTableViewCellIdentifier";
 
    ICBTableViewCell *cell = (ICBTableViewCell*)[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
    if (cell == nil) {
        cell = [[[ICBTableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease];
        cell.textLabel.textColor = UIColor.whiteColor;
    }
    cell.tag = indexPath.row;
 
    NSObject *object = [self.contacts objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
    if ([object isKindOfClass:NSDictionary.class]) {
        [cell setDictionary:(NSDictionary *)object];
    } else {
        [cell setRecord:(ABRecordRef)object];
    }
 
    return cell;
}

We are checking each object coming out of our array so that we can determine if we need to call the setDictionary, or setRecord method calls.
Now the meat of this tutorial, extending a UITableViewCell.
In our header we are going to define a bunch of strings that we want to display

#import 
#import 
 
@interface ICBTableViewCell : UITableViewCell
 
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *firstName;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *lastName;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *email;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *phone;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *address;
 
- (void)setRecord:(ABRecordRef)record;
- (void)setDictionary:(NSDictionary *)dict;
 
@end

And then our two set methods:

- (void)setRecord:(ABRecordRef)record
{
    self.firstName = [(NSString *)ABRecordCopyValue(record, kABPersonFirstNameProperty) autorelease];
    self.lastName = [(NSString *)ABRecordCopyValue(record, kABPersonLastNameProperty) autorelease];
    self.email = [self getFirstEmail:record];
    self.phone = [self getFirstPhone:record];
    [self setNeedsDisplay];
}
 
- (void)setDictionary:(NSDictionary *)dict
{
    self.firstName = [dict objectForKey:@"firstName"];
    self.lastName = [dict objectForKey:@"lastName"];
    self.email = [dict objectForKey:@"email"];
    self.phone = [dict objectForKey:@"phone"];
    [self setNeedsDisplay];
}

Some tutorials will have you put this next part into a separate UIView subclass, and add that class as the contentView of this UITableViewCell, but I prefer to override the drawRect of the UITableViewCell, and do all my drawing there.
The first thing I am doing is getting the current graphics context so that we can draw to the screen, clipping to the rect that is passed in drawRect:(CGRect)rect, and then depending on whether this cell is even, I am filling the entire rect with an almost black color, or slightly lighter.

- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
    CGContextRef ctx = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
 
    CGContextClipToRect(ctx, rect);
    //If even
    if (((self.tag % 2) == 0)) {
        CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(ctx, [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.1f alpha:1.f].CGColor);
    } else {
        CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(ctx, [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.15f alpha:1.f].CGColor);
    }
 
    CGContextFillRect(ctx, rect);

The next thing I am going to figure out is whether I want this text to be centered in the cell, and I am determining this based off whether there is an email field or not.

//Vertically center our text, if no email
    BOOL isCentered = (self.email == nil);

And now for the meat of the drawRect method. We calculate the size of firstName, draw it offset from the left by 5, and then draw lastName right after it. We also change the color we are drawing between those two.

CGRect tempRect;
    CGFloat midY = CGRectGetMidY(rect);
    [[UIColor whiteColor] set];
    UIFont *defaultFont = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:16];
    CGSize size = [self.firstName sizeWithFont:defaultFont];
    if (isCentered == NO) {
        tempRect = CGRectMake(5, 0, size.width, size.height);
    } else {
        tempRect = CGRectMake(5, midY - size.height/2, size.width, size.height);
    }
    [self.firstName drawInRect:tempRect withFont:defaultFont];
 
    [[UIColor lightGrayColor] set];
    size = [self.lastName sizeWithFont:defaultFont];
    if (isCentered == NO) {
        tempRect = CGRectMake(CGRectGetMaxX(tempRect)+5, 0, size.width, size.height);
    } else {
        tempRect = CGRectMake(CGRectGetMaxX(tempRect)+5, midY - size.height/2, size.width, size.height);
    }
    [self.lastName drawInRect:tempRect withFont:defaultFont];

Next we find out if phone actually exists, and if so set the color to red, and draw it to the right of lastName. We also have to make sure we aren’t drawing this outside our boundaries, so we check to see where the end is, and if it is outside, we crop it to 5 pixels from the end.

if (self.phone != nil) {
        [[UIColor redColor] set];
        size = [self.phone sizeWithFont:defaultFont];
        CGFloat end = CGRectGetMaxX(tempRect) + size.width;
        if (end > rect.size.width) {
            size.width = CGRectGetMaxX(rect) - CGRectGetMaxX(tempRect) - 10; //-10 so that we get 5 from the end of last name, and 5 from the end of rect
        }
        if (isCentered == NO) {
            tempRect = CGRectMake(CGRectGetMaxX(rect) - size.width - 5, 0, size.width, size.height);
        } else {
            tempRect = CGRectMake(CGRectGetMaxX(rect) - size.width - 5, midY - size.height/2, size.width, size.height);
        }
        [self.phone drawInRect:tempRect withFont:defaultFont lineBreakMode:UILineBreakModeTailTruncation];
    }

And finally if our email actually exists draw it on the bottom left.

if (self.email != nil) {
        [[UIColor blueColor] set];
        size = [self.email sizeWithFont:defaultFont];
        tempRect = CGRectMake(5, midY, size.width, size.height);
        [self.email drawInRect:tempRect withFont:defaultFont];
    }

I hope this helps you in configuring UITableViewCells for your own project, and hopefully will let you start to think about the possibilities.
To download the entire XCode project, you can find it at: http://github.com/elc/ICB_PrettyTableView

ELCImageGrabber

2012-01-30T17:56:00.001-08:00

As I was working on the ELCImagePickerController, bringing it up to speed for iOS 5, I needed to get some images inside my iOS simulator. I did some googling and came up with the handy method of dragging and dropping images onto the simulator and using Safari to save them to a photo album. This is all well and good for four or five photos, but it starts to really slow down after that. Also, if you ever run into a situation where you need to reset the simulator you’re stuck with doing it all over again. For the love of all that is automation, and of course any excuse to start new project in iOS 5, I knew it was time for a utility to handle this task for me.
With that, I give you ELCImageGrabber.

This was a quick project, so it’s not the prettiest interface, but it sure gets the job done. Tell it how many photos you want and watch as the previews go by and get stored in your photo library. The 64 images at a time limit is imposed by the Google image API for a single request, but there are plenty of ways around it. Also, I’ve hardcoded the search term in the source code, but perhaps you want rainbows and unicorns instead? I hope people find this useful and change it up to fit their needs as well. I’d love to see pull requests for any useful features that you lovely readers might add!
Get the code here!

Import contacts into the iPhone Simulator

2011-12-23T14:50:00.000-08:00

If you’re working with AddressBook.framework chances are you’ll want to import your own data to test against when you’re in the simulator. Without being able to sync with iTunes or iCloud you may think you’re stuck entering in addresses manually; not only is that a huge pain, but there are probably lots of edge cases already in your address book you wouldn’t necessarily think of.

