MFMessageComposeViewController *controller = [[[MFMessageComposeViewController alloc] init] autorelease];
if([MFMessageComposeViewController canSendText])
{
controller.body = @"A test message from http://www.macoscoders.com";
controller.recipients = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:@"9880182343",nil];
controller.messageComposeDelegate = self;
[self presentModalViewController:controller animated:YES];
}

The MFMessageComposeViewController invoking class can implement the below delegate method to know the result of the SMS sending operation.

- (void)messageComposeViewController:(MFMessageComposeViewController *)controller didFinishWithResult:(MessageComposeResult)result

You can download sample XCode project source here

[_webView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:@"document.getElementById('cancel').onclick = function onclick(event) { window.location.href = 'fbconnect:cancel'; }"];

This should fix the issue and dialogDidCancel should get called correctly..!

The Info.plist file belongs directly inside of the bundles Contents folder — that is to say, one level up from the Resources subdirectory. Thus copying Info.plist to that would serve little purpose, and might even be evidence of programmer oversight on something (as Xcode might think), hence the warning.  The Info.plist should not actually be a member of any target. The check boxes in the Get Info window of the info.plist should be unchecked and this warning can be avoided.

Hope this helps..!

Flash CS5: Native iPhone Application Development

The new support for iPhone applications in the Flash Platform tooling will not allow iPhone users to browse web content built with Flash technology on iPhone, but it may allow developers to repackage existing web content as applications for iPhone if they choose to do so.Flash Player uses a just-in-time compiler and virtual machine within a browser plug-in to play back content on websites. Those technologies are not allowed on the iPhone at this time, so a Flash Player for iPhone is not being made available today. Flash Professional CS5 will enable developers to build applications for iPhone that are installed as native applications. Users will be able to access the apps after downloading them from Apple’s App Store and installing them on iPhone or iPod touch. Developers can deliver applications built with Flash Platform tooling just like any other iPhone application. This will require the developer to be a member of the iPhone Developer Program and follow the program guidelines. iPhone applications built with Flash Platform tools are compiled into standard, native iPhone executables, just like any other iPhone applicatio. Applications can be built targeting iPhone OS 3.0 and later.

Update: Apple has bowled out Adobe’s effort to get iPhone application development on Flash platform with introduction of new clause in its iPhone SDK 4.0 license agreement which makes developing iPhone application using tools other than from Apple as illegal. Check more details about whats new in iPhone SDK 4.0 and its implications at http://www.macoscoders.com/2010/04/09/new-features-in-iphone-os-4-0/

iPhone OS streams movies and audio using HTTP over EDGE, 3G, and Wi-Fi networks. iPhone OS uses a native application to play back video even when video is embedded in your webpages. Video automatically expands to the size of the screen and rotates when the user changes orientation. The controls automatically hide when they are not in use and appear when the user taps the screen. This is the experience the user expects when viewing all video on iPhone OS.

Safari on iPhone OS supports a variety of rich media, including QuickTime movies. Safari on iPhone OS does not support Flash so don’t bring up JavaScript alerts that ask users to download Flash. Also, don’t use JavaScript movie controls to play back video since iPhone OS supplies its own controls.

Safari on the desktop supports the same audio and video formats as Safari on iPhone OS. However, if you use the audio and video HTML elements on the desktop, you can customize the play back controls. See Safari DOM Extensions Reference for more details on the HTMLMediaElement class.

Follow these guidelines to deliver the best web audio and video experience in Safari on any platform:

• Follow current best practices for embedding movies in webpages as described in “Sizing Movies Appropriately,” “Don’t Let the Bit Rate Stall Your Movie,” and “Using Supported Movie Standards.”
• Use QuickTime Pro to encode H.264/AAC at appropriate sizes and bit rates for EDGE, 3G, and Wi-Fi networks, as described in “Encoding Video for Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE.”
• Use reference movies so that iPhone OS automatically streams the best version of your content for the current network connection, as described in “Creating a Reference Movie.”
• Use poster JPEGs (not poster frames in a movie) to display a preview of your embedded movie in webpages, as described in “Creating a Poster Image for Movies.”
• Make sure the HTTP servers hosting your media files support byte-range requests, as described in “Configuring Your Server.”
• If your site has a custom media player, also provide direct links to the media files. iPhone OS users can follow these links to play those files directly.

