Got my App on my iPhone!
Exciting days! This weekend I finally got my app running on my iPhone. It took a while to get accepted to the developer program (due to a lost email) and then I had problems getting my app working on my iPhone that were solved by upgrading to the latest SDK.
But now I have my app working on my iPhone and it’s sweet! It’s so cool to see something that you’ve only seen working in the emulator working, and working well, on the iPhone.
Well, except for one thing. It’s slow. Slow as in I don’t wanna use it slow. Now, it’s the debug build, so I’m hoping that the release build is quicker. I haven’t tested it yet due to various reasons, but I’ll be able to do so once the XML data service I rely on is back up and running. I’m crossing my fingers. Either way, I still think I need to add a spinner when the app first launches, to show that I’m working on getting the data. I also need to handle the absence of the data service better, instead of just crashing! 
Edit: When the service I rely on stops working, my app just quits. (I still have to fix that.) I noticed that with the release build, it quits much faster! That’s a good sign, I hope.
TouchXML for the Win!
Last night I implemented saving and loading of the friends list. So now my app is actually useful! I used XML as the file format, because it’s so easy to use and read. Writing the file was easy enough, I just built up an NSString and wrote it out. Reading the file, though, was a different matter. I had previously used the XML reader as in the SeismicXML example, but frankly I didn’t like that method. It was a big pain in the butt. What I wanted was something like NSXMLDocument, which isn’t available on the iPhone. Luckily some wonderful dude created a look-alike library in the form of TouchXML. And some other wonder dude wrote up a RSS tutorial using TouchXML. So after all that, actually reading my XML file became a much easier thing.
Next step? I have lots of little things to do, even now that the basic functionality of my app is working. But I think that maybe now I should actually try to put it onto my iPhone and make sure it works there, and not just in the simulator.
Absorbed Into the Collective
I phoned Apple the other day to ask about the status of my application to the iPhone developer program and was told that I’d been accepted way back on August 12th!
So of course I asked her resend the acceptance email which they nicely did. All in all they were very hepful and friendly.
So I buy my way into the program by paying my $99, and they send me an activation email. I have to click on a provided link to activate, but when I do so it doesn’t work and I’m told to try again later. Doh! I’ve tried several times without success.
I have a feeling that Apple will be getting another phonecall from me soon.
Another One Bites the Dust
Another major piece of functionality is now in my app. It doesn’t look pretty – most of my app doesn’t. But it’s there and it’s working. I now only have one page to go, and it’s a minor one. After I add the last page I’ll start making the app pretty and adding little bits of functionality here and there. Getting close! Now if only Apple would approve my application.
Are you ever amazed that you put a bunch of work into something, and when you hit the GO button, it just works? That’s what happened to me with this page. Did a bunch of stuff, and bam! There it was. It’s a very nice feeling.
On an unrelated note, my MacBook stopped working this morning. Luckily I did some triage and discovered that it was the battery. The battery, which has been dying a slow death, is finally totally kaput. And therefore the MacBook won’t start. Even when it’s plugged in. I remove the battery, and it starts. So today I’ll finally have to plunk down the $159 and buy a new battery. Grrrrr……
Got Add a Friend Working
Last night I got my Add a Friend page working. You can type in a name, I’ll do a lookup and show the avatar. If you click the Add button, I add the friend to the friends list, and also navigate back there. Now I just need to add a few details to the add page, and also clean it up to make it look nice.
Getting major functionality like this done is always a satisfying thing.
Now I need to start thinking about how to do the graphics for this app. I need a nice background for this page. Do I buy Pixelmator? Or do I run upstairs to my PC and boot up Photoshop every time I need some graphics work done? I can’t buy Photoshop again for the Mac, it’s too much money. I have an old friend who works at Adobe who can get me a copy for relatively cheap, but since I haven’t talked to him in a while I think that would be gauche. Right now I’m thinking that’ll probably have to pick up Pixelmator. It’s an easier workflow to have the app right on my Mac.
Name of Friend
Well, I had wanted to put up a small little dialog with a text edit field to allow you to add a friend to the friend list, but I didn’t see an obvious way to do that. So I wired up a full view to the PLUS button in the top right of the main view. It brings up a new view where you can type in the name of a friend. Now if only I could figure out how to make the keyboard to go away when you click on the “Done” button…
View Shows!
Recently I’ve been making some pretty good progress with the GUI. When I click on a friend in the table view, it brings up another empty view (more on that later). It has the appropriate button in the nav bar now to go to the next view. I have three views that the nav bar manages, and I can go between them at will. I added a plus button in the nav bar on the main page so I can add new friends. The button’s there, but its functionality is not. I also have a button for my settings and about page. I decided to combine them into one because there’s only one option settings for the user to control, so that leaves lots of space to talk about me!
The problem I was having recently, though, is that my friend details page just wouldn’t work. I could navigate to it and set up buttons in the nav bar for it, but the view just wouldn’t show. Last night I figured it out by looking at a view that does work, and seeing what’s different. Low and behold, I had made a stupid mistake, and now that’s fixed! Onwards and upwards.
Man, I’m learning a lot that’ll make developing the next app so much faster. The process is a lot of fun and looking forward to getting some time to work on this app even more. Right now my time is filled with other stuff, and I can’t wait to work on this app some more.
WPTouch and Invisibility
I had to disable the WPTouch plugin that shows an iPhone-friendly view of this website. For some reason I’m unaware of, it just stopped working. When I viewed this site on my iPhone, it gave an error. So rather than get an error, it’s better to get the original design of this blog. I’ll have to find an alternate theme.
Last night I went to see Star Wars: The Clone Wars. It’s not as bad as everyone says. You just have to remember that it’s a TV cartoon series expanded to fill the big screen.
Afterwards I got a little chance to work on my app some more. I got it working so that clicking on a person in the list would bring up another view. But for some reason, the screen was blank. All my controls were invisible! I tried a different view than the one I wanted, and it worked. So I’ll have to figure that out.
Nav Only
Last night I implemented the idea from my previous post. I wasn’t sure quite how to go about it, so created an nav bar app from scratch using a template, and just copied what I saw there into my own app. It went without a hitch, and now I have a nav bar only app!
I also implemented avatars. Now you can see a little avatar next to each entry in the friend list, and it makes a world of difference to see those little icons there. I love it!
I also added the WPTouch theme to this site, so if you view this site using an iPhone you’ll see a very iPhone-friendly version. If you want, you can go back to the regular theme using a link at the bottom.
Finally, I also put my project into a Subversion database. I discovered that my hosting provider has Subversion support, so I added a Subversion database to my domain. Installing it was easy. Using it gave me a small problem. Subversion always confuses me when it comes to creating a new sandbox. But I have it up and running now, and it’s a big relief to have my project in a remote version control system
Ooop! One more thing. I also made chewyapps.com point to ch3wy.com. I’m still undecided as to which should be my “main” URL.
Next up? Add some more navigation abilities to get the the view I want in the correct way.