Cocoa Manifest

Building Bridges To JavaScript

2013-05-15T17:05:00-04:00

Here’s some compelling investigative work by Nigel Brooke that Apple is going to go public with an Objective-C/JavaScript bridge. It’s been possible to communicate back and forth with a JavaScript runtime using hidden UIWebViews for a while, but Nigel points out some commits to WebKit that hint to something much more official in the works.

Hey, Apple could even convert Objective-C code to JavaScript at this point. :)

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How to Build Scar Tissue (Or, a fascinating approach to solving iCloud/Core Data)

2013-05-14T10:26:00-04:00

Maarten Billemont is attempting to build out a well documented system to work around iCloud’s Core Data syncing issues¹. It’s an impressive SDK with a clear API for what could go wrong and what you’d need to handle.

His library will watch for iCloud store corruption and tear down and rebuild the store automatically, notifying all other devices to use the new store in the process. It’s a great example of wrapping “scar tissue” around an unreliable external dependency. He’s encoded all the things that could go wrong as well named messages that are sent to you as the delegate, and spells out the default recovery behavior or how you can inject your own.

Maarten’s project itself is a fork of Aleksey Novicov’s iCloudStoreManager.↩

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TICoreDataSync Hits 1.0.2

2013-05-14T09:36:00-04:00

The TICoreDataSync library hit 1.0.2 yesterday with stability and performance improvements, data compression, and a big documentation update.

I first noticed TICoreDataSync last year and have been keeping an eye on it in a personal way. It’s a cloud syncing framework built by the team at No Thirst Software and extracted from their flagship app, Moneywell. At the time I was looking for a native personal finance app that my family could use to stay in sync so I decided to try it out. I’m quite impressed how it syncs over Dropbox. I’ve experimented a bit trying to confuse the clients with conflicting edits, but it catches up and keeps chugging along just fine.

The fact that you have the source code in front of you and that it syncs through different services (with iCloud support in the works) makes it a pretty compelling resource if you need to replicate the contents of a Core Data document across iOS/OS X devices.

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Now, This is A Bug Report

2013-05-10T17:40:00-04:00

For those of you who haven’t figured out the source of that huge sigh of relief among the Objective-C community, Facebook released xctool, an impressive wrapper around xcodebuild that lets you build and run tests for your iOS or OS X apps from the command line. Yes, you can run xcodebuild directly to build, but the output is messy and it is very difficult to run iOS unit tests without resorting to hacking shell scripts like Stewart Gleadow recommended. Definitely check out xctool if you are trying to do continous integration or just want a better way to format the output of xcodebuild.

But that’s not what I’m focusing on here. What impressed me the most was this bug report filed against xctool about CocoaPods integration. Victor Ilyukevich gave the expected outcome, steps to reproduce, full logs, screen casts, sample project…the works. He demonstrated his knowledge of the problem to address any questions up front and even shared a workaround that he found. It is certainly a lot of work but it makes it so easy on the maintainers and cuts through the usual did-you-try-this ping pong game.

Alas, the bug may not be fixable because it depends on knowing how Xcode figures out implicit dependencies. But that doesn’t matter. The bug report is recorded here for all of us to see. This kind of material helps move the open source community forward even if it doesn’t lead to an immediate payoff.

Don’t you wish your users treated you this way?

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RubyMotion: Now For OS X And With Weak References!

2013-05-09T10:33:00-04:00

To celebrate RubyMotion’s first birthday, the team worked hard to ship a new version that now supports OS X development! To top it off, it now supports weak references, more tweaks to speed up the build process, and project templates.

Boom.

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No More Patents on Software In New Zealand

2013-05-09T09:22:00-04:00

Chris Duckett at ZDNet citing New Zealand’s Commerce Minister Craig Foss on a ruling that limits the scope of patents on software:

The Commissioner considers that the actual contribution of the claim lies solely in it being a computer program. The mere execution of a method within a computer does not allow the method to be patented. Accordingly, the process is not an invention for the purposes of the Act.

An interesting development. He poses the idea that a novel washing machine using software to do it’s work could be patentable depending on the novelty of the process. However, a program that auto-fills legal documents could not. The mere act of automation is considered obvious.

I like where this is going, but it still leaves huge holes for misuse. I’d love to see a perspective like this here in the USA, but we still have to deal with the troll situation. Can I risk working on an idea if there’s the possibility that a troll will lob an expensive lawsuit at me–even if I have a more reasonable chance to win under a new system like this?

