Generally, there are 6 steps to make it possible:

• 1. Install a virtual machine.
• 2. Install Windows in the virtual machine.
• 3. Setup the webservice in the virtual machine.
• 4. Port forward from the guest machine to host machine under NAT network.
• 5. Get your MAC’s ip address.
• 6. Connect iphone app to your MAC’s ip with the port.

Step 1 to 3: Installation and Setup

I won’t be explaining how to setup a virtual machine or install a Windows here. What i’ve done was installing VirtualBox, and Windows 8 Consumer Preview since they are free. After setting up Windows, you can just follow some guide to setup IIS and run your webservice.

Step 4: Port Forwarding

One nice feature in VirtualBox 4 is that the port forwarding is really simple to configure. In your virtualBox network setting, choose NAT as the Netword Adaptor like the screen below:

Then check your guest machine ip address, we need the ip to do the port forward. For my case, the ip address is 10.0.2.15

Now, go back to the network setting, click ‘Port forwarding’ button, and fill up your ip address and port like screen below. The Guest IP is the guest machine IP address you get from the Windows. The Host port is the port in you host machine(MAC) which you’ll map to. The Guest Port is the guest machine port which is 80 for HTTP.

So, now if you can run your webservice in your guest machine, for example http:localhost/mywebservice, you should be able to see the webservice in your host machine with url http://localhost:8888/mywebservice. This is because you have forward the port 80 from guest to host’s port 8888.

Step 5: Get your Mac IP Address

After you are able to access the guest machine’s webservice in your host machine, now you can try to access it from your iphone. Before run the app form your iphone, just do a quick check. Get your MAC’s ip address, type in the ip and webservice url in your iphone’s safari browser like: http://MAC_IP_ADDRESS:8888/webservice. If you see the webservice running in your safari, you are almost there.

Before you proceed, one more important step is to check your webservice’s Web.config file. In order to access the webservice remotely, you need to insert:

<system.web>
<webServices>
        <protocols>
            <add name="HttpSoap12"/>
            <add name="HttpSoap"/>
            <add name="HttpGet"/>
            <add name="HttpPost"/>
        </protocols>
</webServices>
...

Without this, you will not be able to remotely access the webservice from your iphone app.

Step 6: Run you app!

Now, run your iphone app that connect to the webservice!

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Features:

• Animated text from right to left, like HTML Marquee
• Tap on text to stop, drag to scroll, and release to resume the animation

This is how you can use the library:

CLTickerView *ticker = [[CLTickerView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0, 20, 320, 30)];
//set the text
ticker.marqueeStr = @"This is a sample ios marquee using scrollview and timer. You can also manually control it by scrolling left 
                      or right, or touch on it to stop it, and release it to auto restart the marquee.";
//set the font
ticker.marqueeFont = [UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:16];
[self.view addSubview:ticker];
[ticker release];

Demo

The library with demo is available on my Github

In order to customize the UISearchBar, first we need to know it’s subviews. We can get the subviews by running the code below:

for (UIView *subview in [searchBar subviews]) {
        NSLog(@"%@", [subview class]);
}

If you run the code above, and you are running IOS 4.3 and above, you should see two subviews “UISearchBarBackground” and “UISearchBarTextField”. So, we know that UISearchBar consist of a background view and a textfield, that make sense.

The default UISearchBar looks like the screenshot above, so let’s try to remove the background and see how the UISearchBar will look like by running the code below:

for (UIView *subview in [searchBar subviews]) {
    if ([subview isKindOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"UISearchBarBackground")])
    {
        [subview removeFromSuperview];
    }
}

The code is quite straight forward, it loop through all the subviews of UISearchBar and check if any subview belongs to the class “UISearchBarBackground”, if it is, remove it.

After you run the code, you should be able to see something like screenshot below. The background has been removed.

Now we only left with the UITextfield, we can customize the UITexfield by running the code below:

for (UIView *subview in [searchBar subviews]) {
        if ([subview isKindOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"UISearchBarBackground")])
        {
            [subview removeFromSuperview];
        }
 
        if ([subview isKindOfClass:NSClassFromString(@"UISearchBarTextField")]) {
            [(UITextField *)subview setBackground:[UIImage imageNamed:@"searchboxbg.png"]];
        }
    }

The code above look for the UISearchBarTextField subview and set it’s background with our own image “searchboxbg.png”.

