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Closed 10 years ago.
Recently I have been thinking maybe I should try out Storyboard in XCode.
I have always programmatically done my views in XCode since I didn't quite like the Interface Builder in the past. I wanted to know exactly what was happening in my apps, so I never really used any interface builders.
So I want to hear experiences of people who have used both, advantages and disadvantages.
I like managing all my UIViewControllers programmatically. But when I set up the UIViews, I kinda have to run my simulator multiple times to check if I have placed my view on the right pixel.
So I like the Interface Builders for the fact that I can see where my views will be positioned.
What do you think?
In the apps I have I actually use a combination of both.
If you're used to doing everything programatically then you will probably find it easier to start off with doing separate xibs.
Doing it that way means that any flow of the VCs is still done programatically like you are already doing.
The main advantage that you get from using a Storyboard is that you can create the flow of the app using IB as well as the UI of each VC. Oh, you can also create custom UITableViewCells within the table it is related to also.
Once you have got used to doing everything with XIBs you should find it easy to move on to Storyboard stuff.
Having said that, there isn't a chain of... Code < XIBs < Storyboard.
They should be sued to complement each other.
I've made a few apps using Storyboards and they worked brilliantly. Just before Christmas I started another app and the requirements of the app lead me down a path of explicitly using XIBs and no storyboard at all.
I've also made apps where the majority of the app uses storyboard but then there are certain common places that all use the same VC or all use the same UIView subclass and for those I have created my own separate XIB files.
It really depends what you are doing but either way, if you can do it in code then most of the time it is actually a lot easier and just as powerful in IB.
(with the exclusion of View drawing etc...)
The new StoryBoard interface is quite nice and intuitive. It still gives you fine-grained control however, without you needing to do everything programmatically. I think it is definitely much more efficient, and it might take about an hour to get used to it is definitely worth the time, from my perspective.
For apps that see repeated interface tweaks Interface Builder has been such a time saver for me - especially for projects with picky clients. The learning curve isn't really that steep if you already know how to code the same things manually which it sounds like you do. I'd say go for it and you won't regret it. I haven't.
Related
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Closed 10 years ago.
I just read a comment saying something like
Yet another reason never to use nibs
Is it such bad practice to use nibs to construct your views in iOS? I think it's a fine system, enables you to construct views quickly without writing a lot of code. I've been working with nibs for a while now and never saw much downsides to their use.
So my question is: should I use nibs or code my views, and why?
I think the statement "never to use nibs" is ridiculous. You just have to know when to use them and when to avoid them. They're great for complex but static views, where you would waste a lot of time getting the coordinates and sizes right. For dynamic GUIs of course you should use code instead.
However, some people might fear that the GUI is out of their control, if they don't create it themselves by code and see every detail. But that's a subjective point.
One sure downside is, that xibs are hard to merge if you use source control. Xib files are actually XML files and when you change something in the GUI, a lot of references are added, removed or changed in the background. This will then result in conflicts that are very difficult to resolve.
Another one might be performance reasons. Loading your GUI from a nib file is slightly slower (in some cases) then creating it directly in code. Some people suggest not to use any nibs for the GUI that has to be loaded at application launch to shorten the launch time. But I'm not sure if there is a significant difference or not.
I prefer using NIBs wherever possible!
My reasons are:
Easy to maintain and in need of a change I can view the result right away.
Now that IPhone5 has a new resolution - things were really easy to do in the NIB
Easy to use
Less code to write
I even make SMALL popup views there and set the container view to hidden.
then I show/hide these popup views with containerView.hidden = YES/NO;
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Closed 11 years ago.
I have been working on an application from past 4 months and it's very much depends on Google Maps on iOS platform. Recently one of my friends raised a concern that what if Apple Inc. decides to use a different Map provider?
It turns out after few searching on internet that Apple is going to replace Google Maps with some new advance 3D maps build by company called C3. (One of the researched resource). Well now I am worried of my already written code,
Should I delay my development work until this new technology gets in? or just wait until Apple announces officially.
Thanks
This is a common dilemma in programming, and there's a common solution too. Develop your own primitives - whether you need to display overlays, show landmarks, draw polygons and lines, do everything through stubs in your own code. If the underlying platform has to change, you then have a few well-known places to update to the new API.
Be very strict about not accessing the underlying API anywhere that isn't in your wrapper layer, and it should be straight-forward to change to a different later. Not free, of course, but so long as it's possible to implement the primitives you need in the new layer, you just need to change those, and can leave the rest of your project untouched.
It's not worth losing months' of having a finished project to avoid this situation.
Edit: This approach has another benefit - if you end up writing multiple primitive layers for different APIs, you may be able to let the user pick between them: you may have a (more expensive) higher-quality map layer which you charge for, and a cheap/free one which you don't - allowing people free access to a lower-quality version, and letting them buy an upgrade to the better maps. Or ... there are lots of possibilities. It's the same pattern some applications take with data-persistence layers, letting people run the same application on top of differing data platforms. There are lots of examples of this patterm.
