Introduction to iOS Development

March 5, 2012

Introductions
Speakers:

Chris Rider Northern Kentucky University Center for Applied Informatics Senior Technology Architect riderc1@nku.edu
Eric Rolf Northern Kentucky University Center for Applied Informatics Mobile Application Developer rolfe1@nku.edu

Resources
http://developer.apple.com/iOS iPhone Programming, The Big Nerd Ranch Guide Joe Conway & Aaron Hillegass Programming in Objective-C Kochan http://www.raywenderlich.com Excellent iOS5 tutorials! Stanford free iOS lectures. Worth the time to watch!

Prerequisites for iOS Development

Previous experience in another Object Oriented Programming (OOP) language will be helpful Understanding of OOP concepts. Some understanding of C can be helpful, but is not required. ObjectiveC builds on top of C. You will eventually run into pointers and other fundamental C features Previous experience with an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is helpful, but not required Mac computer running OS X Lion If you plan to submit to the App Store, you will need Apple devices to do real testing on. The simulator is not good enough.

Introduction
iOS is the operating system that runs iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads, and Apple TVs. The language used to develop software for iOS is Objective-C. This class will teach you how to get started but will not have time to teach you everything.

What is iOS?
iOS is an operating system its a subset of Mac OS X. The iOS SDK is the software development kit that allows application programs to utilize classes and frameworks provided by the SDK. This class will focus on iOS SDK 5. iOS is multitasking and runs on several different devices (iPhones, iPod Touches, iPads, and Apple TVs). Apple provides an IDE called Xcode. Xcode is the IDE used by iOS (and OS X) developers. Xcode provides an interface to the compiler, editor, debugger, and code profiling tools.

Device Features
For the rest of the presentation, assume we are discussing iPhones, iPads, and iPod Touches. Although Apple TV runs iOS, Apple currently does not allow developers to create custom code for this device (yet). SQLite for structured data storage Media support for common audio, video, and still image formats (MPEG4, H.264, MP3, AAC, AMR, JPG, PNG, GIF) GSM Telephony (hardware dependent) Bluetooth, EDGE, 3G, and WiFi (hardware dependent) Camera, GPS, compass, and accelerometer (hardware dependent) Rich development environment including a device simulator, tools for debugging, memory and performance profiling

Capabilities of Mobile Devices

Internet access Touch screen GPS (global positioning system satellite-based system to determine a location) Local storage Camera Media playback Phone Bluetooth for device communication

Limitation of Mobile Devices

Screen size Touch screen No physical keyboard or trackball a finger or stylus is the primary interface to the device Memory Storage Battery Life Cell network Sometimes flaky networks Ergonomics

Download the iOS SDK

Download the latest from the Apple App store This is only available for Apple Macintosh computers Its free To build to device and submit to the app store, you will be required to becomes a register Apple iOS developer It is $99 year for the basic account

Xcode

Launch Xcode
After youve downloaded and installed Xcode, launch it You are presented with the Welcome screen:
Create a new project Connect to a repository Learn about using Xcode Go to Apples Portal

Go ahead and click on Create a new project

Project Template
There are several predefined templates to help you get started on a new project For now, click on Single View Application

Project Options
The Product Name is the name of your app Company Identifier is your organization name such as edu.nku (reverse domain notation) Class Prefix (leave empty) Device Family: iPad, iPhone, Universal (Universal means that a single binary will have screens for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPads) Storyboards Automatic Reference Counting Include Unit Tests (leave unchecked as we are not using)

Source Control
Asks for a location for Source Control By Default, it will use a local GIT repository New developers not used to source control this is extremely useful! It keeps track of versions, lets you see whats changed, and will undoubtedly be used in any team project you run into in the real world GIT and Subversion are two popular source controls systems there are many others to choose from

Where do I start?