Sizing Movies Appropriately

In landscape orientation on iPhone OS, the screen is 480 x 320 pixels. Users can easily switch the view mode between scaled-to-fit (letterboxed) and full-screen (centered and cropped). You should use a size that preserves the aspect ratio of your content and fits within a 480 x 360 rectangle. 480 x 360 is a good choice for 4:3 aspect ratio content and 480 x 270 is a good choice for widescreen content as it keeps the video sharp in full-screen view mode. You can also use 640 x 360 or anamorphic 640 x 480 with pixel aspect ratio tagging for widescreen content.

Don’t Let the Bit Rate Stall Your Movie

When viewing media over the network, the bit rate makes a crucial difference to the playback experience. If the network cannot keep up with the media bit rate, playback stalls. Encode your media for iPhone OS as described in “Encoding Video for Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE” and use a reference movie as described in “Creating a Reference Movie.”

Using Supported Movie Standards

The following compression standards are supported:

• H.264 Baseline Profile Level 3.0 video, up to 640 x 480 at 30 fps. Note that B frames are not supported in the Baseline profile.
• MPEG-4 Part 2 video (Simple Profile)
• AAC-LC audio, up to 48 kHz

Movie files with the extensions .mov, .mp4, .m4v, and .3gp are supported.

Any movies or audio files that can play on iPod play correctly on iPhone.

If you export your movies using QuickTime Pro 7.2, as described in “Encoding Video for Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE,” then you can be sure that they are optimized to play on iPhone OS.

Encoding Video for Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE

Because users may be connected to the Internet via wired or wireless technology, using either Wi-Fi, 3G, or EDGE on iPhone OS, you need to provide alternate media for these different connection speeds. You can use QuickTime Pro, the QuickTime API, or any Apple applications that provide iPhone OS exporters to encode your video for Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE. This section contains specific instructions for exporting video using QuickTime Pro.

Follow these steps to export video using QuickTime Pro 7.2.1 and later:

1. Open your movie using QuickTime Player Pro.
2. Choose File > Export for Web.A dialog appears.
3. Enter the file name prefix, location of your export, and set of versions to export as shown in Figure 8-1.
   Figure 8-1 Export movie panel

   

4. Click Export.QuickTime Player Pro saves these versions of your QuickTime movie, along with a reference movie, poster image, and ReadMe.html file to the specified location. See the ReadMe.html file for instructions on embedding the generated movie in your webpage, including sample HTML.

Creating a Reference Movie

A reference movie contains a list of movie URLs, each of which has a list of tests, as show in Figure 8-2. When opening the reference movie, a playback device or computer chooses one of the movie URLs by finding the last one that passes all its tests. Tests can check the capabilities of the device or computer and the speed of the network connection.

If you use QuickTime Pro 7.2.1 or later to export your movies for iPhone OS, as described in “Encoding Video for Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE,” then you already have a reference movie. Otherwise, you can use the MakeRefMovie tool to create reference movies. You can download the tool from:

• http://developer.apple.com/quicktime/quicktimeintro/tools

Also, refer to the MakeiPhoneRefMovie sample for a command-line tool that creates reference movies.

For more details on reference movies and instructions on how to set them up see “Applications and Examples” in HTML Scripting Guide for QuickTime.

Creating a Poster Image for Movies

The video is not decoded until the user enters movie playback mode. Consequently, when displaying a webpage with video, users may see a gray rectangle with a QuickTime logo until they tap the Play button. Therefore, use a poster JPEG as a preview of your movie. If you use QuickTime Pro 7.2.1 or later to export your movies, as described in “Encoding Video for Wi-Fi, 3G, and EDGE,” then a poster image is already created for you. Otherwise, follow these instructions to set a poster image.

If you are using the <video> element, specify a poster image by setting the poster attribute as follows:

<video poster="poster.jpg" src="movie.m4v" ...> </video>

If you are using an <embed> HTML element, specify a poster image by setting the image for src, the movie for href, the media MIME type for type, and myself as the target:

<embed src="poster.jpg" href="movie.m4v" type="video/x-m4v" target="myself" scale="1" ...>

Make similar changes if you are using the <object> HTML element or JavaScript to embed movies in your webpage.