Fortunately there’s another option, with a tool called iPhone Backup Extractor. Download it, run it and click Read Backups (note that you’ll need to back up to iTunes, not iCloud). Select your device, and you should see a list of apps included in your backup. Choose the last item on the list, iOS Files, and extract it to your desktop. When it’s done take a look in the folder it created. You should find two files in the folder iOS Files/Library/AddressBook, AddressBook.sqlitedb and AddressBookImages.sqlitedb.

Next, open the simulator’s Application Support folder (in the Finder menu, choose Go -> Go to Folder…, enter ~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator, and choose the SDK you’re working with) and drill down to Library/AddressBook. Quit the simulator if it’s open, delete everything in this directory, then copy the two files noted above from your backup. That’s it! If everything went well the next time you launch the simulator you should see all your contacts.

Pretty easy, really. If address book data is a major feature of your app, you might even want to have a few trusted beta testers send you their backups so you can test with their contacts. My experience is that there are a lot of unusual or invalid contacts floating around on people’s phones, and the more opportunity you have to test the better you’ll do once you release your app.

Making UITableViews look not so plain

2011-12-23T14:48:00.000-08:00

#import 
#import 
 
@interface ICBTableViewController : UITableViewController
{
    ABAddressBookRef _addressBook;
}
 
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSArray *contacts;
 
@end

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];
    self.tableView.backgroundColor = UIColor.blackColor;
    self.tableView.separatorStyle = UITableViewCellSeparatorStyleNone;
 
    ABAddressBookRef addressBook = ABAddressBookCreate();
    NSArray *tempArray = (NSArray *)ABAddressBookCopyArrayOfAllPeople(addressBook);
    tempArray = [tempArray sortedArrayUsingComparator:^NSComparisonResult(id obj1, id obj2) {
        NSString *name1 = (NSString *)ABRecordCopyCompositeName((ABRecordRef)obj1);
        NSString *name2 = (NSString *)ABRecordCopyCompositeName((ABRecordRef)obj2);
        return [name1 compare:name2];
    }];
 
    if ([tempArray count] > 0) {
        self.contacts = tempArray;
    } else {
        NSMutableArray *tempMutableArray = [NSMutableArray arrayWithCapacity:100];
        for (int i = 0; i < 100; ++i) {
            NSMutableDictionary *dict = [NSMutableDictionary dictionary];
            if ((i % 9) != 0) {
                [dict setObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"FirstName%d", i] forKey:@"firstName"];
            }
            if ((i % 3) == 0) {
                [dict setObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"LastName%d", i] forKey:@"lastName"];
            }
            if ((i % 3) == 0 && (i % 2) == 0) {
                [dict setObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"emailTest%d@test%d.com", i, i] forKey:@"email"];
            }
            if ((i % 7) == 0) {
                NSString *string = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%d", i];
                while ([string length] < 10) {
                    string = [string stringByAppendingFormat:@"%@", string];
                }
                [dict setObject:string forKey:@"phone"];
            }
            [tempMutableArray addObject:dict];
        }
        self.contacts = tempMutableArray;
    }
}

- (void)dealloc
{
    CFRelease(_addressBook);
    [_contacts release];
    _contacts = nil;
}

We have to supply the tableView with our number of rows

- (NSInteger)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView numberOfRowsInSection:(NSInteger)section
{
    return [self.contacts count];
}

// Customize the appearance of table view cells.
- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{   
 
    static NSString *CellIdentifier = @"ICBTableViewCellIdentifier";
 
    ICBTableViewCell *cell = (ICBTableViewCell*)[tableView dequeueReusableCellWithIdentifier:CellIdentifier];
    if (cell == nil) {
        cell = [[[ICBTableViewCell alloc] initWithStyle:UITableViewCellStyleDefault reuseIdentifier:CellIdentifier] autorelease];
        cell.textLabel.textColor = UIColor.whiteColor;
    }
    cell.tag = indexPath.row;
 
    NSObject *object = [self.contacts objectAtIndex:indexPath.row];
    if ([object isKindOfClass:NSDictionary.class]) {
        [cell setDictionary:(NSDictionary *)object];
    } else {
        [cell setRecord:(ABRecordRef)object];
    }
 
    return cell;
}

#import 
#import 
 
@interface ICBTableViewCell : UITableViewCell
 
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *firstName;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *lastName;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *email;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *phone;
@property (nonatomic, retain) NSString *address;
 
- (void)setRecord:(ABRecordRef)record;
- (void)setDictionary:(NSDictionary *)dict;
 
@end

And then our two set methods:

- (void)setRecord:(ABRecordRef)record
{
    self.firstName = [(NSString *)ABRecordCopyValue(record, kABPersonFirstNameProperty) autorelease];
    self.lastName = [(NSString *)ABRecordCopyValue(record, kABPersonLastNameProperty) autorelease];
    self.email = [self getFirstEmail:record];
    self.phone = [self getFirstPhone:record];
    [self setNeedsDisplay];
}
 
- (void)setDictionary:(NSDictionary *)dict
{
    self.firstName = [dict objectForKey:@"firstName"];
    self.lastName = [dict objectForKey:@"lastName"];
    self.email = [dict objectForKey:@"email"];
    self.phone = [dict objectForKey:@"phone"];
    [self setNeedsDisplay];
}

- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect
{
    CGContextRef ctx = UIGraphicsGetCurrentContext();
 
    CGContextClipToRect(ctx, rect);
    //If even
    if (((self.tag % 2) == 0)) {
        CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(ctx, [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.1f alpha:1.f].CGColor);
    } else {
        CGContextSetFillColorWithColor(ctx, [UIColor colorWithWhite:0.15f alpha:1.f].CGColor);
    }
 
    CGContextFillRect(ctx, rect);

The next thing I am going to figure out is whether I want this text to be centered in the cell, and I am determining this based off whether there is an email field or not.

//Vertically center our text, if no email
    BOOL isCentered = (self.email == nil);

CGRect tempRect;
    CGFloat midY = CGRectGetMidY(rect);
    [[UIColor whiteColor] set];
    UIFont *defaultFont = [UIFont systemFontOfSize:16];
    CGSize size = [self.firstName sizeWithFont:defaultFont];
    if (isCentered == NO) {
        tempRect = CGRectMake(5, 0, size.width, size.height);
    } else {
        tempRect = CGRectMake(5, midY - size.height/2, size.width, size.height);
    }
    [self.firstName drawInRect:tempRect withFont:defaultFont];
 
