bencoffman.com/blog - iphone

Beginning iPhone 3 Development Exploring the iPhone SDK

Ben Coffman — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:29:55 GMT

I'm done! After a summer of surprises, swings, and roadblocks I finally finished this book, a few months behind schedule, but it's done. The last objective-C book I read was by the de facto in Mac OS X development Mr. Hillegass, (my post) I embarked on the journey of reading a book on iPhone development with the man in iPhone teaching Jeff LaMarche. Jeff is every bit as good at breaking down complex topics and making them seem easy as my .Net home skillet Scott Hanselman. In short these dudes are just smart, but they'll never tell you that and they write some good books.

This book is an easy read and provides hands on examples on how to use many of the tools provided with the iPhone SDK 3. The book is spot on with it's examples, but I'm betting new Objective-C users might have trouble following along when xCode 4 comes out. xCode 4 is quite a bit different graphically than 3 and may render the step by step instructions in this book out of date.

Overall if you are into programming on the iPhone, this is a great book to start, given you have a base working knowledge of Objective-C and an advanced understanding of programming in general.

Beginning iPhone 3 Development Exploring the iPhone SDK

Ben Coffman — Sat, 04 Sep 2010 21:29:55 GMT

error: expected '=', ',', ';', 'asm' or 'attribute' before 'interface'

Ben Coffman — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:54:31 GMT

Error Readout:
error: expected '=', ',', ';', 'asm' or '__attribute__' before 'interface'

Fix:
Added a semicolon.

Explanation:
It's important to remember that this was occurring before the interface tag, which meant it was happening in a file I was importing. In this case it was a header file with some enumerations in it that were not showing an error with a missing semi colon.

Commerce Bank iPhone App

Ben Coffman — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 13:50:55 GMT

Apple expects to sell 1 million to 1.4 million iPhones this weekend, this is excluding the 900,000 pre-orders. It has the possibilty to be the biggest selling product release in history!

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704629804575325661775151320.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEADTop

UPDATE: They sold 1.7 million. Apple's most successful product release in it's history.

The Woz is at it again.

Ben Coffman — Fri, 21 May 2010 04:56:23 GMT

I saw this picture on Dave Mark's blog. Dave is a very talented Objective C developer. The picture really got me so I had to post it.

Enjoy.

loadView vs viewDidLoad

Ben Coffman — Sun, 09 May 2010 23:55:43 GMT

The Problem:
I was getting a white screen with no data in a UITableView on it in the iPhone simulator.

The Solution:
I had my initialization code for the array in the the "loadView" method and not the "viewDidLoad" method

Explanation:
Don't read self.view in -loadView. Only set it, don't get it. The self.view property accessor calls -loadView if the view isn't currently loaded. There's your infinite recursion. I'm guessing UITableView calls a View [pretty good guess since "view" is in the name. :)] which in turn caused my recursion.

This was a stupid little error that caused me about 30 minutes of my life due to the fact I didn't get any build errors. A simple copy and paste moved me forward.

Update: I think it might be important to distinguish the differece between loadView and viewDidLoad. (below)

loadView is the method in UIViewController that will actually load up the view and assign it to the "view" property. This is also the location that a subclass of UIViewController would override if you wanted to programatically set up the "view" property. viewDidLoad is the method that is called once the view has been loaded. This is called after loadView is called. It is a place where you can override and insert code that does further initial setup of the view once it has been loaded.

Commerce Bank iPhone Application

Ben Coffman — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:08:51 GMT

UPDATE: http://bencoffman.com/blog/2010/06/25/CommerceBankIPhoneApp.aspx

I finished and nearly published my first iPhone application. It was done about 3 months ago, but waiting on graphics people is always less than fruitful. After 2.5 months of waiting I decided to take matters into my own hands, got myself all hoped up and cranked out the graphics in a day with my limited, but functional knowledge of Photoshop.

After a little bit of drama from Commerce, the application was not published. If you would like an iPhone app for Commerce Bank online banking I'm sure you can expect one in the near to very very distant future. :).

Here is a screen shot.

error: A valid signing identity matching this profile could not be found ...

Ben Coffman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:37:21 GMT

Error Readout:
error: A valid signing identity matching this profile could not be found in your keychain

The Problem:
In Keychain Access it reads the error above.

The Solution:
This can be cause by several issues. The highest probability is, you didn't install the certificate you created in the distribution or development page of "certificates" in the iPhone Provisioning Portal.

Code Sign error: The identity 'iPhone Distribution' doesn't match any valid ...

Ben Coffman — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 15:14:18 GMT

Error Readout:
Code Sign error: The identity 'iPhone Distribution' doesn't match any valid certificate/private key pair in the default keychain

The Problem:
I try and build my application and I get the error above

The Solution:
Many things can cause this error. The error is probably caused by one of the steps being done incorrectly in the Program User Guide. Most won't like reading this, but the best way to fix this is to go back and follow, very precisely, the steps in "Program User Guide." In case the link changes you can get to the pdf by going to http://developer.apple.com/iphone, logging in, clicking "iPhone Provisioning Profile" and in the box on the left hand side of the screen titled "Provisioning Resources," you can download the Program User Guide pdf.

Explanation:
Yes, we ALL wish this process could be more streamlined, and require less reading, but it doesn't. If you want to get that app out there, suck it up, read the 60 pages [lots of pictures :) ] and be done with it.

Making An iPhone Icon Is Easy

Ben Coffman — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 03:41:41 GMT

Making an iPhone icon is way easier than I had anticipated. You don't need to round the corners, you don't have to give it the little glow as if the sun is shining down upon it. Simply make your icon in a 57x57 png and the iPhone SDK does the rest for you. Here is a link to some good apple documentation on making an iPhone Icon. See the icon I created below (1) and the icon that showed up once I plugged the image into xcode (2).

1. 2.