On the desktop, this image is displayed until the user clicks, at which time the movie is substituted.

For more information on including QuickTime Movies in webpages, see the tutorial Including QuickTime In A Web Page.

Configuring Your Server

HTTP servers hosting media files for iPhone OS must support byte-range requests, which iPhone OS uses to perform random access in media playback. (Byte-range support is also known as content-range or partial-range support.) Most, but not all, HTTP 1.1 servers already support byte-range requests.

If you are not sure whether your media server supports byte-range requests, you can open the Terminal application in Mac OS X and use the curl command-line tool to download a short segment from a file on the server:

curl --range 0-99 http://example.com/test.mov -o /dev/null

If the tool reports that it downloaded 100 bytes, the media server correctly handled the byte-range request. If it downloads the entire file, you may need to update the media server. For more information on curl, see Mac OS X Man Pages.

Ensure that your HTTP server sends the correct MIME types for the movie filename extensions shown in Table 8-1.

Be aware that iPhone OS supports movies larger than 2 GB. However, some older web servers are not able to serve files this large. Apache 2 supports downloading files larger than 2 GB.

http://cocoawithlove.com/2009/04/easy-custom-uitableview-drawing.html

"Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=3000 UserInfo=0x113e80 "no valid 'aps-environment' entitlement string found for application"

APNS Error

XCode: Could Not Support Development

Today  when I started my work on an iPhone project, my XCode failed to mount my iPhone. The XCode organizer was showing an orange dot next to it instead of the usual green one. Organizer complained “Could Not Support Development”. I tried restarting my XCode, launched iTunes but in vain. iTunes was able to mount my iPhone but XCode simply failed and I was not able to test my app’s on my phone. Finally I restarted my iPhone and tried again. Bingooo..! it started working again. My iPhone was running the latest iPhone OS 3.0 GM developers build. See left for the screenshot of the error message that I got.

Error Starting Executable

Quite a few times in our iPhone application development cycle we would encounter XCode error “Error Starting Executable – No provisioned iPhone OS device is connected.” even when we know the device is connected to the machine.   This error occurs when the connected device is not configured in the XCode->Organizer. Organizer would fail to mount the device as the version of XCode installed on the developer machine may not support the version of iPhone OS installed on the device.

If you select the device in the Organizer, then XCode would list you the supported iPhone OS versions as well as the OS Version of the device. (An organe dot aganist the device in Organizer indicates it has not been mounted properly.)

iPod_Unmounted_In_Organizer

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    self.view.backgroundColor = [[UIColor alloc] initWithPatternImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"MyBackground.png"]];
}

the first feedback would be I am missing all the formatting options that I take for granted on desktop version of wordpress.

What is Push Notification and How does it work?

Let’s say you’re running a 3rd party IM (instant message) client on iPhone 2.0. When you exit the app, you no longer know if you’re receiving more messages. (Sure, there are work around over SMS and Email, but the app itself is dead to you).

With Apple’s Push Notification Service on iPhone OS 3.0, anytime someone sends you a new IM, an alert can be sent from the IM  developer’s servers (yes, they’ll have to keep a session open for you on their end), to Apple’s Push Notification Service (APNS) servers.

Apple’s PNS server will have a persistent TCP/IP connection to your iPhone . Once Apple PNS gets the alert from the developer server, APNS will “PUSH” it out to your iPhone 3.0.

Apple PNS currently supports 3 kinds of alerts: badges with a number (like Mail uses to show you unread messages), custom sounds (like a beep or bell or anything already built into the app by the developer), or modal message boxes (like the kind that pop up to tell you your battery is at 20%).

Apple isn’t making any promises on up-time for the service, and any new service will have delays and downtime.

What APNS doesn’t solve, however, is the lack of good notifications on the iPhone, and applications that require multitasking for something other than notification (i.e. streaming internet radio apps).

Imagine if 10 apps try to push out 10 alerts at the same time, how will Apple manage those on your device? Will you have to “cancel” or “accept” 50 modal message dialogs, or be hit by a cacophony of 30 random sounds? We don’t know yet, but hopefully Apple will address this.