    [[UIColor lightGrayColor] set];
    size = [self.lastName sizeWithFont:defaultFont];
    if (isCentered == NO) {
        tempRect = CGRectMake(CGRectGetMaxX(tempRect)+5, 0, size.width, size.height);
    } else {
        tempRect = CGRectMake(CGRectGetMaxX(tempRect)+5, midY - size.height/2, size.width, size.height);
    }
    [self.lastName drawInRect:tempRect withFont:defaultFont];

if (self.phone != nil) {
        [[UIColor redColor] set];
        size = [self.phone sizeWithFont:defaultFont];
        CGFloat end = CGRectGetMaxX(tempRect) + size.width;
        if (end > rect.size.width) {
            size.width = CGRectGetMaxX(rect) - CGRectGetMaxX(tempRect) - 10; //-10 so that we get 5 from the end of last name, and 5 from the end of rect
        }
        if (isCentered == NO) {
            tempRect = CGRectMake(CGRectGetMaxX(rect) - size.width - 5, 0, size.width, size.height);
        } else {
            tempRect = CGRectMake(CGRectGetMaxX(rect) - size.width - 5, midY - size.height/2, size.width, size.height);
        }
        [self.phone drawInRect:tempRect withFont:defaultFont lineBreakMode:UILineBreakModeTailTruncation];
    }

And finally if our email actually exists draw it on the bottom left.

if (self.email != nil) {
        [[UIColor blueColor] set];
        size = [self.email sizeWithFont:defaultFont];
        tempRect = CGRectMake(5, midY, size.width, size.height);
        [self.email drawInRect:tempRect withFont:defaultFont];
    }

ELCImageGrabber

2011-12-23T14:46:00.000-08:00

As I was working on the ELCImagePickerController, bringing it up to speed for iOS 5, I needed to get some images inside my iOS simulator. I did some googling and came up with the handy method of dragging and dropping images onto the simulator and using Safari to save them to a photo album. This is all well and good for four or five photos, but it starts to really slow down after that. Also, if you ever run into a situation where you need to reset the simulator you’re stuck with doing it all over again. For the love of all that is automation, and of course any excuse to start new project in iOS 5, I knew it was time for a utility to handle this task for me.

With that, I give you ELCImageGrabber.

This was a quick project, so it’s not the prettiest interface, but it sure gets the job done. Tell it how many photos you want and watch as the previews go by and get stored in your photo library. The 64 images at a time limit is imposed by the Google image API for a single request, but there are plenty of ways around it. Also, I’ve hardcoded the search term in the source code, but perhaps you want rainbows and unicorns instead? I hope people find this useful and change it up to fit their needs as well. I’d love to see pull requests for any useful features that you lovely readers might add!
Get the code here!

40 Beautiful Android Application Interfaces and Icons

2011-12-18T17:35:00.001-08:00

Androidify

Google surprised everyone last month with an application no one was really expecting from them. Androidify lets you create your own personal Android and use it any way you like. With a beautiful, usable interface and two tons of customization options, Androidify sets a new standard for mobile application design.

Androidify

Calorific

Counting calories made fun and beautiful, that was my first impression of Calorific. The applications lets you record what you eat with a couple of clicks and provides feedback on your food habits. The interface is colorful and full of life, just what the doctor ordered, one would say.

Calorific

Camera360

We have already spoken tons about this Swiss army knife of Android camera applications. Camera360 provides virtually every feature you would ask for in a mobile phone camera and does it in a beautiful, intuitive interface that is invisible when you don’t need it, yet always there at the tap of a button.

Camera360

Chomp

The new web-based Android Market is a big leap from the virtually non-existent entity before, but there’s still a lot of room for alternatives to make a mark. Chomp is a new entrant that starts on the right foot with a stunning look & feel. The visual design, interface and user experience is top-notch, coupled with a very smart search engine that provides way better results than the official market itself.

chomp

Color Blindness Test

Nearly 8% of all men in the world are color blind in some way (as against only 0.5% women, incidentally). The Color Blindness Test application lets you check if you’re one of them with a simple but visually attractive interface and a clever set of questions that should leave little doubt about the results.

Color Blindness Test

DoubleTwist Player

There is no dearth of alternative music players on the Android Market, most of them competing wildly for the ‘most beautiful’ title (as we will see further down). DoubleTwist does little wrong in the race. The excellent icon is coupled with a dark, sleek interface that makes browsing and listening to your music a pleasure.

DoubleTwist Player

Epicurious

Wondering what to cook for dinner tonight? The Epicurious Recipe App is probably one of the best looking applications of its kind on the Android Market. From the browsing experience to the recipe details, everything is neatly laid out and blends beautifully with the red branding of the epicurious website.

Epicurious

Episodes

Episodes is one of the few Android applications with a beautiful and self-explanatory icon. The retro television set icon establishes clearly that this is an application about TV shows and the interface does the rest. Check out all the current shows on TV, review their episodes, save favorites and more.

Episodes

FlightBoard

A checkered grid of colorful LEDs is the basic premise of this application’s interface as well as its icon. FlightBoard turns your phone into the Arrivals & Departure board for any airport, and does a neat job of replicating the real world through good use of metaphor and a neat, clean UI.

FlightBoard

GasBuddy

The premise of the GasBuddy application is simple: it helps you find gas stations around you with the cheapest gas. The application uses GPS to overlay the nearest gas stations on a map along with a list view to compare gas prices in your vicinity.

GasBuddy

Glympse

Glympse is one of many applications for Android that let you share your location with friends. What sets it apart is the clean and simple interface, the excellent UI and an equally impressive icon. This is another one of very few beautiful Android application icons on the market today.

Glympse

Go Launcher Ex

There are a ton of home screen launchers on the Android Market, each with a unique set of features. Go Launcher is a recent entrant, but has already made a splash with an extremely active development cycle, a neat combination of features and themes that actually look good out of the box.

Go Launcher Ex

Go SMS

Another beautiful application from the makers of Go Launcher. Go SMS replaces the stock android SMS application with a better interface, more features, a beautiful widget and stellar support for themes. There are already a bunch of themes available in the market, with more coming out pretty regularly.

Go SMS

Google Maps

The Google Maps stock application has been improving in leaps and bounds over the last year or so. The latest incarnation with navigation is a hard one to beat on the platform. With a new 3D compass view, GPS based navigation, places and integration with Latitude, the application is a nice combination of eye-candy and utility.

Google Maps

Graphic.ly Comics

If you love comics, things don’t get better on the Android platform than the recently released Graphic.ly comic reader. The application combines a humongous collection of free and paid comics with a nice user interface that makes reading the comics a pleasure, even on smaller screens.

Graphic.ly Comics

Grooveshark

The Grooveshark web app has been known for its neat design and simplicity, and the official Android application does that reputation no harm. The online streaming music player is just as beautiful and as usable, allowing you to easily search for songs, create playlists and listen to your favorite music on the go.

Grooveshark

HotelPal

The HotelPal application provides ready access to over 100,000 hotels worldwide, allowing you to check out their facilities, see high-resolution photos and make bookings on the go. The icon is pretty unique, coupled with a neat clean interface and good use of maps to help locate hotels around your area of interest.

HotelPal

Kobo eBooks

You may have never heard of the Kobo eReader, which trails behind the Kindle and the Nook by quite a margin. Like its counterparts, the Kobo reader is also available for a number of device platforms, including Android. And although it is not the most feature-packed of the applications, it is visually one of the best.

Kobo eBooks

LiveShare

In case you don’t know, the stock gallery application on most Android phones is powered by Cooliris. Liveshare, an official Cooliris app, takes the next step by providing an gorgeous interface for not only viewing your photos and videos, but also providing an easy and seamless way to share them with family and friends.

