Show What You're Working On

Currently working on a new site for our family run business. Old one is due for a much needed update. This is the homepage. Haven't got much else done due to college work but the main design is there :D

Sorry for the blurry image. Turns out imgurs reszising feature isn't great XD. OCUK really need a feature to make big images smaller automatically!
w4OrN.jpg.png
 
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Update 1.2 for my Gold Tracking app which brings in some new tracking features, allowing the user to automatically know how much there bullion has increased or decreased since they bought it.

Im hoping after this update to increase the price from free to £1.49.

But i had an unsuccessful trial run with the curent version when i set it to £0.69, its back to free now.

iossimulatorscreenshot1.png
 
It connects to a stock market web service which gives back JSON Data then i just serialise the data and display the data, The prices are updated around every 30mins, so it can be slightly out if your comparing it to a live feed of the stock market.

I see it being most useful to determine how much your jewellery is worth. There is a calculator in it which allows you to enter the weight and purity of your precious metal to calculate the price.

But with the new update im hoping it will become more useful for people who actually buy precious metals. They will be able to enter how much bullion they have, how much they paid for it, then get updates on how well there investment is doing.

My plan is to allow the user to enter a percentage increase or decrease notification, so they automatically get a push notification and an email showing them how their metals are doing.

This is my first app, i know the UI is a bit clunky atm, and the icon is pretty rubbish. That will be all changing though, so it should only get better.

TBH im not expecting this to be successful or anything, i just do as i think its the best way to learn iOS development. Now that i have an app and people are downloading it everyday, i feel compelled to support it, which means i have to learn new things.

The link in my sig takes you to itunes, which has more screen shots.
 
Why don't you add other metals to the list?
Keep the 3 most common metals on the front page (you have 4 at the moment) and then with a further button click you can get an alpheticised listing of many other metal prices?
 
sunama said:
Why don't you add other metals to the list?
Keep the 3 most common metals on the front page (you have 4 at the moment) and then with a further button click you can get an alpheticised listing of many other metal prices?
Click to expand...

This is my plan, i want to add metals such as copper, lead etc (scrap metals)

The biggest issue is getting the live data, web services are not cheap, especially when it comes to the stock market. If i can start pulling in some revenue from the app, then i will expand the metals in the list.

I appreciate the feedback, i want to know what people honestly think about it. If its bad i want to know so i can make it better. But no-one really rates apps, or gives feedback to the developer.
 
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The reason I asked Kieren is that I am trying to learn xcode but the thing that is I find hard is the pushing and pulling data within apps. I'm not sure coding is for me, I can do the basics but meh.

At least you have it approved that is a good starting point. The gui can only get better in time.

If you compare your app to 'Gold Price Live' your gui can 100% be improved over time so good luck to you.

PS do you have any good tutorials? How did you get to where you are at and how long did it take you?
 
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mrbell1984 said:
The reason I asked Kieren is that I am trying to learn xcode but the thing that is I find hard is the pushing and pulling data within apps. I'm not sure coding is for me, I can do the basics but meh.

At least you have it approved that is a good starting point. The gui can only get better in time.

If you compare your app to 'Gold Price Live' your gui can 100% be improved over time so good luck to you.

PS do you have any good tutorials? How did you get to where you are at and how long did it take you?
Click to expand...

Im using NSJSONSerialisation, its pretty simple, there are plenty of tutorials of how to get the data. Ill give you some code which hopefully will help.

-(int) fetchJSONDataString{

APILink = [[NSURL alloc]initWithString:@"URl_To_Web_Service"];

NSData *jsonData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:APILink];

if(jsonData != nil){

NSError *error =nil;

id result = [NSJSONSerialization JSONObjectWithData:jsonData options:NSJSONReadingMutableContainers error:&error];

//NSLog(@"the result is:%@", result);

if(error == nil){
//NSLog(@"%@", result);

// GOLD PRICE
NSMutableDictionary *gold = [result objectForKey:@"gold"];
NSString *goldQuote = [gold objectForKey:@"quote"];
NSString *goldQuoteKG = [gold objectForKey:@"quoteKg"];
goldPrice = [goldQuote floatValue];
goldPriceKG = [goldQuoteKG floatValue];

You search objectForKey because the JSON data is access via keys.

