Looking For Assistance (Objective-C)
This is a little bit of an odd request, but I’m looking for someone who is an OSX/iPhone Application Developer that is willing to provide some very basic assistance in moving forward on a side project I’ve been considering doing for some time. If you are one, or know one, and you would be willing to spend a little time providing some advice via email (I promise it wouldn’t be a lot of time at all) I would greatly appreciate the assistance.
To give an idea, I really only have a couple of questions where being pointed in the right direction for getting answers is probably all that I would need, but since I’m not that knowledgeable when it comes to the Objective-C (or really any other object-oriented) language I’m guessing it could be a couple of hours time explaining things (total, and via email). See, not bad at all.
Or, if someone knows of a repository with a limited variety of application source code files, that would probably do the trick. The big thing is simply having something more than a “Hello World” application and some feature-rich application to choose from. I need a couple of basic examples that deal with storing and displaying data for what I have in mind.
Heck, to be honest if I just had a couple of applications to look at that simply stored data in a text file (or via some other method than using arrays) and did nothing more than displayed said data on an iPhone screen (with a couple of layers of navigation, such as a main menu with one or two buttons to select a specific piece of text) I would be off to a good start.
So, anyone out there able to help me out a little?
I’ve been learning the iPhone for a bit but I doubt I’m the right person to ask.
I can, however, thoroughly recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-iPhone-Development-Exploring-SDK/dp/1430216263/
You can get the source code for all the projects (free) from the book’s forums
http://iphonedevbook.com/forum/
And the one of the author’s blog
http://iphonedevelopment.blogspot.com/
In particular it sounds like you might want to look at things relating to .plist files which are kind of XML collections that work well for small-ish simple data sets.
The two chapters on Table Views are pretty good for that.
Thank you for the info! Just out of curiosity, are you starting with programming experience going into playing with the iPhone as a development platform or are you completely new to programming? Subsequently, do you think the book provides you with a solid foundation for exploring and developing an app that comes to mind or do you find yourself still looking for more information elsewhere?
I think I’m being overly ambitious with my thoughts for the app I have in mind, but I have a good idea on how to implement it in stages to be able to tackle things in manageable components. My first dilemma is simply how to start with a “reference” section (so-to-speak) and the best way to handle it for growth and cross-linking to the other sections I have in mind.
The problem I’m facing is simply having no real idea where to start. I don’t have a programming background (limited scripting experience, very limited exposure to C, and very limited exposure to C++). The two books I’ve gone through have helped in understanding the environment in general, but neither went into storing information in any type of fashion once the program exits, and nothing on storing data that the app could call upon and display (such as what a reference type of app would provide).
Naturally I don’t want to give too much away in an open discussion, but if you’re curious feel free to email me