Latest Posts

• Feb 28, 2016

  Overlaying build information on top of app icon

  During development I prefer to keep separate dev/qa/production versions of my application installed on device. This can be simply achieved by using different bundle ids. But they all will look the same on device springboard. Earlier I stored icon name in configs to use different icons but it still require to manually create and add this icons. And it have no valuable information apart of differentiating between types of builds.

  In this article I will show a script to overlay icon with information from application Info.plist, xcconfigs or git output.

  [ Continue reading… ]
• Feb 27, 2016

  Build number auto-increment

  Many developers are using script to increment build number after each deployment. I don’t like this approach because it provides no info about a builds other than ordering. Since Apple requires this to be increasing number - commits hash can’t be used. But it is possible to use number of commits in current branch - this allows to quickly find a commit for any build deployed.

  Also my approach only changes plist in build results, so nothing appear in git status for woking directory.

  [ Continue reading… ]
• Feb 27, 2015

  Xcode project configuration

  In every iOS or OS X app there are many configurations like API base url, keychain service name, keys for various 3rd party services. Some of them are different for Debug and Production, which leads to numerous #ifdef’s across all the project and so on.

  Here I will show quick and convenient way to manage project compile-time dependencies in .xcconfig’s.

  [ Continue reading… ]
• Feb 25, 2014

  OSX Quick Look plugin development

  Quick Look — OS X service that creates thumbnails and previews for files in Finder. It supports a number of standard file types, for others there are QL plugins — custom thumbnails and preview generators. They have .qlgenerator extension and can be placed in ~/Library/QuickLook or /Library/QuickLook.

  In this article, I will tell about main stages of creating custom QL plugins.

  [ Continue reading… ]
• Sep 12, 2013

  RESTful API With Node.js + MongoDB

  I am mobile app developer. I need some backend service to manage user data in remote databases quite frequently. Of course, I could use some BaaS (Parse, Backendless, etc…). But good own solution is always a more convenient and practical choice.

  I decided to explore completely unknown technologies, which are now very popular and are positioned as easily assimilated by newcomers and do not require in-depth knowledge and experience to implement large-scale projects.

  This article will consider building a REST API for mobile applications using Node.js and Express.js framework with Mongoose.js for working with MongoDB. For access control we’ll use OAuth 2.0, with the help of OAuth2orize and Passport.js.

  [ Continue reading… ]