Generate APNS SSL Certificate

To get started with APNS we need to generate an certificate unique to each applications which will support APNS. We need to log into our iPhone developer portal with “Team Agent” access.  Only users with “Team Agent” access can do the below mentioned process. The iPhone developer portal with “Team Agent ” has a detailed steps to generate an APNS certificate. You should be able to see the screen shown below in the portal to start creating your APNS certificate. Follow the steps mentioned below:-

Fig 1: APNS Development Certificate

(1) You need to create an App ID without .* in the iPhone developer Portal. An App ID without .* means its unique and works only for a single application

(2) Generate a certificate signing request from your Mac’s keychain (You should be an Team Agent to have access to the wizard shown in Figure 1) as shown in figure 2 and save to disk

(3) Upload the CertificateSigningRequest.certSigningRequest to the Program Portal

(4) Wait for the generation of cert (about 1 min). Download the certificate (aps_developer_identity.cer) from the Program Portal

(5) Keep (or rename them if you want) these 2 files (steps 2 and 4) in a safe place. You might need the CertificateSigningRequest.certSigningRequest file to request a production cert in the future or renew it again.

(6) Suppose you have imported the aps_developer_identity.cer to the keychain. Then you have to export these new cert and the private key of this cert (not the public key) and saved as .p12 files.

(7) Then you use these commands to generate the cert and key in Mac’s Terminal for PEM format (Privacy Enhanced Mail Security Certificate)

openssl pkcs12 -clcerts -nokeys -out cert.pem -in cert.p12
openssl pkcs12 -nocerts -out key.pem -in key.p12


(8) The cert.pem and key.pem files will be used by your own program communicating with APNS.

(9) If you want to remove the passphase of private key in key.pem, do this

openssl rsa -in key.pem -out key.unencrypted.pem

Then combine the certificate and key

cat cert.pem key.unencrypted.pem > ck.pem


But please set the file permission of this unencrypted key by using chmod 400 and is only readable by root in a sever configuration.

(10) The testing APNS is at ssl://gateway.sandbox.push.apple.com:2195

Fig 2: Request Certificate From Keychain Access

(11) For the source codes to push payload message to the APNS, you can find them in the Developer Forum. This is the one that I used, for php. Run this (after obtaining the device token from the testing device and with iPhone Client program setup)
php -f apns.php "My Message" 2

or if you put this php script and the ck.pem in a local web server, you can use this to test
http://127.0.0.1/apns/apns.php?message=Hello%20from%20macoscoders&badge=2&sound=received5.caf

apns.php




<?php

$deviceToken = '02da851dXXXXXXXXb4f2b5bfXXXXXXXXce198270XXXXXXXX0d3dac72bc87cd60'; // masked for security reason

// Passphrase for the private key (ck.pem file)

// $pass = '';

// Get the parameters from http get or from command line

$message = $_GET['message'] or $message = $argv[1] or $message = 'Message received from javacom';

$badge = (int)$_GET['badge'] or $badge = (int)$argv[2];

$sound = $_GET['sound'] or $sound = $argv[3];

// Construct the notification payload

$body = array();

$body['aps'] = array('alert' => $message);

if ($badge)

$body['aps']['badge'] = $badge;

if ($sound)

$body['aps']['sound'] = $sound;

/* End of Configurable Items */

$ctx = stream_context_create();

stream_context_set_option($ctx, 'ssl', 'local_cert', 'ck.pem');

// assume the private key passphase was removed.

// stream_context_set_option($ctx, 'ssl', 'passphrase', $pass);

$fp = stream_socket_client('ssl://gateway.sandbox.push.apple.com:2195', $err, $errstr, 60, STREAM_CLIENT_CONNECT, $ctx);

if (!$fp) {

print "Failed to connect $err $errstrn";

return;

}

else {

print "Connection OKn";

}

$payload = json_encode($body);

$msg = chr(0) . pack("n",32) . pack('H*', str_replace(' ', '', $deviceToken)) . pack("n",strlen($payload)) . $payload;

print "sending message :" . $payload . "n";

fwrite($fp, $msg);

fclose($fp);

?>

(12) For iPhone Client Program, you need to edit the bundle identifier to the App ID that you created and imported the new provisioning profile for that APP ID to the XCode and iPhone. Then implement the following methods in AppDelegate to Build & Go

AppDelegate.m




- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(UIApplication *)application {

