I feel like I always start new posts now with.. I’ve been busy… It’s been a while since I’ve posted.. I’ve had a lot on… etc and this post is no different. I’ve been working on a bunch of projects lately both sound and programming related that have been keeping me very busy.
Although it is probably quite specific issue I thought I would post this just incase anyone else was having the same troubles. I’ve started using Xcode 6 and was very excited about using the view debugging tools that let you view your view hierarchy of your app in 3d to inspect your view elements. This is great if your loading some or all of your view programmatically and using the layoutSubviews in your view classes and things are working the way that you expected.

The problem for me was that when ever I tried to use this feature my Mac would freeze for a second and then reboot which was a little frustrating. Turns out this was a fault with the geforce 330M graphics card in mid 2010 Mac pros. Since it’s now 2014 and Apple will only replace this 3 years after the issue was discovered I don’t think I’ll be able to it fixed. Luckily found a little app called gfxCardStatus while allows you to lock your system to using the integrated GPU. After doing this BAM it worked perfectly!

You can download gfxCardStatus here: http://gfx.io/

 

The prepareForSegue method is called just before a segue is performed and allows you to pass variables to the new view controller that is the segue’s destination.

While the prepareForSegue for segue call hasn’t changed between iOS 5 and iOS 6 there has been a new method, shouldPerformSegueWithIdentifier, that has been introduced in iOS 6 which allows you to specify if you want the segue to be be performed or not.. It’s very useful especially for things like only displaying one popover at a time
I’ve included an example of how to to use it below:

-(void) prepareForSegue:(UIStoryboardPopoverSegue *)segue sender:(id)sender
{
    if ([[segue identifier] isEqualToString:@"Next View"]) {
      
        //The segue is to the a View Controller called NextViewController
        (NextViewController *nvc =  (NextViewController  *) segue.destinationViewController;
       
       //Set properties in the view controller - note the views outlets are not set yet
        nvc.stringProperty1 = @"This Is Property 1";
      
         nvc.property2 = @"This Is Property 2";
       //Set self as the delegate
       nvc.delegate = self;
    }
}

- (BOOL)shouldPerformSegueWithIdentifier:(NSString *)identifier sender:(id)sender {
    

    
        if ([identifier isEqualToString:@"Crazy View" ]) {
           
            return NO;
      }


        return YES;
        
    }
        
        
       
}

In a lot of the iOS example projects that Apple provides, such as the scrollview paging example, view controllers are Instantiated from an xib file and not from a storyboard which was introduced in iOS 5.
Instantiating a view controller with a story board is quiet easy you just have to specify the name of the storyboard, ie MainStoryBoard_iPhone without the .storyboard and make sure that you have set the identifier of the view controller that you want to instantiate.
Below is a short example:

UIStoryboard *storyboard = [UIStoryboard storyboardWithName:@"MainStoryboard" bundle:nil];

MonkeyViewController mkvc = [storyboard instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier:@"monkeyView"];

you can then add the view to a scrollView using something like:
[self.scrollView addSubview:mkvc.view];

I am about to release a new version of Aussie Lingo Audio Companion – (Australian Slang Dictionary with Audio) in the next couple of days. This update will slightly update the iPhone interface to make it more user friendly, add a suggest button to be able to suggest new lingo straight from the main screen of the iPad and iPhone version, update with 15 or so new bits of lingo and add a button which will open the new Facebook page….

Which brings me to the great segue of…. the new face book page!
https://www.facebook.com/AussieLingoAudioCompanion

If your wandering around Facebook and need something to “like” it’s just sitting there… waiting…

Thanks to everyone who has already liked it. Once again if you want to check out the details or some audio samples head to or use the menu above!

In a new iPhone app I am currently developing I needed to be able to import the data from a plist file (apple’s XML formatted file) stored within the app bundle and display it in my app. Luckily there is a very handy class method in the NSDictionary class which enables you to create a Dictionary (basically an array with key values) from a file.
NSDictionary *dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:file];

As I wanted to be able to iterate through all the values in the plist, I created a main dictionary named “database” then within that an array which stored another dictionary that holds my key based data.

This is the code I used to open the plist file and iterate though all the values it contains:

NSString *file = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"list_of_dogs" ofType:@"plist"];
        NSDictionary *dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:file];
        
        NSArray *dogArray = [[NSArray alloc] initWithArray:[dict objectForKey:@"database"]];
        
        
        for (NSDictionary *sectionDict in dogArray){
          
            //loop through the data from the plist
            
            
           NSLog(@"Dog Name = %@ ",[sectionDict objectForKey:@"dog_name"]);   
           NSLog(@"Dog Type = %@ ",[sectionDict objectForKey:@"dog_type"]);  


         
            
            
        }

This is the XML format of the plist file I created:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
	<key>database</key>
	<array>
		<dict>
			<key>dog_name</key>
			<string>Jasper</string>
			<key>dog_type</key>
			<string>Great Dane</string>
			
		</dict>
		<dict>
			<key>dog_name</key>
			<string>Samd</string>
			<key>dog_type</key>
			<string>Jack Russell</string>
			
		</dict>
	</array>
</dict>
</plist>

Any questions? hit me up in the comments

In one of the IOS apps I am currently working on I been using a table view controller to display information for a core data database.  I was wanting to change the background colour of the UITableCell depending on a boolean variable in my manged objects.

Originally I tried setting this in the UITableView delegate method

- (UITableViewCell *)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView cellForRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath

After I quick test I realised that because the UITableViewCell is effectively recycled (de-cued and used again) this approach was not going to work.

After a little more reading I found the UITableView delegate method

-(void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView willDisplayCell:(UITableViewCell *)cell forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath

This is what you need to use if you want to change a cell that is displaying a specific row (index path) in your table.

Here is an example of the code I used in my app:

 

-(void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView willDisplayCell:(UITableViewCell *)cell forRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    MonkeyManagedObject *monkey = [self.fetchedResultsController objectAtIndexPath:indexPath];
    
    
    if ([monkey.hasBanana isEqualToNumber:[NSNumber numberWithBool:YES]] ) {
        
        cell.backgroundColor = [UIColor redColor];
        
        
        
    } else {
        
        
        cell.backgroundColor = [UIColor whiteColor];        
    }
    
    
    
    
    
    
}

In my code I am using a NSFetchedResultsController to populate my table view also because the Boolean type in a managed object is actually an NSNumber you need to use the NSNumber class method:

[NSNumber numberWithBool:YES]