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Closed 11 years ago.
sometimes i'm using OO des. and sometimes procedural style and everytime i use oop i feel like wasting resources on nothing. say i have a situation where i need to grab some values from datasource, a pool of bannerinfo. For the further work i can declare a banner class and decorators for additional functionality, but why would i do such a hard sequence - i got to grab, instantiate objects, fill them, wrap and so on, rather then just: grab data, run procedural code on data; yeah in many times oop just helps to organize logic and make decisions flexible, but on the other hand it's a waste of time on design (i experience a lot of problems solving simple stuff while putting them into oop style) and obviously a waste of machine resources. i'm kinda stuck in that mindset, im young but i've already seen some projects in oop - i wouldn't say that they're easy-understandable; that idead of oop is pretty charming - organising, making logically, but...
So, would you mind to point out some difference between situations when i should use oop/procedural styles. I'll appriciate any links to additional literature on that topic.Thanks!.
That data you're grabbing has a structure to it, i.e. the order in which the fields show up within each record in the data source. The code you want to run on that data is closely bound to that structure (i.e. the code is not going to apply to other data structures, and if the data structure changes you certainly want to change the code). So it makes sense to keep the data and behaviour together from a "mental information management" point of view, and object are a great way to do this.
What if your program grows, and you want to iterate through bannerinfo in multiple places within the project? Of course you could create a routine available from the whole program which does what you want on the bannerinfo, and call that from each point where you need it. But what if you then think of other things you want to do with a bannerinfo? Of course you could just create another routine available from the whole program, but it would be completely separate from the first. What if these two routines had some code in common that you could push out to a separate routine, would you create yet another routine available from the whole program, even though it's only used by the other two?
With OOP you'd have a class with two public methods, and one private one for that third routine. Why is this different to having three routines available to the whole program? The answer is clutter. You can create as many additional methods on that class, and it won't add clutter to the parts where you're not using that particular class as they won't be available. If the data structure of bannerinfo changes, you only need to go to one place to make the changes.
Of course there's more, but I hope this helps demonstrate where OOP can be useful. Its all about making it easy to manage. If your specifc problem doesn't care for that because it is a one-off, or will never grow, then there's not necessarily any benefit.
Final note: whether the benefit is worth the effort also depends on other factors such as how comfortable you are with using objects, what you're trying to do with them (inheritance can get murky), and also on the language and syntax itself.
"grab data, run procedural code on data"
I don't see how dealing with data can be easier with procedural. With OOP you can do stuff like
$users = $db->from('users')->where('score',100,'>')->getMany();
Or with an ORM:
$user = $orm->entity('User')->findOne($id);
$user->setPassword('abc123'); // set a new password
$orm->save($user);
About showing the data (also called 'the view' in MVC architecture), I have to agree that decorators can be annoying. But if you use a templating engine, things are easy as they can get. You didn't mention which language you are using, but if you are into PHP you can use Twig
Personally, I feel more comfortable with OOP even in small projects, where you don't even do things like unit-testing. But I think the best of OOP comes when you need maintainability, collaboration, reusability, etc.
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Closed 12 years ago.
I have seen some people who refuse to use Interface Builder and prefer to make everything using code. Isn't this a bit tedious and doesn't it take longer? Why would people do that?
This is usually a holdover from working in other environments with other UI builders. A lot of UI builder programs are viewed as newbie hand-holding at best and outright harmful at worst. Interface Builder is unusual in that it's actually the preferred way to create interfaces for the platform.
Some people don't like mixing code functionality in interface designs. Another example is when flash devs would include lots of code snippets directly in the stage (fla files), rather than in separate .as files. With xib it's not as big of a problem, since they are xml and can be merged quite easily when using source control. I personally like using xib's because we have a team of devs and designers -- splitting up the work load is nice. The designers can easily port their photoshop/fireworks designs into xibs and we can focus on the functionality.
Sometimes you want to do something that the UI builder can't quite handle (these situations aren't common, but they do come up now and then). Sometimes you may feel you have better control over what's happening when you write the code yourself. Me, I prefer to let the UI builders do it as much as possible, but sometimes it doesn't always work that nicely, and I sometimes have had to write the code myself.
Possibly because the Interface Builder is another tool to understand. Also, it's useful to know how to do things programmatically in case nibs don't give you enough functionality.
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Closed 10 years ago.
Interface Builder can be used for basic dependency injection in a Cocoa app, but is anyone aware of more complete dependency injection frameworks for Objective-C/Cocoa for when you don't want to instantiate objects in a NIB file?
Edit
To clarify, I recognize that IB can be used for basic DI, but I'm looking for a framework with more complete functionality, including separate production and testing configurations, along the lines of Groovy or Springs.
objection by AtomicObject. It is molded in the image of Guice.
I'll go out on a limb and speak on this. Dependency injection as described by the top answer doesn't address the core issue that those seeking to use it are having. We'd like a means of development where component A does not directly instantiate or reference component B. Component A is bound by protocol to component B and is not referenced at all by component A. This allows component B to be replaced at anytime without ever touching component A. I down voted but I will research your references as it seems there are a few who agree with you. I'm not trying to debate, just looking to learn. I'd like to understand more about the "nope you don't need to do that" approach.