Lets build the default project

Click the Run button (upper left of the screen) The iPad simulator will launch (You can also change this to iPhone if you want) You will have a blank white screen Press Command-Q to end the simulator

Quick Terminology: MVC

Model-View-Controller (MVC) MVC is the paradigm of iOS programming Model: Hold data, should know nothing of the interface View: code for getting data in/out of a view. Deals with items like buttons, lists, tables, etc Controller: keeps the Model objects and View objects in sync

Quick Terminology: Delegate

AppDelegate.h AppDelegate.m The Delegate is essentially the controller of your app it links buttons, labels, and views together .h files are header files interfaces are defined here .m files are implementation files. These contain your classes, code, etc.

Quick Terminology: Storyboard

These are new to iOS5 Storyboards help you graphically lay out your app before you code it. It makes it easy to see the flow of your app We will not have a lot of time to dig into this but will use it in upcoming examples You are advised to use Storyboards going forward with you iOS programming adventures If you have tinkered with iOS in the past, you might be asking about the xib/nibs. They are still there - however, Storyboards offer similar functionality and make it easier to visualize your views. We will not be covering nibs in this class.

Quick Terminology: ARC

Automatic Reference Counting (ARC) The LLVM 3.0 compiler handles memory management for you It is not a garbage collector! Prior to iOS5 memory management was the single most difficult item to grasp in Objective-C. Unless you have specific reasons, all of your projects should use ARC (unless you want to track down memory leaks, zombies, random crashes, etc). We will not talk much about them, but there are cases in which you might not want ARC. At WWDC 2011, this announcement brought a standing ovation from all of the developers in attendance!

Quick Terminology: Unit Tests

We will not be discussing Unit Tests in this class Be advised unit tests are very useful for your programs The tests can help you make sure your code changes are not breaking anything. The end result you should be able to find bugs quicker and fix them before your code goes to QA (or the customer!)

Click on the iPhone Storyboard

It shows a blank view It looks like you are on a sheet of graph paper There are two buttons
First Responder View Controller

Find the Label

In Xcode, lower right hand corner, scroll until you find the object Label Drag Label to the blank view Double click on the Label you added, and change it to say Hello World Do the same steps for the iPad Storyboard

Run the project

The iPad and iPhone projects should now display Hello World!

Next, add two buttons to your view

Find the Round Rect Button, drag two to the view Double-click on one of the buttons and type Hello Double-click on one of the buttons and type Goodbye Run your project, click on the buttons

Nothing Happens we have to tell it to do something

Click on the Assistant Editor It looks like a tuxedo It will be in the upper right hand corner of your screen

Linking the ViewObject to your ViewController

You will see your ViewObject in the middle of the screen The right hand side of the screen should be the ViewController.h file
View Object

ViewController.h

Link the label

Single click on your Hello World label While holding down the Control key, left click-drag to the ViewController.h file You need to drag between the @interface and @end in the code This will make a new property For the name, call it helloLabel so we can easily recognize what it is This step will allow us to make changes to the UILabel

Hold on what is this stuff? interface

@interface @end

Remember that ObjectiveC is an extensive to the C language The @ symbol denotes an ObjectiveC keyword @interface is the start of a class. @interface Classname: Superclass Anything between the declaration and end is part of the class

Hold on what is this stuff? property

@property (weak, nonatomic) IBOutlet UILabel *helloLabel;

A property is an attribute of the class Getters and Setters are automatically created for you Weak is a memory management term we will not be discussing this in depth Nonatomic has to do with adding mutexes around your getters and setters we will not be discussing in this class IBOutlet stands for Interface Builder Outlet. Interface Builder still exists in iOS5 we are using Storyboard instead. We will not be discussing it much in this class (Interface Builder is your interface to working with nibs)

Hold on what is this stuff? synthesize

@synthesize helloLabel Synthesize this creates the accessor/mutators (getters/setters) for you You can write your own if you want, but in general, there is no reason to do so

Link the rest of the buttons

Link helloButton to ViewController.h Link goodbyeButton to ViewController.h When done, you will have two properties Now, switch the Assistant window to the ViewController.m file

