Channel 9 For iPhone (Teaser) | The Coffeehouse

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After an afternoon of work, I've got the beginnings of a native iPhone Channel 9 client:

Currently pulls down the list of threads in the Coffeehouse via the same web service used for the reload and previous/next page buttons on the forums page. Loading and displaying threads is the next step.

The catch (for anyone interested in running it once I've gotten it to a useful state): I do not own a Mac, which means I can't use the official iPhone SDK or distribute via iTunes, so it can only be run on jailbroken devices. Anyone willing to sponsor me and buy me a new Macbook Pro is quite willing to do so, though Wink

I'll update this thread as I get further along... this is pretty fun!

ManipUni
Proving QQ for 5 years!

Silly question but if you don't have a Mac how are you developing for the iPhone?

Ion Todirel
buuu

In reply to ManipUni

#Jun 27th @ 6:42 PM

who cares, complete it and I'll buy it (the app if you push it to AppStore), if it's nice

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In reply to Ion Todirel

#Jun 27th @ 6:50 PM

I can't push it to the app store as I don't have a Mac. I doubt that there would be enough customers for a C9 app to pay for a new Mac... expensive computers aren't on a grad student's budget.

The gory technical details of how I'm developing for the iPhone without a Mac:

The iPhone/iPod Touch jailbreak patches signature verification out of the kernel. With a compatible compiler and linker (which are open source) and headers and libraries extracted from the official SDK and device, you can build working apps for the device without using the official SDK. It's fairly easy to get everything up and running on Linux; it was easier before 3.0 (there's an automatic script to build it), but it's still pretty straightforward.

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jun 27th @ 7:10 PM

Considering that you have the logic down, maybe you could just simply write a webapp (using iui?) that acts as an iPhone-friendy UI to channel 9... Smiley

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In reply to PaoloM

#Jun 27th @ 8:42 PM

But that's not where my interest lies. Plus, a good native app beats a web app any day... you can provide a much richer experience.

I'll leave the web app to one of the multitude of talented web developers here.

PaoloM
Hypermediocrity

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jun 27th @ 8:54 PM

But I don't want to jailbreak my phone Smiley

ME ME ME ME ME!

Smiley

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In reply to PaoloM

#Jun 27th @ 10:24 PM

Then that only leaves one other option... buy me a mac! Tongue Out

On an unrelated note, I really like how the C9 team is using JSON for their "AJAX" stuff... makes it a lot easier to deal with than the SOAP web services would be (yes, I could parse XML, but SOAP requests and responses are icky).

ZippyV
Fired Up

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jun 27th @ 10:28 PM

Can you give the code to someone who does own a mac and can publish it for you?

TommyCarlier
I want my scalps!

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jun 27th @ 10:28 PM

Oh yeah, I'm developing a C9 reader for Cray computers. So if someone buys me a Cray, I can actually compile it and publish it to the “Cray AppStore”.

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

In reply to TommyCarlier

#Jun 28th @ 4:50 AM

I'm doing the same thing for Project Natal, but it's really hard without one of those prototypes.

Sabot
My name is Dave Oliver. I'm a Technical Architect.

In reply to Bas

#Jun 28th @ 6:57 AM

I'm working with Unicorns!

Bas
It finds lightbulbs.

In reply to Sabot

#Jun 28th @ 7:21 AM

That's impossible, there's only one.

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In reply to ZippyV

#Jun 28th @ 4:11 AM

Perhaps. It should definitely run when built with the offical SDK... my only concern with doing that is that I don't want someone else profiting off my code (charging for an app they didn't develop).

It's a moot point right now, though. It's nowhere near ready yet, and might not be complete for some time now (as this is just a project I'm doing in my spare time).

rhm

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jun 28th @ 9:59 AM

The Channel9 team should register as iPhone developers and publish it Smiley Well, Microsoft does have a Mac division, so it's not that out of order.

More seriously, my microISV could publish it for you if you wanted it distributed for free download (it's too complicated to deal with money). Also, it would have to be a reasonably compact number of lines of code as I'd have to review it if I was going to publish it.

leeappdalecom
.nettter

Hi CannotResolveSymbol,

Nice app for channel9, I am also currently working on an iPhone app to compliment a project I'm working on. It will read and display articles from an RSS feed, I am currently building the HTTP and authentication pieces and I'm having a little trouble with 1 part of the code, basically getting the message body from the HTTP response.

I'm using the CFNetwork API from the Core Foundation library, would it be possible to give me a little help or let me know how you implemented the HTTP part of it.

I'm fairly new to Cocoa and Objective-C so learning as I go along.

I'm on the following if you can help:

GTalk: lee.jdale@googlemail.com

Skype: Lee_Dale

MSN: leedale8850@hotmail.com

Cheers.

PS. I'm willing to publish the app on behalf on my company for free when it's done (when Apple give me a AppStore account that is)

Pace
In The Mix...

Any chance of an Android port of this? Devil

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In reply to leeappdalecom

#Jun 29th @ 1:01 AM

Just to give you a little pointer, I'm using the NSURLConnection and NSMutableURLRequest classes to do HTTP communication... takes care of all the details of the protocol (I think it can even handle cookies correctly, but I haven't tested it). I'm willing to let you see my communication code (I'm planning to open-source this eventually anyways), but I'll need to do a little bit of cleanup beforehand... I'm currently downloading on the UI thread (icky) and my code's a bit messy... I was just trying to get a working prototype this weekend.

I'll try to contact you on MSN Messenger tonight, but the six-hour time difference makes that somewhat difficult. I probably won't be able to get on until 6:00 or 6:30 tonight (CDT), which works out to 12:00 or 12:30pm BST

leeappdalecom
.nettter

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jun 29th @ 7:22 AM

Thanks that would be cool, I thought you might be using NSURL as it seems easier than coding at the Core Foundation level with CFNetwork. I've implemented most of the code now so don't want to rip it out and replace with NSURL just need to get over one little sticking point with extracting the message body from the response stream.

Would still be good to look at your code as I'm still learning and would be nice to take a look at how someone else is doing things.

leeappdalecom
.nettter

In reply to CannotResolveSymbol

#Jun 29th @ 7:22 AM

Thanks that would be cool, I thought you might be using NSURL as it seems easier than coding at the Core Foundation level with CFNetwork. I've implemented most of the code now so don't want to rip it out and replace with NSURL just need to get over one little sticking point with extracting the message body from the response stream.

Would still be good to look at your code as I'm still learning and would be nice to take a look at how someone else is doing things.