As an iOS developer, you often need to use a web service from your app.Sometimes you need to use a web service that someone else has written, and sometimes you need to use one of your own!In this tutorial, you’ll get hands-one experience with using web services, by writing an iOS app that communicates with a simple web service that allows you to redeem promo codes to unlock extra content.This tutorial is the second and final part of a two part series on custom web services.If you are curious how to develop the web service yourself, check out the first part of the series for full details!You don’t necessarily have to set up the web service yourself for this tutorial – you can use the one I’ve already set up if you’d like.This tutorial assumes you have basic familiarity with programming for iOS.If you are new to iOS development, you may wish to check out some of the other tutorials on this site first.This tutorial requires you to create a new View-based application and integrate three frameworks into it: the JSON framework, ASIHTTPRequest, and MBProgressHUD.

You also have to make a basic UI for the app so the user can enter in a code to redeem.But that’s a lot of work, so I thought we’d start this tutorial out with a choice.Are you like this guy?If so, then just download this starter project with the libraries pre-integrated and the UI pre-made and skip the next two sections :] Otherwise, read on DIYer!:] If you want to create everything yourself, start up Xcode and go to File\New\New Project, select iOS\Application\View-based Application, and click Next.Enter PromoTest for the Product Name, click Next, and save it somewhere.To add the JSON framework, first download it from its github page.Once you have it downloaded, right click your PromoTest project entry in groups and files, select New Group, and name the new group JSON.Then drag all of the files from the JSON\Classes directory (JSON.h and several others) into the new JSON group.Make sure “Copy items into destination group’s folder (if needed)” is selected, and click Finish.

To add ASIHTTPRequest, first download it.Once you have it downloaded, right click your PromoTest project entry in groups and files, select New Group, and name the new group ASIHTTPRequest.Then drag all of the files from the ASIHTTPRequest\Classes directory (ASIAuthenticationDialog.h and several others, but IMPORTANT!don’t add the subfolders such as ASIWebPageRequest, CloudFiles, S3, and Tests.)into the new ASIHTTPRequest group.Also repeat this for the two files in ASIHTTPRequest\External\Reachability, as these are dependencies of the project.To add MBProgressHUD, first download it.Once you have it downloaded, right click your PromoTest project entry in groups and files, select New Group, and name the new group MBProgressHUD.Then drag MBProgressHUD.h and MBProgressHUD.m into the new MBProressHUD group.The last step is you need to link your project against a few required frameworks.To do this, click on your PromoTest project entry in Groups & Files, click the PromoTest target, choose the Build Phases tab, and expand the Link Binary with Libraries section.

Click the plus button in this section, and choose CFNetwork.framework.Then repeat this for SystemConfiguration.framework, MobileCoreServices.framework, and libz.1.2.3.dylib.Compile your project just to make sure you’re good so far, and now we’re back to the fun stuff!ios store encryption keyLet’s make a quick and simple interface to test this web service.iqos price singaporeAs a refresher, the web service takes three parameters: So basically, all we need is a text field for the user to enter the code (they’ll tap “Go” on the keyboard to start the redemption process), a label for the text field, and a text view to write the result out to.buy ios promo codes

So click on PromoTestViewController.xib, bring up the Object library by selecting the third tab in the View toolbar (Utilities) and selecting the third tab in the library toolbar (Object library), as shown in the screenshot below.From the Object library, drag a UILabel, UITextField, UITextView into the main view.vaporizer shop co ukDouble click the UILabel and change the text to read “Enter promo code:”.pax vaporizer secretsThen double click the text view and delete all the text inside, and optionally change the background color of the UITextField to clear in the Attributes Inspector.vaporizer pen tucsonYou also may find it useful to go to Editor\Canvas\Show Bounds Rectangles so you can see the bounds of the text view.ios location programming

