I am not sure this can be done at all...
Background: I am constructing an in-house application which means it does not get into appstore so i am not limited by the appstore guidelines.
I have a dylib which loads before the main application. It is a kind of augmenting library for applications. I am using the constructor __attribute__ to load my stuff. In there i would like to put an alertview or any kind of popup which will receive a user/password question. If the password is correct than the user is allowed to continue into the original application.
Since this is in the dylib i do not yet have a UIApplication and i do not want to interfere in the original application or sources.
Suggestions, tips are welcome...
Thanks.
This is how i've done very similar thing in my application:
0) Intercept applicationDidFinishLaunching message, add your own code, run original implementation.
1) Make opaque fullscrean UIWindow (for example, black).
2) Set its windowLevel to UIWindowLevelAlert + 1 So it hides every other window in app.
3) Add fields for user and password to this UIWindow.
I'm pretty sure you can't show a UIAlertView without having initialized the UIApplication and UIWindow instance.
Only the iOS itself can show alerts outside the application, for example when it asks for permissions or in case of iTunes or game center login ...
As a workaround you can:
make a login view inside the application
create a web application for the login process. The web app could launch the native app with a custom URL scheme and pass parameters like 'user' and 'password' to the app.
You should create a View for the Login then if you pass the login you can go on using the app otherwise you just make the app shut itself.
You could start a thread when loading your dylib and make it listen for your UIApplication to become available, then display the alert on the main thread.
Related
I have a custom url scheme working well, but there is one small behaviour I am hoping to change... Currently the inbound url is captured and processed in the following code (so, all good here):
- (void) handleURLEvent:(NSAppleEventDescriptor*)event withReplyEvent:(NSAppleEventDescriptor*)replyEvent
{
NSString* url = [[event paramDescriptorForKeyword:keyDirectObject] stringValue];
//I parse and deal with the url here//
}
Is it possible to avoid my app becoming the frontmost application? Whenever the url is received, my app is open already, as I initiated the communication from this app, and are merely listening for the reply. However, sometimes the call is made via an NSTimer so my app may or may not be the frontmost app. I don't want to disrupt the workflow if I am currently say browsing pages in Safari by having my app take the focus from Safari. I hope this makes sense.
Is this possible?
For anyone who's interested i instead set up a group container. I save my payload to the group defaults and then send an NSDistributedNotification from my helper app. The main app gets the notification, and reads the payload data from group defaults.
Such a workaround... but its necessary as both the main and helper apps are sandboxed.
I also discovered that KVO on group defaults doesn't work in the sandbox, and neither does sending a userDictionary in the NSDistributedNOtification.
:(
I have had to write sooo much extra code to make my app play nicely in the sandbox.
I'll just want to ask if someone here know the step by step process of creating a deep link for an IOS app? I've tried to read some articles but it did not give me absolute answers. Thank you :)
Deep linking is basically just setting up url to your app so that other apps can launch it with information. The can launch to certain parts of the app if you set it up so that your app reacts to certain urls. So there are a few things that you have to do. For this example I will use two apps. If you are trying to integrate with an existing app you just have to find out what their url schemes are. So for this example I will use 'Messages' as one app and 'Schedule' as another.
First: in the 'Messages' app we will need to setup the schemes our Schedule app to call.
So open up your first app we need to add schemes so other apps can open it. Go to your info.plist click the little + and type URL types hit the triangle to expand and hit the + type URL Schemes and within that one add an item and put your apps name in it. Also add URL identifier along with $(PRODUCT_BUNDLE_IDENTIFIER) as the value. `
Then we just have to add the apps that we can open so hit the top level + again and add LSApplicationQueriesSchemes This whitlists the apps so we can evaluate weather or not they are installed on the device.
Now we can jump over to the other app and create a way to call this. For this example lets make it happen when we press a button.