After running the code, you’ll see something like screenshot below.

This is how you can customize the UISearchBar.

New iPhone app released on Chinese New Year, Jan 25, 2012.

App name: O Level POA

Description:

Learn GCE ‘N’ and ‘O’ Level Principles of Accounts by reviewing the notes specially designed for Secondary 3, 4 and 5 students in Singapore.

You will be able to read full notes of all topics and test yourself by attempting on at least 10 multiple-choiced questions per topic.

Correct answers will be marked in green while wrong answers will be highlighted in red. Users can also submit questions via the app to the author for clarifications. The author is a current school teacher from the Ministry of Education.

You can download the app here.

Thanks to the library OHAttributedLabel, you can achieve the styled NSAttributedStrings easily under one UILabel.

In order to use the library, you must first import the CoreText Framework. In the example below, I style the label so that the text are splited into 2 different colors.

    OHAttributedLabel *label;
    NSString *txt = @"page (1 of 10)";
    NSMutableAttributedString* attrStr = [NSMutableAttributedString attributedStringWithString:txt];
    NSArray *splits = [txt componentsSeparatedByString:@"("];
    [attrStr setTextColor:[UIColor redColor]];
    [attrStr setFont:[UIFont boldSystemFontOfSize:18]];
    [attrStr setTextAlignment:CTTextAlignmentFromUITextAlignment(UITextAlignmentCenter)     
                lineBreakMode:CTLineBreakModeFromUILineBreakMode(UILineBreakModeTailTruncation)];
    if ([splits count] >= 2) {
        int start =  [[splits objectAtIndex:0] length];
        int end = [[splits objectAtIndex:1] length] + 1;
        [attrStr setTextColor:[UIColor blackColor] range:NSMakeRange(start, end)];
    }
 
    label.attributedText = attrStr;

The result will be like the screenshot below:

- (void)setBackgroundImage:(UIImage *)backgroundImage forBarMetrics:(UIBarMetrics)barMetrics

In order to customize UINavagationBar for both IOS 5.0 and below IOS 5.0 devices, we have to prepare these two methods:

• 1. Write a category for UINavigationBar (for IOS 4.3 and below)
• 2. Check if device is IOS 5.0 and above, use – (void)setBackgroundImage:(UIImage *)backgroundImage forBarMetrics:(UIBarMetrics)barMetrics

To create a category, create a new file name ‘CustomNavigationBar’.
In ‘CustomNavigationBar.h’,

@interface CustomNavigationBar : UINavigationBar
@end

In ‘CustomNavigationBar.m’, draw the navigation bar with your custom image,

#import "CustomNavigationBar.h"
 
@implementation UINavigationBar (UINavigationBarCategory)
 
- (void)drawRect:(CGRect)rect {
    UIColor *color = [UIColor darkGrayColor];
    UIImage *img  = [UIImage imageNamed: @"img-bgtopbar.png"];
    [img drawInRect:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.frame.size.width, self.frame.size.height)];
    self.tintColor = color;
}
@end

To replace the default Navigation bar, just #import ‘CustomNavigationBar.h’ in any classes that need to be customized.

To determine the IOS version, check like this:

float deviceVersion = [[[UIDevice currentDevice] systemVersion] floatValue];
if (deviceVersion >= 5.0)
  [self.navigationController.navigationBar setBackgroundImage:[UIImage imageNamed:@"img-bgtopbar.png"] forBarMetrics:UIBarMetricsDefault];

The code above check if the device version is equal to or more than IOS 5.0, if so, use the ‘setBackgroundImage’ API. With these 2 methods, you can customize the UINavigationBar for IOS 4.3 and below as well as IOS 5.0

When we create a new project in XCode, we can choose which project template to use. However, some project templates provide an options to use Core Data while some not. To enable the Core Data option in a project template, we need to modify the ‘TemplateInfo.plist’ which you can find at:

Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Templates/Project Templates/Application/(Application Type).xctemplate/TemplateInfo.plist

For example, by default my Tabbed Application does not provide the core data option, what i can do is to open up the template for Tabbed Application at:

/DeveloperNew/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/Library/Xcode/Templates/Project Templates/Application/Tabbed Application.xctemplate/TemplateInfo.plist

Open the TemplateInfo.plist in XML format. Then just add one more line:

<string>com.apple.dt.unit.coreDataCocoaTouchApplication</string>

under the ‘Ancestors’ key like below:

<?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>Ancestors</key>
  <array>
	<string>com.apple.dt.unit.storyboardApplication</string>
	<string>com.apple.dt.unit.coreDataCocoaTouchApplication</string>
  </array>
 <key>Concrete</key>
  ...