At this point your layout should look similar to the screenshot below: Next, you need to set the File’s Owner as the Text Field’s delegate so you can get a callback when the return button is clicked on the keyboard.To do this, control-click on the Text Field, and drag a line from the delegate entry to the File’s Owner.ios kotor reviewAlso, you need to connect the text view to an outlet so you can set it later.iqos store in tokyoTo do this in the cool new Xcode 4 way, first turn on the Assistant Editor (the second button in the Editor tab) and make it show up on the bottom with View\Assistant Layout\Assistant Editors on Bottom.Make sure it’s set to Automatic and that PromoTestViewController.h is visible.Then select the Text View and control-drag a line from the text view down to right above the @end keyword, set Connection tou Outlet, the Name to textView, and click Connect, as you can see in the screenshot below.

At this point Xcode will automatically create a textView property and instance variable for you.Finally, open PromoTestViewController.h and mark the class as implenting UITextFieldDelegate as follows: Then switch to PromoTestViewController.m and implement textFieldShouldReturn as follows: Compile and run your app, tap the text field, enter a code, and tap the return button, and you should see a message in your console output similar to the following: OK – all the setup is done, and you’re ready to start communicating with the web service!If you’ve grabbed the starter project and skipped ahead, here’s where you should pick back up!Otherwise, good progress so far DIYer!:] To redeem the promo code, we need to to send a POST to our web service’s with three parameters: the app id, the code to redeem, and the device ID.The good news is sending a POST is extremely easy with ASIHTTPRequest.You simply: Let’s see what this looks like.First add the following imports to the top of the file: Then replace textFieldShouldReturn with the following: If you’ve set up your own web service following the previous tutorial, you should replace the URL with wherever you put your web service.

As you can see – very simple, following the steps outlined above.Finally, implement the requestFinished and requestFailed callbacks to log out the results: This simply checks for the error codes that we expect from our web service, and prints a message for each.Or if it’s succcessful, parses the JSON with the JSON framework, and checks the unlock code.Here is where you could grant the user with whatever special content you might want to give them in your app.Compile and run your project, and you should see something like the following: The app works so far, but when you’re running a task in the background like this it’s often nice to let the user know what’s going on.This is nice and easy with MBProgressHUD, so let’s quickly add it in: Compile and run your code, and this time a nice progress indicator should appear while the request is running!Now as promised, I’d like to share my experience using this promo code system in Wild Fables with you guys!I set up two codes for Wild Fables – one to unlock a single fable (of the user’s choice), and one to unlock all fables.

I set up the first one so I could give out codes to friends & family to give them a little extra taste of Wild Fables, and I set up the second one so I’d have a way to give out full access to Wild Fables to professional app reviewers.One of my favorite things about this system is it allows for unlimited codes.Which was great as 100 people used a code I gave out on Twitter alone (thanks again for checking it out and all the RTs guys, you rule!)!I also put some codes in some threads on some various iOS forums, our mailing list for Razeware, our Facebook pages, etc. I made a separate code for each place I gave out the code, which is nice because it let me track where people actually cared about the post & used codes, and where people were more like the picture earlier in this tutorial ;] People redeemed the codes most often on Twitter or the Cocos2D forums (which makes sense, as my friends such as yourself hang out there), then on the Razeware mailing list (which also makes sense, since if people subscribe to that they must be interested in our products).

Forum-wise, Reddit came up on top, then the iPad Forums, MobileRead, MacRumors, and TouchArcade were the best in that order.Another amusing thing was sometimes I’d get emails from “reviewers” asking for a promo code to redeem my app, so of course I’d send them a custom code.But these “reviewers” would also include a pitch to try to get me to advertise on my site.Looking at the redemption table, I can see that several of them didn’t even bother to redeem the code, so I guess their real reason to email me was to get ad revenue, so beware!:] As far as drawbacks go, as some people noticed the “unlock” is implemented basically by saving data to the file system, so it doesn’t work across all devices like in-app purchases do.You can implement this by creating a login system or such, but that was overkill for what I wanted to do.So that’s it for my experience!Let me know if you have any further questions.Here is a sample project with all of the code we’ve developed in the above tutorial.