I started Objective-C around jan/feb 2011, just over a year and a half ago ago. I did an app for my final year project for uni. It wasn't released, the guy i developed it for moved away half way through my project... I started with sams teach yourself iphone development in 24hrs. I got half way through the book, and then started my project.

Then after i finished i stopped went back to do some stuff in Java, but got back into Objective-C around the end of 2011. I started messing around with JSON and then my app evolved from that.

I term of how long ive been learning Obj-C, i would say around 6-7months, but i've got 4 years of experience in Java which helped a lot.

For visual tutorials i highly recommend lynda.com

One thing ive got to say is, im not the best programmer, i actually was really bad at it when i started. I struggled with it in college and it was only in my second year of uni when i started to pick it up.

so stick with it, just pick a subject like JSON and spent a few weeks on it. Create small projects, then move onto a different subject like writing to PLists and create small projects around that.
 
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mrbell1984 said:
Thank you. I have my private test certificates ready on my ipad/iphone so I can start playing with code.

Is that push/pull via public 'API's' ? Is that how your push/pull works for the gold?
Click to expand...

The API for metals prices i only pull the data from the service.

Some you will have to send data to the service and in most cases you will do that through the URL string

Here is an example, i small project i did to convert currencies using the public google API

int main(int argc, const char * argv[])
{

@autoreleasepool {


int startAmount = 1;
NSString *currencyOne = @"EUR";
NSString *currencyTwo = @"USD";
NSString *post = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://www.google.com/ig/calculator?hl=en&q=%i%@=?%@", startAmount, currencyOne, currencyTwo];

NSURL *webURL = [[NSURL alloc] initWithString:post];

NSData *data = [NSData alloc];

data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:webURL];

if(data !=nil){

NSMutableString *response = [[NSMutableString alloc] initWithData:data encoding:NSISOLatin1StringEncoding];

[response deleteCharactersInRange: [ response rangeOfString:@"{lhs: \"1 Euro\",rhs: \""]];
[response deleteCharactersInRange: [ response rangeOfString:@" U.S. dollars\",error: \"\",icc: true}"]];

float convertedResult = [response floatValue];

NSLog(@"The value is: %f", convertedResult);
}else{
NSLog(@"Cannot convert currency!");
}

}
return 0;
}

This requests the user to push some data to the service, and you do it through the URL in this line

NSString *post = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://www.google.com/ig/calculator?hl=en&q=%i%@=?%@", startAmount, currencyOne, currencyTwo];

stringWithFormat allow you to drop in data using place holders %i, %@ etc
so start amount (100), currencyOne (EUR), currency two (USD)

will convert 100 euros to US dollars.

the only issue with this example is the output is a string and not an object like a dictionary so its a bit harder to get the data out of the result string.
 
kierenharrold said:
The biggest issue is getting the live data, web services are not cheap, especially when it comes to the stock market. If i can start pulling in some revenue from the app, then i will expand the metals in the list.
Click to expand...

If your provider is charging you per request, which seems to be the common method, then it can work out a lot cheaper to request and store the data yourself and get your app to grab the data from your servers rather than the app requesting it directly from your provider. Obviously this does add latency but having worked on similar projects, it isn't much of an issue unless you're wanting near real-time feeds.

The app looks good though!
 
To continue what I enjoy doing I'm making a game with my small engine, maybe steam greenlight in several months time (next year more likely...) possibly depending on having artists and such and maybe more programmers, future is a bit unclear at the moment... Anyway! Been working on getting collision in and this is the progress so far showing some collision boxes being generated from the meshes. Needs to split into smaller collision boxes, which is the next task!

(Dunno why it's got the black border around it, silly live movie maker :< Go directly to youtube to view it for a slightly more clearer picture.)
 
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