iOS has a simple event-based XML parser built in, which makes it fairly easy to do less involved parsing operations without having to load up a third-party framework. This tutorial will show you how to build a simple iPhone application that will download an XML feed from Twitter containing a user’s tweets, and then display them with a pretty UI. (You could easily adapt this to parse other XML documents, such as RSS feeds.)
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Here’s a tip for you iOS developers. Have you ever noticed how some apps let you copy files back and forth between their Documents directories and your computer from within iTunes? It’s very easy to implement it yourself. As a matter of fact, it’s just a boolean switch in your app’s plist file.
All you have to do is open the plist file in your Xcode project and add the key UIFileSharingEnabled with a value of YES. iTunes will display any files in your application’s Documents folder and allow you to copy them to your computer, or vice versa.
This is a feature I would like to see more developers implement. It would be great for things like games or other apps that don’t sync with a web service, as it provides a convenient way to back up your progress (e.g. game save files).
I noticed something interesting recently. The new version of Apple’s Xcode development suite (which is used to build applications of iPhones and OS X) is starting remind me a little of Coda and Espresso. The latter two applications are one-window development environments for web developers.
Coda, which is similar to Espresso but was released first, combines a powerful text editor with FTP syncing, visual CSS editing and support for the SVN versioning system. This has proven to be popular among web designers looking to streamline their workflow.
Xcode 4 is taking the same one-window approach, bringing the previously separate Interface Builder application inside of Xcode. The UI is also looking a lot more streamlined. The boring Windows-style file tree pane on the left hand side has been redesigned to look more like the iTunes sidebar. (Which is another interface feature of Espresso and Coda.)
Xcode is already a great IDE, and a pleasure to work with. The changes should make it even better, and more in line with the “Mac-like” feel the great tools that other developers have been building for web designers.
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