TouchUpInside Actions
TouchUpInside events occur if you touch a button and lift off while inside the button This corresponds to a user tapping a button Click on the Hello button On the far right, locate Touch Up Inside Left click-drag this over to your ViewController.m Notice it creates some code Do the same for the goodbye button

IBAction
You created two IBActions Actions signify something that happens when you do something like push a button When you push a button, it fires the action These are currently empty methods
(IBAction)helloPushed:(id)s ender { } (IBAction)goodbyePushed:( id)sender { }

Change the UILabel

- (IBAction)helloPushed:(id)sender { self.helloLabel.text=@"Hello Pushed"; } - (IBAction)goodbyePushed:(id)sender { self.helloLabel.text=@"Goodbye Pushed"; } Self refers to the ViewController class We defined the property helloLabel earlier Text is a property of UILabels tht we can set. The @Some text is an NSString object that UILabels can display. Run your program and push the buttons you should see the UILabel change when you press the buttons

Tab Controller
If youve ever used an iOS device, you have come across apps that use the tab controller. Several of the built in apps (such as the phone app) use this controller For the next session, we are going to create a simple tab controller

Create a new project

Close any existing projects you have open (to make things easier!) Select File->New>Project from the application menu

Select Tab Template

Select the Tabbed Template for your project

Set Options
For product name, call it tabDemo Whatever you used for Company Identifier should be set if not, edu.nku is ok Leave Class Prefix blank For Device family, choose iPhone (to keep it simple) Enable Storyboards and Arc Do not select Unit Tests as we are not going over them

Look at the Storyboard

Click on MainStoryboard.Storyboard Notice how the Tab Bar Controller is shown It also shows the child views associated with the tab bar buttons This lets the developer see the views and path to them at a quick glance. Go ahead and run the project, observe what happens when you tap the tab items. It switches between the views

Lets add a new class: ThirdViewController

On the left hand side, right-click on the tabDemo folder and select New File

Pick the type of file

We are adding a new ViewController so select Objective-C class

Pick the options

For Class, type in Third In the Sublass combo box, select UIViewController The IDE will change your class name It is good naming convention to have the class be description so in this case, ThirdViewController lets any developer know this is a ViewController (now, Third might not be the most descriptive) Leave Targeted for iPad and XIB unchecked

Create
Take the default options, click the Create button

We now have a .h and .m

Notice that you now have two files ThirdViewController. h and ThirdViewController. m If you look at the files, they are basically skeleton classes ready for the developer

Add another View Controller

Add a new View Controller to the Storyboard After you add it, it will not be linked to any view

Our new view, all alone

Notice that Storyboard does not have any arrows pointing to it The developer will have to make the association as this view could be a sub view of any of the views shown

Link this ViewController to the Tab Controller

Hold down he Control key, left-click drag from the Tab Controller to the new view we just added This tells Storyboard that this view is going to be accessed from the tab controller

Select Relationship

Label this before we forget

Click on the Text Change this to say Third We do not have any graphics if we did, we would want to go ahead and add a graphic for this. Note: you will need graphics for standard iPhones, retina, and iPad (and if rumors are correct, iPad retina!)

Lets be more specific about the class

Left click on your new view in Storyboard Click the Identify Inspector (upper right) Notice how the class is currently UIViewController We need to make this to be associated with our ThirdViewController (which is a subclass of UIViewController)

Select ThirdViewController
From the combo box, scroll until you find ThirdViewController This will let us do any custom actions we might need to do Remember: ThirdViewController has all of the methods and properties of a UIViewController!