LiveShare

Mint

When it comes to managing your finances online, few applications come close to the features and functionality of mint.com. The Android application helps you keep track of and update your finances on the go, and provides ready access to critical financial information, complete with graphs and alerts.

Mint

Mobisle Notes

A lot of mobile applications try to use the visual metaphor of a notepad, but few are able to nail it and strike a balance between usefulness and visual overload. Mobisle Notes is one application that succeeds at this. The interface is pretty yet minimalistic, with a focus on getting in and jotting things down quickly.

Mobisle Notes

Out of Milk

Out of Milk combines a shopping list, pantry list and to-do list in one small, intuitive and easy-to-use package. The interface uses a real-life notebook metaphor for lists, allowing you to create multiple lists in each category. An added advantage is the ability to scan bar codes to automatically add items to your list without having to write everything down manually.

Out of Milk

OvuView

This one is purely for the women, and everything about the application shouts that. OvuView is an advanced fertility tracker that helps women track periods, ovulation and fertility. Although the pink and lavender interface clearly states its target audience, the information visualization is worth a look for anyone interested in beautiful UI design.

OvuView

Photoshop Express

When it comes to image editing, Adobe reigns supreme, with Photoshop being the king of the hill on the desktop. On the mobile platform as well, the mini version of Photoshop sets itself apart with a nice, simple user interface and a just-right set of features for editing photos on the mobile phone. Take a look at our full review.

Photoshop Express

picplz

picplz tries to re-create the magic of instagram (an iOS photo sharing phenomenon) on the Android platform. The idea is to click images, apply interesting effects and share them with the world. The picplz application is minimalistic, and acts as a simple client to share snaps on their more full-featured web application.

picplz

Plume for Twitter

The official Twitter application for Android is pretty full-featured now, but that doesn’t stop other clients from offering even more. Plume is one such alternative with a beautiful and highly customizable interface. From colorizing your twitter stream to geotagging and inline conversations, it offers a heavy dose of functionality in a sleek design and with another cute blue bird for an icon.

Plume

PowerAmp

PowerAmp is one of the better known alternative music applications that go head-to-head with the stock Android music player. The sleek, skinnable application interface packs a lot of advanced features together to an extent that might feel a bit overwhelming for a new user. Once you get used to it, though, it is hard to go back.

PowerAmp

Rdio

Rdio is a newish social music subscription service that allows you to search for and play from a huge collection of music, while also following other users and subscribing to what they are listening to. The minimal interface provides just the right balance of eye-candy and utility, and makes discovering new music easy and fun.

Rdio

RealPlayer

After a dismal few years and a few controversial products, RealNetworks is making a comeback with a kick-ass music application. The application lets you easily organize and play your media collection, including videos (something a lot of other players don’t do very well).

RealPlayer

Retro Camera

Taking pictures on the android camera is fun, but what’s even more fun is making it look like a camera of the past (and I mean real long past). Retro camera converts the stock camera interface into one of five classic cameras, complete with antique viewfinders and matching photo effects.

Retro Camera

SketchBook Mobile

With phone screen sizes touching upwards of 4 inches, you don’t need to saw off your fingertips to be able to draw on them anymore (sure, the take on a certain comment from a certain Mr. Jobs is intended). SketchBook Mobile is a miniature, touch-friendly version of the immensely popular Sketchbook Pro application from Autodesk and does a pretty neat job of bringing the sketchbook feel to your Android phone.

SketchBook Mobile

SoundCloud

Android comes with a built-in sound recorder application, but like with most stock applications, it is quite barebones. Enter SoundCloud, a full-featured sound recording, editing and sharing application which makes it a breeze to record a sound around you and save it in the cloud. It also comes with some rudimentary editing features and built-in social integration.

SoundCloud

SoundHound

Listening to a song you just need to have? Got a tune stuck in your head but can’t seem to place it? SoundHound boasts of the world’s fastest music recognition engine that can identify music by simply listening to it. The interface, though minimalistic, makes it easy to search for songs, find lyrics and artist info or even buy the identified song directly from the Amazon music store. Check out our guide to identifying music.

SoundHound

Songbird

Okay, last of the audio applications, this time an open source Mozilla project. Songbird is still in Beta, but is already shaping up to be a veritable foe to all the other commercial applications out there. The feature set is robust, the interface unique and usable, and the community support is growing by the day. Watch out for this one in the days to come.

Songbird

SpeedView

SpeedView is an advanced speedometer application for your Android phone that uses the phone’s GPS to accurately tell your current, maximum, and average speeds, as well as total distance and time traveled. The interface features a cool leather background texture and a car dashboard-like UI.

SpeedView

Sports Track Live

Sports Track Live is the mobile companion for the SportsTrack web application, which allows you to log your fitness routine on the go. All information gets synced with your account online. The application uses the phone’s GPS to accurately track your outdoor trips and provides instant analytics to help review your progress then and there.

Sports Track Live

StayHIP

If you are looking for the finest boutique hotels in the world, the search ends at StayHIP. The application lets you browse, evaluate and book at some of the best hotels, all online and through a fittingly sleek interface that has ‘premium’ written all over it.

StayHIP

SwiftKey

Alternative Android keyboards are a bit of an overkill on the market, and finding one that works best can be quite a task. Although the Swype keyboard provides a unique and in many ways better typing experience, few keyboard applications come close to the visual quality of the SiwftKey keyboard. That it also has the best text prediction engine is icing on the cake.

SwiftKey

Taazzago

There are very few India-focused applications on the Android Market, in spite of the huge and growing user base in the country. Taazzago tries to fill that space with a beautiful local news application that provides news, weather, classifieds and deals, all in a compact user interface with surprising accuracy.

Taazzago

Tasker

Tasker is a multi-purpose automation application for your phone that can automate everything from settings to photos, and SMS to speech. It works by letting you apply actions to triggers, with an overwhelming number of choices for each. The power of the application needs to be seen to be believed, although the interface makes setting tasks pretty simple once you understand the basics.

Tasker

Wallet

If paranoia over information security sounds familiar, Wallet is just the tool for you. The application lets you save critical information – like bank details, passwords and important numbers – in an encrypted file on your phone. This file can then be synchronized with Dropbox for anytime access. The interface is minimal but beautifully done with subtle textures and icons.

Wallet

Weatherbug

What sets the Weatherbug application apart from other similar ones is the depth of the information it provides in a small package, as well as the intuitive and clean visual design of the application. Everything from topographic maps to weather conditions and forecasts are available at a tap of an icon, with more details readily available for when you need them.

Weatherbug

In Conclusion

These applications are a very small sampling of what’s on the market. New applications are coming up every day – so much so that I actually continued to add them to the list till the last minute (Chomp was actually released just a few days ago). With such a broad growing collection, there should be very little to complain about the lack of aesthetics on the Android applications front any more.
Got a few favorites of your own that are not here? Let’s hear about them in the comments below.