Regardless, I’d love to see more politicians here in the US show this level of understanding:

We believe it’s near impossible for software to be developed without breaching some of the hundreds of thousands of software patents awarded around the world, often for ‘obvious’ work.

I’m pulling for you, USA. Don’t let me down.

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✦ Three More Chapters of Test iOS Apps With UI Automation Released!

2013-05-08T13:56:00-04:00

Beta 2.0 of my book, Test iOS Apps with UI Automation is now out. I’ve added not one, but three new chapters for you to enjoy! Here’s the highlights:

Chapter 7 focuses on how to use UI Automation in a performance testing workflow, bouncing back and forth between your Objective-C code and Instruments while trying recreate the steps that provoke a memory leak.
Chapter 8 introduces some nifty techniques to make sure your iOS application starts in a ready state for your tests. You’ll learn how to control UI Automation through environment variables, set up a Core Data stack for different scenarios, and hide this test setup code from your release build.
Chapter 9 explores how you can stub out external services that your app depends on so your tests execute the same way every time…internet or not.

Thanks so much for your patience as my editor, Brian, and I get these next chapters out. There are only two more chapters to go before the book is entirely in your hands. Then I’ll just need to see what I have to update after WWDC 2013!

SQLite: The File Format Of The Future

2013-05-02T15:27:00-04:00

After I got the latest version of Acorn, one of the awesome indie image editing suites for OS X, I was catching up with Gus Mueller’s blog and came across an awesome post a few days ago about his use of SQLite as the file format for the app. You read that right…Acorn uses SQLite to store images and metadata.

Acorn has been using SQLite as its native file format since version 2.0, and it has been wonderful. When writing out and reading in an image I don’t have to think about byte offsets, I mix bitmap and vector layers together in the same file, and debugging a troubled file is as simple as opening it up in Base or your preferred SQLite tool. This sure beats opening a PSD file in a hex editor to figure out what’s going on.

This is a marvelous simple and real world example of how to leverage what SQLite does well: atomic, transactional, and incremental data storage. Sound familiar? This is why Core Data uses it, too…and why you shouldn’t think of Core Data as an ORM for SQLite. It merely uses SQLite for data storage because it kicks ass in general.

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GSAutomation - Simple Test Runner For UI Automation by the Hulu Tech Team

2013-04-26T09:33:00-04:00

Bao Lei gave a nice writeup of Hulu’s GSAutomation test runner for UI Automation. Rather than use the UI Automation JavaScript API itself to write tests they developed a domain language, of sorts, that expresses test steps as a series of arrays. The example looks something like this:

task = [
  [Tap, "Button"],
  [Check, "Text I'm expecting", "Text I'm expecting from another label"],
]

Yes, this can lead to oversimplified test steps and you’re leaving behind a lot of the raw power of looking up and interacting with UIAElement objects directly, but I think it’s an interesting technique and could cover a lot of common test cases.

And, hey, it kinda reminds me of Lisp. :)

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Expert Beginners

2013-04-23T12:17:00-04:00

Erik Dietrich on the rise of the “Expert Beginner”:

The Expert Beginner has nowhere to go because progression requires an understanding that he has a lot of work to do, and that is not a readily available conclusion…The Expert Beginner has perfected the craft of bowling a 160 out of 300 possible points by doing exactly the same thing week in and week out with no significant deviations from routine or desire to experiment. This is because he believes that 160 is the best possible score by virtue of the fact that he scored it.

This describes so much of the “startup” culture today.

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Codea, Lua IDE for iPad, Now Exports as Xcode Projects

2013-04-22T07:03:00-04:00

Codea just keeps getting better and better. After you’ve built that awesome iPad game in Lua on the iPad, you can now export your Codea project as an Xcode project ready to go for submission to the App Store.

Codea is quite a powerful IDE with inline documentation, REPL, live preview, a physics engine and more tweakability than you’ll know what to do with. It’s a great way to build games and interactive visualization tools with Lua and the Xcode project export removes even more friction to get the results into the hands of your users.

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Run UI Automation Tests in the Cloud with cisimple

2013-04-12T09:55:00-04:00

cisimple, a continuous integration service that builds your app whenever you push up changes, just announced their new features to support UI Automation testing. Point it at your repo, tell it what test scripts to run, and it will run them in Instruments against whatever simulator device families you choose whenever you push changes. They’ll capture and notify you of any failures and even record a video of the test run so you can try to figure out what went wrong.