Lets Replace the First View

We are going to replace the FirstViewController with a TableViewController Click on First View, hit the Delete button to remove it

Drag a Table View Controller

From the Object Library, drag over a Table View Controller A good spot would be where you just deleted the other view controller

Embed Navigation Controller

From the Xcode menu bar, select Editor->Embed In>Navigation Controller Notice that another view controller is added to the Storyboard canvas

Check it out
This is what we did in the previous slide Since the Navigation Controller is a container, there is a relationship between the Nav controller and the table view controller. (Noted by the connecting arrow)

Hook up the Scenes

Ctrl-drag from the Tab Bar controller to the Nav controller Select Relationship

Look at Storyboard now

The relationship is defined When we added this, it added an entry labeled Item as the last tab bar button Drag this Item and make it the first entry in our tab bar

Fix up the tab bar items

Drag item to the left most position Also, lets rename this back to First Double-click on Item in the Navigation Controller scene, change text to First

Name the Nav bar

In the Table View window, double-click on the Title bar. Type in Things to give the Navigation bar a name. In a real app, you would type something descriptive and meaningful to the user.

The Nav Bar has a title

You can now see the title has a name. If you have noticed, we have been getting a warning from the compiler for our storyboard. Prototype table cells must have reuse identifiers

Lets get rid of the warning

Warnings are typically not something you want in your program. We are getting this warning because we have not configured the cells yet so the compiler does not know what they are.

Table View Controller

Click on the blank prototype cell Next, click on the attributes inspector and set Style to Subtitle.

Attributes Inspector

More cell attributes

Set the Accessory attribute to Disclosure Indicator. Give the cell an identifier of ThingsCell. The warning from Xcode is a reminder to developers there is something you need to do if you want this to work. (Side note warnings are something you should not overlook. Several program crashes can stem from warnings people dont pay attention to.)

Add a UIViewController subclass template

Add a new file to the project. Choose UIViewController subclass template. Name the class ThingsViewController, this will be a subclass of UITableViewController

New file

Objective-C Class

ThingsViewController

Create to add to project

Set the class with Identify Inspector

Click on the TableViewController object (the whole object will be outlined in blue) Now, click class and select ThingsViewController

Click on ThingsViewController.h
Add an NSMutableArray pointer This arry will contain Things objects it will be the main data model for the app. #import <UIKit/UIKit.h> @interface ThingsViewController : UITableViewController @property (nonatomic, strong) NSMutableArray *things; @end

Lets add a class called Thing

We need to add a Thing class to our project. Right-click, add a new Objective-C class template. Name it Thing, subclass of NSObject.

New File

Objective-C Class

Class Thing

Create

Modify thing.h

Modify thing.m

Modify AppDelegate.m
The AppDelegate will create a Thing array and add some sample data to it The first thing you need to do is click on AppDelegate.m At the top of the file, add:
#import Thing.h #import ThingsViewController.h

The imports tell the delegate what these classes are so we can use them Add an instance variable named things (It is an NSMutableArray pointer)

AppDelegate.m

didFinishLaunchingWithOptions method

Now the hard part

This looks more complicated that it really is: UITabBarController *tabBarController =(UITabBarController *)self.window.rootViewController; UINavigationController *navigationController =[[tabBarController viewControllers] objectAtIndex:0]; ThingsViewController *thingsViewController = [[navigationController viewControllers] objectAtIndex:0]; thingsViewController.things = things;

tabBarController
UITabBarController *tabBarController This line of code lets us access the storyboards initial view controller (the tab bar controller) We now have a pointer to it.

navigationController
UINavigationController *navigationController Using the tabBarController pointer, we are just getting a pointer to the navigationController

ThingsViewController *thingsViewController
Next, we get access the the thingsViewController We are not done yet!

ThingsViewController.m
Find the method numberOfSectionsInT ableView

Change the return 0 to return 1 (Also, remove the #warning)

ThingsViewController.m

Change numberOfRowsInSection Notice what we are doing with the return We are returning a count of the number of objects in the things array. (In our example, this is 3)

ThingsViewController.m
Modify cellForRowAtIndexPath We are interfacing with the ThingCell we defined earlier We then add the name and how many (in this case, we are converting the returned value from an NSInteger to an NSString)

Build and run!

Go ahead and build the app You can now scroll and see the items added to the table view. Tapping on an entry currently just highlights it This session will not add the code to go to the detail screen