I think you'll find that you don't need it in late-binding languages like Objective C, Ruby, Lisp and so on. Like Jamis' revelation that he was going down an overly complex path when he tried to build needle, a DI framework for Ruby- Net::SSH revisited.
Here are some links that will hopefully give you some sample code to do similar things in Objective C. With categories you can essentially change any class's behavior at runtime. See Mac Developer Tips – Objective-C: Categories and the Cocoa API docs on categories. Essentially you don't need some central place to ask for "the thing that does x" that is configurable, because you can just instantiate TheThingThatDoesX directly and if something else needs to change/hook into that behavior it can use categories.
Typhoon
Almost one year ago, I released: https://github.com/typhoon-framework/Typhoon
The Typhoon-website lists the key features. A quick summary:
Non-invasive. No macros or XML required. Uses a powerful Objective-C runtime approach.
Makes it easy to have multiple configurations of the same base-class or protocol.
No magic strings - supports IDE refactoring, code-completion and compile-time checking.
Supports injection of view controllers and storyboard integration.
Supports both initializer and property injection, plus life-cycle management.
Powerful memory management features. Provides pre-configured objects, without the memory overhead of singletons.
Excellent support for circular dependencies.
Lean. It has a very low footprint, so is appropriate for CPU and memory constrained devices.
Battle-tested - used in all kinds of Appstore-featured apps
An internationally distributed core team (we even monitor StackOverflow), so support for any of your questions are never far away :)
API Docs and sample app
API docs: http://www.typhoonframework.org/docs/latest/api/
We have a nice sample app: https://github.com/jasperblues/Typhoon-example
Quality Control:
We also maintain a robust quality control system.
Every commit triggers a series of regression tests
We maintain high test coverage.
You don't have to instantiate the object in the NIB file. If you set the File's Owner to your object's class and then link things in the view/window/whatever up to that, you can set your object as the owner at runtime by loading the nib file manually. That way you can have a dynamic instance of an object that still gets dependencies injected properly.
What about dependecy injection implementation at Objective-IOC
What about ObjectivePim?
ObjectivePim
I’ve written a very simple DI container, the code is on GitHub. It can only do the bare basics, ie. discover the dependencies of an object and satisfy them using other given objects. I have found that to be usable in real-world applications, the code is very simple and it’s fun to hack with.
Has any looked at the Associative References feature of Mac OS X 10.6?
I believe with this it would be possible to build or already have something similar to DI.
As far as I have seen however any reference that is needed in an object has to be fetched manually using objc_getAssociatedObject().
Manfred
Interface Builder does not do ANY dependency injection. It does not need to. Interface Builder serializes objects. When a nib is "awoken" (aka opened), there are no "dependencies" to resolve -- there are just properties to set. Very, very simple. Opening a nib relies solely on the NSCoding protocol and key-value coding.
Dependency injection, pretty much a make-work project at the best of times, or at best a generalized glue layer between components designed independently, is of no use in well written Objective-C code. You are asking for a tool that you don't need.
In Objective-C, software that requires an anonymous service declares a Protocol. Services then adopt this protocol. Clients load services as dynamic plug-ins. On the other hand, if the server was written prior to the client, it is simply a matter of writing a new plug-in which adapts the existing interface to the protocol. This is less work, and more straightforward than trying to define an intermediate data-driven system for "discovering" (please) an interface at runtime.
Is it not obvious to everyone that the big secret of DI is just that it's a way to write code in XML instead of in the native language? I'd really like to hear a good argument as to how XML is somehow a better programming language than a real programming language. It doesn't make any sense.
I work with Spring all day and I've checked Groovy. I'm by no means an XCode/Cocoa expert, but IB does only some dependency injection, which Groovy doesn't even really claims to be doing.
I reckon you are not looking for DI, but rather for a well compiled set of integrated libraries which saves you from typing a lot of code which other people also have typed. I think there are no Spring like frameworks for Cocoa because for some reason people tend to see "Open Source" as "not platform dependant" and therefore Cocoa is a bit left out in the cold.
Depending on your needs though, there are some nice free open source libraries available for Cocoa, all listed on CocoaDev in a nice list.
I know it isn't Spring, but I hope it helps.
DI is a property of a runtime execution enviroment requiring dynamic binding. I'm very new to Obj-C and Cocoa so I may speak out of turn. Unless I'm missing something, I don't see how one could implement DI except by interpreting Obj C rather than compiling it, or by modifying the runtime environment.
I suspect that the DI like behaviour of IB is because there is a domain specific runtime environment associated with apps that are built with it.
I'm happy to be corrected though.
Categories appear to be an implementation of mixin's, allowing dynamic dispatch of methods to a delegate. Rather cool and similar to Java's interface concept, thought the details differ and from the following, I can't see if constants can be defined in a category, though member fields cannot.
objective-c categories