Create Grid Layout Using UICollectionView in iOS 6

January 12, 2013 By 26 Comments

Do you still remember the Recipe app that we have worked on several months ago? At that time, we showed you how to display a list of recipes using UITableView. Wouldn’t be great if it can display the recipe in a nice grid view?

The iOS 6 SDK introduces a new class called UICollectionView that allows developers to create grid-like layout out of the box.

If you have no idea about grid-like layout, just take a look at the built-in Photos app. The app presents your photos in grid format. In the pre-iOS 6 world, you have to write lots of code or make use of other libraries in order to build a similar layout. The UICollectionView, in my opinion, is the most spectacular API in iOS 6. Not only it simplifies the way to arrange visual elements in grid layout, it even lets developers customize the layout (e.g. circular, cover flow style layout) without changing the data.

Grid based Photo App

In this tutorial, we will build a simple app to display a collection of recipe photos in grid layout. Here are what you’re going to learn:

  1. Introduction to UICollectionView
  2. How to Use UICollectionView to build a simple Grid-based layout
  3. Customizing the Collection Cell Background

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iOS Programming 101: Integrate Twitter and Facebook Sharing in Your App

November 22, 2012 By 19 Comments

Following the Twitter support in iOS 5, Apple added the support of Facebook in iOS 6. In the past, developers have to make use of the Facebook and Twitter API to integrate the sharing feature in their apps. With the built-in support, it’s much easier to add these social features to your own app.

In this short tutorial, we will show you how to build Twitter and Facebook sharing feature in your app. As usual, we’ll build a simple app together as we believe there is no better way to teach programming than “get your hand dirty”.

Social Framework in iOS 6

The iOS 6 introduces a new framework known as the “Social Framework”. The Social framework lets you integrate your app with any supported social networking services. Presently, it supports Facebook, Twitter and Sina Weibo. The framework gives you a standard interface to interact with different social networks and it shields you from learning the internals. You don’t have to worry about the Twitter/Facebook APIs, how to handle network connection, handle single sign-on, etc. The social framework simplifies everything. You just need to write a few lines of code to bring up the composer and users can tweet / publish Facebook post within your app.
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iOS Programming 101: Intro to MapKit API and Add an Annotation on Map

October 14, 2012 By 27 Comments

A month ago, we covered how to use Core Location framework to retrieve the user’s location. We also showed you how to convert the GPS coordinate into an address. However, the best way to show a location is to pin it on map. Thanks to the MapKit API. It lets programmers easily work with the built-in Maps and pin a location.

The Map Kit framework provides an interface for embedding maps directly into your own windows and views. This framework also provides support for annotating the map, adding overlays, and performing reverse-geocoding lookups to determine placemark information for a given map coordinate.
- iOS Developer Reference

MapKit is a neat API, comes with the iOS SDK, that allows you to display maps, navigate through maps, add annotations for specific locations, add overlays on existing maps, etc. In this tutorial, we’ll walk you though the basics of the API and show you how to place a pin on the map. As usual, rather than going through the theory, we’ll work on a simple app. Through the practice, we hope you’ll get a better idea about MapKit.

Let’s get started.
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