Cocoa Development

... an introduction

by Lieven Dekeyser

Previous sessions

• Cocoa development on Mac
• Foundation
• AppKit
• Xcode
• Interface Builder
• Most of it is very similar on iPhone

Part 3

• UIKit
• Navigation
• Animation
• Distribution

UIKit

• Equivalent to AppKit
• Built from the ground up for the iPhone:
  • Multi-Touch
  • Small screen
  • Limited resources
• Basic User Interface components (UIButton, UILabel,...)
• Access to accelerometer, pasteboard, touch events,...
• Complex UI components (UIImagePickerController, UIWebView,...)

Structure of an iPhone app

• Model-View-Controller
• Model: All yours!
• View: UITextField, UIButton, UITableView,...
• Controller: UIViewController
  • Every screen has its view controller
  • Standard view controllers: UITableViewController, UIImagePickerController,...
  • Navigation: UINavigationController, UITabBarController

Example: Image Viewer

• Demo time

Structure of the Netlog iPhone app

• Tab Bar
  • Navigation Controller
    • HomeViewController : UITableViewController
  • Navigation Controller
    • FriendsViewController: custom view controller that happens to control a table view (and more)
  • Navigation Controller
    • PhotosMenuController : UITableViewController
    • Push: PhotosSlideShowController: custom view controller
    • Modal: UIImagePickerController
  • Navigation Controller
    • ShoutsViewController : UITableViewController
  • Navigation Controller
    • MessagesViewController : UITableViewController

Example: Bookmarks TableView

• Demo time

Animation

• UIKit is built on top of CoreAnimation
• On small-screen devices, animation is almost necessary
• Property changes (location, visibility,...) can be easily animated
• Example: Moving Labels

Distribution

• Development with simulator = free
• Run on device => iPhone Developer Program (80 euro/year)
• Code signing certificate
• Provisioning profiles: list of devices your code is allowed to run on
• Ad hoc distribution: limited
• More devices? Submit to the app store