18 Nov The 8 Hour App…
On weekends my girlfriend and I (and sometimes others who join) have been attempting to set aside a block of time (ca. 3 hours) where we play around with some sort of coding project unrelated to our work/research.
This Saturday my idea was to combine a couple of things I wanted to do/learn into a single project. Those things were:
1. Can I quickly/easily (relatively) build an iOS app?
2. Is there something fun I can do with the MTA lost and found xml data that I found last week?
For [1] I wanted to build from start to finish – i.e. uploading a completed app to the app store. And for [2] I decided that I would like to specifically use the lost umbrella data to pull into the app and display.
I managed to do both, though it is now almost 6am – the three hours stretched into more like 8 or so.
A brief run through of those 8 hours…
- Nice, here’s a website with a guide to making an app with no experience. First on the checklist, get XCode. Well, I already have it, so that was easy. Step 2, “Know Swift”. That’s literally what it said. Step 2: Know Swift.
- Here’s what looks like a pretty interesting course on Swift taught by a Stanford prof on YouTube.
- Wait, am I really going to learn Swift right now?
- I feel like I remember that you can make apps in Unity and then more or less package/export them automatically for iOS
- Okay, yes, it seems like you can more or less do that
- Now to figure out how to read JSON files from the web into Unity
- Okay found a decent tutorial, working through this
- Ah. This is not a JSON file, it is XML
- Undo the code I had been writing (You script in C# for Unity)
- How do you access a specific single element in an XML file?? (googling, googling)
- Cobble something together
- Okay, seems unlikely that it will work but lets test
- Wow, it worked. That was surprising.
- Okay, mess around with trying to make it look a bit nicer. This led me to the Monoid font, which I like
- Alright, figure out how to build from Unity (it creates files which you then open in XCode)
- Ugh, XCode needs a 6GB update as I have iOS 12.1 on my phone
- Okay build works, it is on my phone and functioning!
- Okay now to upload to the app store
- So many headaches…
- wrong Bundle Identifier
- need to update XCode with my developer ID
- need to create App on Itunes Connect
- need to provide a screenshot (wrong resolution, wrong resolution, alpha channel error, need an iPad version as well…etc…)
- need to fill out a bunch of text fields, including checking off a laundry list of items that they use for providing a rating for your app (re: pornography, violence, etc.)
- Read that if I use a https call that I have to provide an annual report to the US government???!
- Try to submit. Failed. Need a Privacy Policy. Go to auto Privacy Policy generator…
- Try to submit. Failed. Need a Support web page. Make a very minimal one.
- Finally approved
- Submitted and waiting for approval…I’ll add a link when it goes live.
UPDATE: Rejected from the app store.
I was told there was not enough functionality.