IBAction launchMessagesApp() {
let url = NSURL(string: "Messages://") where UIApplication.sharedApplication().canOpenURL(url) {
self.launchAppWithURL(url, name: "Messages")
}
The canOpenURL(url) checks to see if the application is on the device. If you wanted to you could launch the app store to your app if that retuned false. then launchAppWithURL actually launches it. That is the basic setup you may also want to have multiple things happen so you may have multiple url schemes that launch the same app but take it to different parts of the app. In the app delegate of the app in the function
func application(app: UIApplication, openURL url: NSURL, options: [String : AnyObject]) -> Bool {
print(url)
//Any customizations for the app here
}
You can do anything you can imagine.
Have you checked out Turnpike? It's an open source tool for enabling deep linking in iOS apps. http://urxtech.github.io/#GettingStarted
If you want to create a deeplink you might need to do some server code to detect the user device/browser and do some actions based on this.
I've created a tool that simplify this process, you can check it here:
http://www.uppurl.com/
It's mainly a short link tool that checks for user device and give him the right url based on his devices. With this tool you don't need to write any server code and it also takes care of different devices, operating systems and browsers.
I am currently making an app that recommends other apps to download on the apple app store. I assumed that the only way for users to download these linked apps was to call the iTunes URL of the particular app -> the apple app store would then open pushing the original calling app into the background -> then the user would press the download button here as per normal.
Then I was playing with the app "App Hero" and they do something I thought wasn't possible. You can actually download another app to your device without ever leaving the "App Hero" application. I thought this was impossible due to sandboxing. They have a modal segue to what appears to be an embedded app store where you can commence installation of another app. This "embedded" app store doesn't have the usual UITabBar running along the bottom but everything else is basically the same.
Does anyone have any idea how they would have achieved this? It doesn't appear to be a UIWebView, perhaps I am wrong. And is this against any of the apple regulations?
*This is no way an advertisement for "App Hero". I am genuinely impressed/confused how they are able to do this and would love this functionality in my own app if it is allowed.
The class you are looking for is called SKStoreProductViewController. Docs here.
Alright, this title might seem strange, but bear with me. I have an app which can be set on its preferences by the user to launch at login. That means I can expect sometimes the app will be launched by the user (clicking on the Dock/Finder, etc), but some other times the app will be launched automatically by the system, on login.
I would like to show a window when the app is launched by the user, but not when it is launched automatically (as I imagine that would be a pain for the user). How can I do that?
Although it may depend on how you intend to automate the launch of the app, you could use command line arguments to distinguish between system launch vs. user launch.
So, the command line launch might like like this:
MyApp -autoLaunch "Y"
To parse the command line args in a Cocoa app, you could use NSUserDefaults (Yes, you can!):
if( ![[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:#"autoLaunch"] isEqualToString:"Y"] ) {
// do something for user initiated launch
}
I don't have an exact answer to your question. However, may I suggest that your app should show the window if the window was visible when the user last quit your app?
This may be more in-line with the Mac UI guidelines' suggestion on restoring apps and windows, and is within the user's expectations.
Also, a user who set your app to launch at login will probably understand to close the window and not have it restored the next time, or make the system also hide your app during login.
I'm developing iPad application I need to integrate third party project(Source code) with my code like i have a button in my code, when i click on the button it landed to third party application page then navigate around and vice verrsa. what is the best way to swap the app?
Regards,
Sri
Use the url schema.
See add custom URL Schema using http://
Every Application can have customer url schemas. Like ...
yourapp://someting?withparams=1.
To get they running you have to change your Info.plist to inform the iOS that your app is handling that url schema. See the SO post above.
When another App calls that URL your app gets opened and you get a hook on your app delegate.
check http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/iPhoneURLScheme_Reference/Introduction/Introduction.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007899
and:
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/UIKit/Reference/UIApplicationDelegate_Protocol/Reference/Reference.html#//apple_ref/occ/intf/UIApplicationDelegate
Also look here:
http://wiki.akosma.com/IPhone_URL_Schemes