NSLog(@"Registering Remote Notications");

// For beta 2

// [[UIApplication sharedApplication] registerForRemoteNotifications];

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] registerForRemoteNotificationTypes:(UIRemoteNotificationTypeBadge | UIRemoteNotificationTypeSound)]; // For beta 3

// other codes here

}

- (BOOL)application:(UIApplication *)application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions:(NSDictionary *)launchOptions {

NSLog(@"%@",[[[launchOptions objectForKey:@"UIApplicationLaunchOptionsRemoteNotificationKey"] objectForKey:@"aps"] objectForKey:@"alert"]);

return YES;

}

- (void)application:(UIApplication *)application didRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithDeviceToken:(NSData *)deviceToken {

NSLog(@"deviceToken: %@", deviceToken);

}

- (void)application:(UIApplication *)application didFailToRegisterForRemoteNotificationsWithError:(NSError *)error {

NSLog(@"Error in registration. Error: %@", error);

}

(13) Additional tips

- The feedback service is currently unavailable.
- Send your messages to gateway.sandbox.push.apple.com:2195 during the beta period.
- Devices must be set up as new iPhones in iTunes in order to generate device tokens. Restoring from backup is not currently supported.
-Make sure the audio file received5.caf is included in your application resource.


(13a) Registering an App ID for Apple Push Notification service

1. In the App ID section of the Program Portal, locate the App ID you wish to use with the Apple Push Notification service. Only App IDs with a specific bundle ID can be used with the APNs. You cannot use a “wild-card” application ID. You must see “Available” under the Apple Push Notification service column to register this App ID and configure a certificate for this App ID.

2. Click the ‘Configure’ link next to your desired App ID.

3. In the Configure App ID page, check the Enable Push Notification Services box and click the Configure button. Clicking this button launches the APNs Assistant, which guides you through the next series of steps that create your App ID specific Client SSL certificate.

4. Download the Client SSL certificate file to your download location. Navigate to that location and double-click the certificate file (which has an extension of cer) to install it in your keychain.

5. When you are finished, click Done in the APNS Assistant.

6. Double-clicking the file launches Keychain Access. Make sure you install the certificate in your login keychain on the computer you are using for provider development. The APNs SSL certificate should be installed on your notification server.

7. When you finish these steps you are returned to the Configure App ID page of the iPhone Dev Center portal. The certificate should be badged with a green circle and the label “Enabled”.

8. To complete the APNs set-up process, you will need to create a new provisioning profile containing your APNs-enabled App ID.

- (BOOL)textField: (UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange: (NSRange)range replacementString: (NSString *)string

to set the maximum character length.

This can be done by doing the following:

#define MAX_LENGTH 10

- (BOOL)textField: (UITextField *)textField shouldChangeCharactersInRange: (NSRange)range replacementString: (NSString *)string
{
    if (textField.text.length >= MAX_LENGTH && range.length == 0)
    {
        return NO; 
    }
    else
    {
        return YES;
    }
}

UIView *myView = [[UIView alloc] init];
myView.layer.zPosition = X;

Messed Up Icons With iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 5

With the latest release of iPhone OS 3.0 seed 5, the icons of the applications are being messed up. This mostly occurs when we install updates to the applications from App store. Few applications will not have any icons altogether, few apps have icons of their neighbouring apps like shown in the figure. iPhone OS 3.0 beta 5 is lot more buggier than beta 4 or beta 3. Also I have observed beta 5 drains the battery very fast. My iPhone lost more than half of its power over night even without performing any tasks while lying idle. Seems Apple has purposefully made beta 5 buggy so that users are forced to move to the final version expected in the WWDC.

On the screenshot we can observe that, PingPongLite application doesnt have icon at all and NewsPro and Bloomberg have same icons.

However on a positive note, if we restart the iPhone, all icons are restored to their original application icons.

Update:

The messed up icons issue has been fixed with the latest iPhone OS 3.0 GM build. Also with the GM build my iPhone runs relatively for a longer duration on a full battery charge than what I used to get with beta 5. (But still I feel 3.0 is consuming too much of battery than 2.2.1)

For now I am setting GDATA_SKIP_LOG_XMLFORMAT = 1 for my project to compile without any error.

NSTask Missing In iPhone OS 3.0