Now when you create a new Tabbed Application, you’ll see an option for Core Data.

First of all, download the ZXing-1.7.zip. After you unzipped it, look for the folder ‘iphone’ -> ‘Barcodes’, this is the sample project we will be using in this tutorial. If you launch the app in simulator and do the code scanning, it won’t work as it requires a camera which a simulator doesn’t have. In order to test the QRCode reader without a device, here’s a little modification to the library so that it can either scan from camera or image.

In the Barcodes project, you’ll see a ‘ZXMainViewController.mm’, this is the main controller of the project. There’s a function called:

- (IBAction)scan:(id)sender

which is the event for scanning button.

What we are going to modify is the controller that control the QRCode scanning:

ZXingWidgetController *widController

We will tell this widController to scan from an image instead of using camera. To do that, we need to add 2 extra properties to the ZXingWidgetController.

Now, in the project directory, look for ‘dependencies’. There’s a ‘ZXingWidget.Xcodeproj’, look for ‘classes’ directory, we are only interested in 2 files which are ‘ZXingWidgetController.h’ and ‘ZXingWidgetController.m’.

In ‘ZXingWidgetController.h’, add the 2 properties like below:

@property (nonatomic, assign) BOOL isCamera;
@property (nonatomic, retain) UIImage *scanImage;

The property ‘isCamera’ is to tell the controller to either scan from camera or image. The property ‘scanImage’ is the image to be scanned, which is a QRCode.

In ‘ZXingWidgetController.m’, syntesize the properties like:

@synthesize isCamera, scanImage;

In the ‘dealloc’ function, release the ‘scanImage’ we retain:

[scanImage release];

Now, create a new function in ‘ZXingWidgetController.m’ to scan the image:

- (void)scannedWithImage:(UIImage *)img size:(CGRect)rect{
    Decoder *d = [[Decoder alloc] init];
    d.readers = readers;
    d.delegate = self;
    decoding = [d decodeImage:img cropRect:rect] == YES ? NO : YES;
    [d release];
}

Then, in ‘- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated’, modify the code like below:

- (void)viewDidAppear:(BOOL)animated {
  [super viewDidAppear:animated];
  self.isStatusBarHidden = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] isStatusBarHidden];
  if (!isStatusBarHidden)
    [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES];
 
  decoding = YES;
 
    if (isCamera) {
        [self initCapture];
        [self.view addSubview:overlayView];
        [overlayView setPoints:nil];
    }
    else {
        [self scannedWithImage:self.scanImage size:CGRectMake(0, 0, self.scanImage.size.width, self.scanImage.size.height)];
    }
 
  wasCancelled = NO;
}

What it does here is to check whether it should scan from camera or image, if we choose to scan from image it will call the function ‘- (void)scannedWithImage:(UIImage *)img size:(CGRect)rect’ we’ve just created.

We can now go back to the ‘ZXMainViewController.m’ to set the property of ‘ZXingWidgetController’.

In ‘- (IBAction)scan:(id)sender’, set the property like below:

  ZXingWidgetController *widController = [[ZXingWidgetController alloc] initWithDelegate:self 
                                                                              showCancel:YES 
                                                                                OneDMode:NO];
  widController.isCamera = NO;
  UIImage *image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"Test.png"];
  widController.scanImage = image;

Here we set the ‘isCamera’ to ‘No’ so that we can scan from image. Then we set the QRCode image which is the ‘Test.png’ to be scanned.

Now when you launch the app and press the scan button, it will scan from the QRCode image instead of camera.

You may download the sample code for this tutorial here.

You can get the TouchXML here.

TouchXML is using XPath, if you never heard of XPath, read it more here.