Touch or Untouch a File in Xcode

2010-12-28T00:36:00.001-08:00

For example, if you edit and save a file, the time stamp will be updated and Xcode will recompile the file on the next build cycle.
If you ever need to force a recompile of a file, you can do a Clean of the project (see the Build menu in Xcode). Clean will delete all intermediate files such as precompiled headers, so on the next build Xcode will recreate the current target’s precompiled header files and all other files as needed. Depending on the size of your project, this may be a time consuming process.
Should you have a need to recompile a select file or two, a better option is to touch only those specific files. For those unfamiliar with touch, this refers to a unix utility of the same name that changes file access and modification times. From within Xcode you can touch a file by right clicking on a file in the Groups and Files window and choosing Touch from the drop-down menu:

Notice there is also an Untouch option in the menu, which will mark the file state as up-to-date, thus averting a compile of that file, on the next build.

Create a Universally Unique Identifier (UUID)

2010-12-07T14:58:00.001-08:00

UUID’s are 128-bit values which are guaranteed to be unique – typically the value is based on a machines ethernet address combined with the current time since October 15, 1582.
UUID’s are string values separated by hyphens, for example, here is how a UUID may look: 13222F23-C76A-7781-0C12-0293E3B34398.
The method below creates a UUID and returns a string representation of the same:

Create UUID

- (NSString *)createUUID
{
  // Create universally unique identifier (object)
  CFUUIDRef uuidObject = CFUUIDCreate(kCFAllocatorDefault);
 
  // Get the string representation of CFUUID object.
  NSString *uuidStr = [(NSString *)CFUUIDCreateString(kCFAllocatorDefault, uuidObject) autorelease];
 
  // If needed, here is how to get a representation in bytes, returned as a structure
  // typedef struct {
  //   UInt8 byte0;
  //   UInt8 byte1;
  //   ...
  //   UInt8 byte15;
  // } CFUUIDBytes;
  CFUUIDBytes bytes = CFUUIDGetUUIDBytes(uuidObject);
 
  CFRelease(uuidObject);
 
  return uuidStr;
}

Get UDID from iTunes

2010-12-07T14:57:00.000-08:00

The following tips runs you through the steps to quickly look up the UDID number for a device from with iTunes.
Begin by plugging in the device and starting iTunes. Choose your device in the DEVICES section on the left side of iTunes. At this point you should see the iPhone stats (name, capacity, software version, etc) similar to the figure below. By default the serial number will be shown on the second line from the bottom:

If you click the Serial Number, the content of that row will change to show the UDID:

To copy the UDID to the clipboard, from the Edit menu inside iTunes, choose Copy. You can now paste the UDID as needed into an email, document…

Creating Clickable Hyperlinks from a URL, Phone Number or Address

2010-11-23T02:44:00.001-08:00

The following tips shows a quick way to create clickable hyperlinks using a UITextView. The trick is to set the dataDetectorTypes property to specify the data type you are after, from there, upon a tap the link will launch the appropriate application, namely Safari, Phone Dialer or Maps.

Clickable URL

// Create textview, centering horizontally
UITextView *textView = [[UITextView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 10, 320, 50)];
 
// Set font, background and alignment
[textView setFont:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:16]];
[textView setBackgroundColor:[UIColor blackColor]];
[textView setTextAlignment:UITextAlignmentCenter];
 
// Unfortunately the link will show as blue even with this setting
//  [textView setTextColor:[UIColor greenColor]];
 
// Edit and scrolling off  
[textView setEditable:NO];
[textView setScrollEnabled:NO];
 
// Set data type to specify URL/link
[textView setDataDetectorTypes:UIDataDetectorTypeLink];
 
// Set text as URL
[textView setText:@"iOSDeveloperTips.com"];  
 
[self.view addSubview:textView];

Clickable Phone Number

To change up the code to support a clickable phone number, replace lines 16-21 with the following:

// Set data type to phone number
[textView setDataDetectorTypes:UIDataDetectorTypePhoneNumber];
 
// Set text as phone number
[textView setText:@"800-555-1212"];

Clickable Address

With the release of iOS 4.0, you can now create a clickable address. Tapping on the link will launch the Maps application.

// Set data type to address
[textView setDataDetectorTypes:UIDataDetectorTypeAddress];
 
// Set text as phone number
[textView setText:@"1 Infinite Loop, Cupertino, CA 95014"];

Submitting iPhone Apps To The Apple App Store – A Step by Step Guide

2010-10-30T18:27:00.000-07:00

Here’s a quick step by step guideline that you can print and keep hand, to use when your app is ready for submission. I am assuming that the reader of this article has an iPhone Developer License.

Here’s a quick step by step guideline that you can print and keep hand, to use when your app is ready for submission. I am assuming that the reader of this article has an iPhone Developer License.
====== Step 1 ======
Certificate is an essential element to submit or test an application on iphone. It comes with code sign(Signatures) which would verified when an application is submitted on apple store or when tested on iphone.
One can bypass these if an application is installed on jail-break iphone or when submitted on Cydia but this is not possible when one wants submit it to Appstore.