I’ve had a chance to talk to the team and try out the service, and I’m quite impressed. It’s easy to use but don’t let the simplicity fool you. They are taking enterprise applications seriously, too, and you can talk to them more about their security and privacy protocols if you need to. If you’ve been trying to get your UI Automation tests into a CI process, this product is definitely worth a look.

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Self Compiling Objective-C Files

2013-04-08T10:13:00-04:00

I did a lot of experimenting with Core Data as I prepared for my talk at the RubyMotion #inspect conference. I needed to run Objective-C files over and over again while I compared accessing the framework from RubyMotion. My workflow increased when I found this tip by Nicolas Bouilleaud to make Objective-C source files executable in the same way that you make a script file executable with a hash-bang line at the top. By crafting a custom command in a special comment at the top of the file, you can mark an Objective-C script executable with chmod +x and run it like a shell script. It will automatically compile, link, and run the resulting binary from the current directory.

From the fun to know department.

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A Secure Incremental Store For Core Data

2013-04-02T09:57:00-04:00

I had the honor to speak at the first RubyMotion #inspect conference on Core Data—quite a challenge to put together for a room full of people who are not too excited about Objective-C. The presentation was a success and the video recording should be up on the web soon.

I demonstrated a RubyMotion app with a custom persistent store written in Objective-C to show off how flexible the Core Data stack can be and a lot of people came up to me afterward asking about custom stores that do encryption.

Well, today I stumbled upon stoeger it’s secure incremental store that promises full encryption of data at rest in a SQLite database. It looks like it’s not a fully complete incremental store, yet, but they’ve got a roadmap that looks quite promising. This is the first commercial custom Core Data persistent store that I’m aware of. I hope they succeed and that it paves the way for other options.

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✦ Announcing My Book: Test iOS Apps With UI Automation

2013-03-27T00:10:00-04:00

I’m quite excited to announce my new book, Test iOS Apps With UI Automation! You can get the first six chapters today as a beta ebook through the Pragmatic Programmers. They’re working with me to add more polish and we’ll release the final chapters in the coming weeks. If you spot a problem, let me know! Many thanks to them and specifically Brian Hogan, my editor, for helping me pull this off.

What’s this UI Automation?

UI Automation is a tool that lets you control your application as it runs on the simulator or a tethered device through a JavaScript API. It’s one of the many pieces of the Instruments analysis tool that comes with Apple’s SDK. You can use it to write acceptance tests to assert proper behavior for your app, and even use it to drive the boring and repetitive behavior needed to squash hard to replicate performance bugs.

And This Book Helps?

The documentation on UI Automation is…sparse, shall we say. There’s lots of detail there, but not a good description of patterns and paradigms to help you think about writing effective test suites for iOS applications.

That’s where this book comes in.

I share my experience with you and walk you though testing an actual application that uses Core Data, talks to external network services, and uses geolocation. I show you how to start testing with UI Automation in small chunks. By the end you’ll isolate the application from external dependencies, bootstrap the starting state, and run the entire behavior test suite from the command line.

You don’t need to install anything extra to get started, since UI Automation comes with Xcode and friends. Learn as you go and pull in third party resources as you need them.

Ooooo, So Where Do I Get It?

As mentioned above, the first six chapters are available today through the Pragmatic Programmer’s beta ebook program. Buy it and you’ll get free updates as I finish polishing the book. And we’re making sure the beta period extends past WWDC 2013 so I can keep it up to date after the new goodies are announced.

Thank you all for your support and encouragement. SQUASH ALL THE BUGS.

Cocoa Manifest

Building Bridges To JavaScript

How to Build Scar Tissue (Or, a fascinating approach to solving iCloud/Core Data)

TICoreDataSync Hits 1.0.2

Now, *This* is A Bug Report

RubyMotion: Now For OS X And With Weak References!

No More Patents on Software In New Zealand

✦ Three More Chapters of Test iOS Apps With UI Automation Released!

SQLite: The File Format Of The Future

GSAutomation - Simple Test Runner For UI Automation by the Hulu Tech Team

Expert Beginners

Codea, Lua IDE for iPad, Now Exports as Xcode Projects

Run UI Automation Tests in the Cloud with cisimple

Self Compiling Objective-C Files

A Secure Incremental Store For Core Data

✦ Announcing My Book: Test iOS Apps With UI Automation

What’s this UI Automation?

And This Book Helps?

Ooooo, So Where Do I Get It?

Now, This is A Bug Report