iPhone Development
Connecting to the cloud

Ninth Division
real legit growing apple platforms development
company in omaha, ne
www.ninthdivision.com
@ninthdivision
Andy Peters
@andypeters

Midwest Mobile
Developers
connecting all the mobile developers in the region
(Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri)
http://groups.google.com/group/midwest-mobile-developers

Getting started with
iPhone Development

Getting started with
iPhone Development

flickr: kmulcahy

flickr: kmulcahy

iPhone The Cloud

Why?
flickr: Waldo#4

30 Million
iPhone’s Sold as of Sept. 2009

20 Million
iPod Touches Sold as of Sept. 2009

User experience.

Offline usage.

Unreliable Connectivity.

Social networks.

More devices...

More devices...

More devices...

More devices...

iPhone users use the
hell out of social apps

15,604,157 Monthly Active Users
Facebook for the iPhone

Tweetie 2 for the iPhone

Be unique.
flickr: Erica Marshall

Game’s submitting
scores to community.

Post high score to
twitter.

Announce new user
profile on Facebook.

Music related app uses
Last.fm for data.

Grab data to populate a
map.

Some devices are tied
directly to the cloud.

MORE and MORE!

Connection Methods.
flickr: barjack

Web Services
~=
The Cloud

XML
RESTful please!

XML
There is no SOAP Client #642 or XML-RPC Client
#1,203. You parse it yourself.

Options for Parsing
XML
• libxml2
• Tree-based: easy to parse, tree in memory
• Event-driven: less memory, more complex managing state
• Text reader: fast, easy to write
• NSXMLParser
• Event-driven: simpler but less powerful than libXML
• No NSXMLDocument on iPhone
• expat too!!!

XML Code
NSXMLParser *parser = [[NSXMLParser alloc]initWithData:....];

XML Code
NSXMLParser *parser = [[NSXMLParser alloc]initWithData:....];

XML [delegate] Code

XML [delegate] Code

XML Docs.
• “Event Driven XML Programming in
Cocoa” - ADC
• NSXMLParser.h / Supporting doc.
• NSXMLParserDelegate.h / Supporting doc.
• Sample code: XMLPerformance and
SeismicXML
• Google: cocoa + nsxmlparser

JSON
JavaScript Object Notation

JavaScript Object
Notation
• More lightweight than XML
• Similar to a Property List
• arrays, dictionaries, strings, numbers
• Open Source json-framework wrapper for
Objective-C
• no “official” Apple library (yet)

JavaScript Object
Notation
• If I have a choice, I prefer using JSON
• Lightweight
• Fast
• Easy to parse and map to objects.

JSON Looks like
{
“name” : “Hearful Andrena”,
“pets” : 23,
“poop-scooping-service” : false,
“pet-names” : [“Hanna”,
“Nemo”}
}

Parsing JSON
#import <JSON/JSON.h>
// Get a JSON string
NSString *jsonString = ....;
// Parsing will result in Foundation objects
id object = [jsonString JSONValue];

Using JSON-framework
// Create data.
NSDictionary *dictionary = ...;
// converts into a JSON spring.
jsonString = [dictionary JSONRepresentation];

UIWebView

Best Practices

Asynchronous
Never parse on the main thread.

NSOperation

Never assume you
know the size of the
server response.

Delegates methods

Show progress.

Debugging.

Caching

Libraries, Frameworks
and Wrappers
flickr: (Erik)

MGTwitterEngine

ObjectiveFlickr

Facebook Connect

iPhone on Rails

ASIHTTPRequest

Development Demos
flickr: TheNixer

Development Demos
flickr: TheNixer

Questions ?
flickr: Jim in Times Square

ninth Division
real legit growing apple platforms development
company in omaha, ne
www.ninthdivision.com
@ninthdivision