One has to through 2 step procedure to create a certificate from developer portal. I simply copied those two from “iphone developer portal”
[1] Generating Certificate Signing Request
[2] Submitting a Certificate Signing Request for Approval
Generating a Certificate Signing Request:
[3] Open the Utilities folder and launch Keychain Access from the Applications folder.
[4] Set the value of Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) and Certificate Revocation List (CRL) to “off” in the Preferences Menu.
[5] Select Keychain Access -> Certificate Assistant -> Request a Certificate from a Certificate Authority.
[6] Fill in your email address in User Email Address Field. Confirm that this email address is same as provided at the time of registering as iPhone developer.
[7] Fill in your name in the Common Name field. Confirm that this name is same as provided at the time of registering as iPhone developer.
[8] It is not necessary to have an Certificate Authority (CA). The ‘Required’ message would be eliminated after finishing the following step.
[9] Click the ‘save to disk’ radio button if prompted, choose ‘Let me specify key pair information’ and proceed.
[10] If you choose ‘Let me specify key pair’ option then one has provide a file name and click ‘Save’. Select ‘2048 bits’ for Key Size and ‘RSA’ for the algorithm in next screen and proceed.
[11] CSR file would created on the desktop by Certificate Authority.
Submitting a Certificate Signing Request for Approval:
[1] Once CSR file is created log in to the iPhone developer program portal and go to ‘Certificates’> ‘Development’ and select ‘Add Certificate’.
[2] Click the ‘Choose file’ button, select your CSR and click ‘Submit’. The portal will reject the CSR if Key Size is not set to 2048 bit at the time of CSR creation.
[3] This will followed by notification to Team Admins by email of the certificate request.
[4] The change in the certificate status would informed by email on approval or rejection of the CSR by Team Admin.
Download/Installing Certificate on your machine
[5] Once the CSR is approved the Team Members and Team Admins can download their certificates via the ‘Certification’ section of the Program Portal. Choose ‘Download’ next to the certificate name to download your iPhone development certificate to your local machine.
[6] Once this is done double-click the .cer file to launch Keychain Access and install your certificate.
On installation of certificate on your MAC the next step is to create an App ID.
Note: You have to follow this step only once and late you don’t have to make certificates for your other applications.
====== Step 2 ======
Follow the following steps to create an App ID:
[1] Go to ‘App IDs’ and click ‘App ID’ after logging in to iPhone developer program portal.
[2] Populate the ‘App Id Name’ field with your application name (that is – iPhone app) and in ‘App Id’ enter something like com.yourdomain.applicationname (i.e com.edumobile.iphoneapp) and click submit.
[3] Please do note down the “App Id” as this would be utilized in Info.plist, bundle identifier tag.
====== Step 3 ======
Next step would be to create a Provisioning file for our Xcode and is the last step for creating binary which would submit it to Appstore.
[1] After you navigate to ‘Provisioning’> ‘Distribution’ click ‘Add Profile’ in iphone developer program portal.
[2] Choose “App Store” in “Distribution Method”.
[3] In “Profile Name” enter your application name (i.e iphoneapp) which will be your provisioning profile name as well.
[4] In “App ID” select the app name(i.e. iphoneapp) which you created in Step 2.
[5] After downloading the Provisioning profile copy it to your/YourUserName/Library/MobileDevice/Provisioning Profile.
====== Step 4 ======
Now everything is step up, open your project in Xcode
[1] Click “i” Info button after selecting your project from “Group & File” in left side bar.
[2] Navigate to “Configuration” tab and select “Release”. Click the “Duplicate” button from bottom, name is “iphoneDistribution”.
[3] Click on “Build” tab and choose “iphoneDistribution” and enter in “Search in Build Settings” filed ‘Base SDK’ and select the current selected Device and change to what gadget your application is targeting (I prefer “Device-iPhone OS 2.0)
[4] Now in “Search in build setting” field enter “code signing identity” and choose the provisioning profile created earlier in Step 3. Apply the same to the child property “Any iPhone OS Device”.
[5] Once this done close the Info screen and select the “Target”> “Your App” from “Group & File” in left side bar and click on “Info” button again from Xcode.
[6] To be on the safer side repeat step 3 and 4.
[7] With the Info screen still open click on “Properties” tab and enter “App Id”(i.e. com.edumobile.iphoneapp) in Identifier field.
[8] Now that all is done, click on “Build” (cmd+B) from Xcode>Build.
[9] You will find your binary file created on right clicking on “Product”> “YourApp” and selecting “Reveal in Finder”. Zip this file.
====== Step 5 ======
The next step is to submit the binary file created to itunesconnect.
[1] In your browser type https://itunesconnect.apple.com/ (this website is very slow over https) and login using your iPhone developer account.
[2] Click on “Manage Your Account” > “Add Application”
[3] On replying to a simple question from apple you can sumbit your application to app store. You also need few things in your system before you submit your application.
a) Application Name (must be unique)
b) Application description
c) Application Category
d) URL for your application feedback.
e) Icon of your application in 512 x 512 size.
f) Main picture of your application in 320 x 480 or 320 x 460 size. (You have option to submit up to 4 more pictures of your application).

How to build libmad on android

2010-10-18T17:54:00.001-07:00

download libmad from here: http://www.underbit.com/products/mad/

unzip, then run

./configure --enable-speed --disable-debugging --host=arm-eabi CC=arm-eabi-gcc CPPFLAGS="-I$NDK/build/platforms/android-8/arch-arm/usr/include/" CFLAGS="-nostdlib" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-rpath-link=$NDK/build/platforms/android-8/arch-arm/usr/lib/ -L$NDK/build/platforms/android-8/arch-arm/usr/lib/" LIBS="-lc "

You will have config.h. Note to set path to arm-eabi-gcc

-----------------------------------------

So i was porting all the decoders i had build for the onset detection tutorial to C++, using libmad as the mp3 decoder of choice. After getting that to work on the desktop properly i had to make it work on Android too. Now, there’s no build of libmad in the NDK for obvious reasons, so i had to build that myself. As the autotools configure script of libmad is not useable with the NDK toolchain i used the config.h file from http://gitorious.org/rowboat/external-libmad/blobs/raw/master/android/config.h, which has all the settings needed for building libmad on Android. Compiling libmad is then a simple matter of creating a proper Android.mk and Application.mk file. The Android.mk file looks like this:

LOCAL_PATH := $(call my-dir)
 
include $(CLEAR_VARS)
 
LOCAL_MODULE    := audio-tools
LOCAL_ARM_MODE := arm
LOCAL_SRC_FILES := NativeWaveDecoder.cpp NativeMP3Decoder.cpp mad/bit.c mad/decoder.c mad/fixed.c mad/frame.c mad/huffman.c mad/layer12.c mad/layer3.c mad/stream.c mad/synth.c mad/timer.c mad/version.c
LOCAL_CFLAGS := -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -DFPM_ARM -ffast-math -O3
 
include $(BUILD_SHARED_LIBRARY)

Now there’s a couple of things that initially bogged down the performance of this. I tested it with the song “Schism” by tool which is a 6:47min long song, encoded at 192kbps. The file weights in at 9.31mb, pretty big for an mp3 imo. NativeMP3Decoder is just a libmad based implementation of the MP3Decoder in the onset detection tutorial framework. So it has a simpleNativeMP3Decoder.readSamples method which will fill a float array with as many samples as there are elements in the float array. If the input file is in stereo the channels get mixed down to mono by averaging. TheNativeMP3Decoder.readSamples() method internally calls a native method with a similar signature. Instead of a float array i pass in a direct ByteBuffer that has enough storage to hold all the samples requested. The native wrapper then writes the samples to this direct buffer which in turn then gets copied to the float array passed into the NativeMP3Decoder.readSamples() method. It looks something like this:

public int readSamples(float[] samples) 
{ 
   if( buffer == null || buffer.capacity() != samples.length )
   {
      ByteBuffer byteBuffer = ByteBuffer.allocateDirect( samples.length * Float.SIZE / 8 );
      byteBuffer.order(ByteOrder.nativeOrder());
      buffer = byteBuffer.asFloatBuffer();
   }
 
   int readSamples = readSamples( handle, buffer, samples.length );
   if( readSamples == 0 )
   {
      closeFile( handle );
      return 0;
   }
 
   buffer.position(0);
   buffer.get( samples );
 
   return samples.length;
}

The call to buffer.get( samples ) kills it all. Without any optimizations (thumb code, -O0, -DFPM_DEFAULT == standard fixed point math in libmad, no arm assembler optimized fp math) decoding the complete files takes 184 seconds on my Milestone. Holy shit, batman! If i eliminate the buffer.get( samples ) call that gets down to 44 seconds! Incredible. Now i still thought that is way to slow so i started adding optimizations. The first thing i did was compiling to straight arm instead of thumb code. You can tell the NDK toolchain to do so by placing this in the Android.mk file:

LOCAL_ARM_MODE := arm

With this enabled decoding takes 36 seconds. The next thing i did was agressive optimization via -O3 as a CFLAG. That shaved off only 2 more seconds, so nothing to write home about. The last optimization is libmad specific. The config.h file i linked to above does not define the fixed point math mode libmad should use. Now, when you have a look at fixed.h of libmad you can see quiet some options for fixed point math there. There’s also a dedicated option for arm processors that uses some nice little arm assembler code to do the heavy lifting. You can enable this by passing -DFPM_ARM as a CFLAG. Now that did wonders! i’m now down to 20 seconds for decoding 407 seconds of mp3 encoded audio. That’s roughly 20x real-time which is totally ok with me. The song i chose is at the extreme end of the song length spectrum i will have to handle in my next audio game project. A song a user uses will be processed once and waiting for that 20 seconds is ok in my book.

I’m afraid i won’t release the source of the ported audio framework as it’s a bit of a mess and would need some work to clean up. What i can give you is the plain source for the native side of the NativeMP3Decoder class if you guarantee me not to laugh. My C days are long over so there’s probably a shitload of don’ts in there. The “handle” system is also kind of creative but good enough for my needs. I learned how to use the low level libmad api by looking at the code here. I actually like doing it this way more than with the shitty callback high-level API. Your mileage may vary. So here it is, be afraid:

#include "NativeMP3Decoder.h"
#include "mad/mad.h"
#include 
#include 
 
#define SHRT_MAX (32767)
#define INPUT_BUFFER_SIZE (5*8192)
#define OUTPUT_BUFFER_SIZE 8192 /* Must be an integer multiple of 4. */
 
/**
 * Struct holding the pointer to a wave file.
 */
struct MP3FileHandle
{
 int size;
 FILE* file;
 mad_stream stream;
 mad_frame frame;
 mad_synth synth;
 mad_timer_t timer;
 int leftSamples;
 int offset;
 unsigned char inputBuffer[INPUT_BUFFER_SIZE];
};
 
/** static WaveFileHandle array **/
static MP3FileHandle* handles[100];
 
/**
 * Seeks a free handle in the handles array and returns its index or -1 if no handle could be found
 */
static int findFreeHandle( )
{
 for( int i = 0; i < 100; i++ )
 {
  if( handles[i] == 0 )
   return i;
 }
 
 return -1;
}
 
static inline void closeHandle( MP3FileHandle* handle )
{
 fclose( handle->file );
 mad_synth_finish(&handle->synth);
 mad_frame_finish(&handle->frame);
 mad_stream_finish(&handle->stream);
 delete handle;
}
 
static inline signed short fixedToShort(mad_fixed_t Fixed)
{
 if(Fixed>=MAD_F_ONE)
  return(SHRT_MAX);
 if(Fixed<=-MAD_F_ONE)
  return(-SHRT_MAX);
 
 Fixed=Fixed>>(MAD_F_FRACBITS-15);
 return((signed short)Fixed);
}
 
 
JNIEXPORT jint JNICALL Java_com_badlogic_audio_io_NativeMP3Decoder_openFile(JNIEnv *env, jobject obj, jstring file)
{
 int index = findFreeHandle( );
 
 if( index == -1 )
  return -1;
 
 const char* fileString = env->GetStringUTFChars(file, NULL);
 FILE* fileHandle = fopen( fileString, "rb" );
 env->ReleaseStringUTFChars(file, fileString);
 if( fileHandle == 0 )
  return -1;
 
 MP3FileHandle* mp3Handle = new MP3FileHandle( );
 mp3Handle->file = fileHandle;
 fseek( fileHandle, 0, SEEK_END);
 mp3Handle->size = ftell( fileHandle );
 rewind( fileHandle );
 
 mad_stream_init(&mp3Handle->stream);
 mad_frame_init(&mp3Handle->frame);
 mad_synth_init(&mp3Handle->synth);
 mad_timer_reset(&mp3Handle->timer);
 
 handles[index] = mp3Handle;
 return index;
}
 
static inline int readNextFrame( MP3FileHandle* mp3 )
{
 do
 {
  if( mp3->stream.buffer == 0 || mp3->stream.error == MAD_ERROR_BUFLEN )
  {
   int inputBufferSize = 0;
   if( mp3->stream.next_frame != 0 )
   {
    int leftOver = mp3->stream.bufend - mp3->stream.next_frame;
    for( int i = 0; i < leftOver; i++ )
     mp3->inputBuffer[i] = mp3->stream.next_frame[i];
    int readBytes = fread( mp3->inputBuffer + leftOver, 1, INPUT_BUFFER_SIZE - leftOver, mp3->file );
    if( readBytes == 0 )
     return 0;
    inputBufferSize = leftOver + readBytes;
   }
   else
   {
    int readBytes = fread( mp3->inputBuffer, 1, INPUT_BUFFER_SIZE, mp3->file );
    if( readBytes == 0 )
     return 0;
    inputBufferSize = readBytes;
   }
 
   mad_stream_buffer( &mp3->stream, mp3->inputBuffer, inputBufferSize );
   mp3->stream.error = MAD_ERROR_NONE;
  }
 
  if( mad_frame_decode( &mp3->frame, &mp3->stream ) )
  {
   if( mp3->stream.error == MAD_ERROR_BUFLEN ||(MAD_RECOVERABLE(mp3->stream.error)))
    continue;
   else
    return 0;
  }
  else
   break;
 } while( true );
 
 mad_timer_add( &mp3->timer, mp3->frame.header.duration );
 mad_synth_frame( &mp3->synth, &mp3->frame );
 mp3->leftSamples = mp3->synth.pcm.length;
 mp3->offset = 0;
 
 return -1;
}
 
JNIEXPORT jint JNICALL Java_com_badlogic_audio_io_NativeMP3Decoder_readSamples__ILjava_nio_FloatBuffer_2I(JNIEnv *env, jobject obj, jint handle, jobject buffer, jint size)
{
 MP3FileHandle* mp3 = handles[handle];
 float* target = (float*)env->GetDirectBufferAddress(buffer);
 
 int idx = 0;
 while( idx != size )
 {
  if( mp3->leftSamples > 0 )
  {
   for( ; idx < size && mp3->offset < mp3->synth.pcm.length; mp3->leftSamples--, mp3->offset++ )
   {
    int value = fixedToShort(mp3->synth.pcm.samples[0][mp3->offset]);
 
    if( MAD_NCHANNELS(&mp3->frame.header) == 2 )
    {
     value += fixedToShort(mp3->synth.pcm.samples[1][mp3->offset]);
     value /= 2;
    }
 
    target[idx++] = value / (float)SHRT_MAX;
   }
  }
  else
  {
   int result = readNextFrame( mp3 );
   if( result == 0 )
    return 0;
  }
 
 }
 if( idx > size )
  return 0;
 
 return size;
}
 
JNIEXPORT jint JNICALL Java_com_badlogic_audio_io_NativeMP3Decoder_readSamples__ILjava_nio_ShortBuffer_2I(JNIEnv *env, jobject obj, jint handle, jobject buffer, jint size)
{
 MP3FileHandle* mp3 = handles[handle];
 short* target = (short*)env->GetDirectBufferAddress(buffer);
 
 int idx = 0;
 while( idx != size )
 {
  if( mp3->leftSamples > 0 )
  {
   for( ; idx < size && mp3->offset < mp3->synth.pcm.length; mp3->leftSamples--, mp3->offset++ )
   {
    int value = fixedToShort(mp3->synth.pcm.samples[0][mp3->offset]);
 
    if( MAD_NCHANNELS(&mp3->frame.header) == 2 )
    {
     value += fixedToShort(mp3->synth.pcm.samples[1][mp3->offset]);
     value /= 2;
    }
 
    target[idx++] = value;
   }
  }
  else
  {
   int result = readNextFrame( mp3 );
   if( result == 0 )
    return 0;
  }
 
 }
 if( idx > size )
  return 0;
 
 return size;
}
 
JNIEXPORT void JNICALL Java_com_badlogic_audio_io_NativeMP3Decoder_closeFile(JNIEnv *env, jobject obj, jint handle)
{
 if( handles[handle] != 0 )
 {
  closeHandle( handles[handle] );
  handles[handle] = 0;
 }
}

To compile that for Android all you have to do is download libmad and put the source files into your Android project’s jni folder along with the code above. Then use the Android.mk from above et voila you got yourself a native mp3 decoder for Android. You can use it in combination with the AndroidAudioDevice class of the last post. If you feel adventureous you could even extend it to return stereo data.

Source: http://www.badlogicgames.com/wordpress/?p=231

Fun with Android AudioTrack

2010-10-18T17:53:00.001-07:00

AudioTrack is available since Android 1.5 (API level 3) and offers an extremely simple way to send PCM data directly to the device’s audio hardware. You can use it in two modes: static and streaming. I will only look at the streaming mode here. Streaming mode means that you permanentley write new PCM data to the hardware, the framework will queue it in a buffer and play it back for you. AudioTrack supports various sampling rates and 2 PCM encodings, 8-bit and signed 16-bit PCM. An AudioTrack instance can either be in mono or stereo mode. Here’s a small class that can be used similar to the AudioDevice class of the onset detection tutorial:

public class AndroidAudioDevice
{
   AudioTrack track;
   short[] buffer = new short[1024];
 
   public AndroidAudioDevice( )
   {
      int minSize =AudioTrack.getMinBufferSize( 44100, AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_MONO, AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT );        
      track = new AudioTrack( AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC, 44100, 
                                        AudioFormat.CHANNEL_CONFIGURATION_MONO, AudioFormat.ENCODING_PCM_16BIT, 
                                        minSize, AudioTrack.MODE_STREAM);
      track.play();        
   }    
 
   public void writeSamples(float[] samples) 
   { 
      fillBuffer( samples );
      track.write( buffer, 0, samples.length );
   }
 
   private void fillBuffer( float[] samples )
   {
      if( buffer.length < samples.length )
         buffer = new short[samples.length];
 
      for( int i = 0; i < samples.length; i++ )
         buffer[i] = (short)(samples[i] * Short.MAX_VALUE);;
   }  
}

Pretty simple eh? Now let’s start with the constructor. The first thing we do is to get the minimum buffer size for the AudioTrack instance we are going to create. This is achieved by a call to AudioTrack.getMinBufferSize(), passing in the sampling rate, wheter we are mono or stereo and the PCM encoding, in this case 16-bit signed. This buffer size is used by the AudioTrack internally for a buffer it stores all the samples in we’ll write to it. If the buffer is full it is flushed to the audio hardware. Now, in the next line we instantiate an AudioTrack. The first parameter dictates which audio stream our samples are going to be written to. There’s a couple of audio streams in the Android system, we’ll almost always want to use AudioManager.STREAM_MUSIC here. For the other stream types refer to the documentation. The next three parameters say what sampling rate we want to have, wheter we want the track to be mono or stereo and which PCM encoding we want to use. As with the AudioDevice class from the onset detection tutorial we use 44100Hz, mono, 16-bit signed PCM. The last parameter says wheter this AudioTrack is static or a streaming one, we want it to be a streaming one. All that’s left is to call AudioTrack.play() and we are ready to write samples to the audio hardware.
All the code in the onset detection tutorial worked with PCM data encoded as floats in the range [-1,1]. We want to emulate this here so i wrote a little method called AndroidAudioDevice.writeSamples( ) which takes a float array of mono float PCM samples and writes it to the hardware. For this the float samples have to be converted to 16-bit signed PCM which is done in the AudioDevice.fillBuffer() method, no rocket science here. Once we have the converted PCM we simply write it to the AudioTrack via AudioTrack.write() which takes a short array (our PCM samples), an offset into the array and the number of samples to use from the offset on. Extremely simple, even more than the equivalent Java Sound class SourceDataLine.
Now there’s a couple of interesting things about AudioTrack. First off, if you don’t write to it constantly it will pause itself to not hog any further system resources. Upon the next write it will start playback again introducing a wake up lag. Another not so nice thing is that due to the internal buffer of AudioTrack which has to be filled up completely before it is send to the hardware there’s noticeable lag between the time you write your first samples and when you hear them being played back. The minimum buffer size i get on my Milestone for the configuration is 8192, sadly the documentation doesn’t tell wheter that’s bytes or samples. If it’s bytes we divide that by two and then by the sampling frequency to get the total lag introduced by the internal buffer: 8192 / 2 / 44100 = 0,092 seconds, so nearly 100ms. That’s noticeable. In case the minimum buffer size is in samples it get’s even worse. The lag will be 200ms in that case. So that’S what you have to expect when using this class. Writting a software mixer based on AudioTrack is possible as long as you don’t need low latency. Synthesizing sounds each time the screen is touched for example is a bad idea as the lag is more than noticeable. Another property of AudioTrack is that the AudioTrack.write() method blocks. If you want to use it in a game you should do all your audio mixing in a seperate thread.
Still, the class is pretty niffty and it makes it easy to port all the examples from the onset detection tutorial to Android. I tested it with the WaveDecoder class and it worked like a charm, not eating up to much system resources while doing its thing. Here’s the sine wave generator sample ported to android:

public class AudioTest extends Activity
{     
   @Override
   public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) 
   {
      super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);                      
 
      new Thread( new Runnable( ) 
      {
         public void run( )
         {          
            final float frequency = 440;
            float increment = (float)(2*Math.PI) * frequency / 44100; // angular increment for each sample
            float angle = 0;
            AudioDevice device = new AndroidAudioDevice( );
            float samples[] = new float[1024];
 
            while( true )
            {
               for( int i = 0; i < samples.length; i++ )
               {
                  samples[i] = (float)Math.sin( angle );
                  angle += increment;
               }
 
               device.writeSamples( samples );
            }         
         }
      } ).start();
   }
}

You can also try to use the decoders included in the tutorial framework, however, the pure Java MP3 decoder will be to slow. Only the WaveDecoder works acceptably. When i’m done porting all decoders to C++ i might put out a small Android audio library so you can benefit from that a bit. Now go out and play :)

Source: apistudios