From his post:

The NSObject class lies at the root of (almost) all classes we build and use as part of Cocoa programming. What does it actually do, though, and how does it do it? Today, I’m going to rebuild NSObject from scratch, as suggested by friend of the blog and occasional guest author Gwynne Raskind.

He goes through memory management, inheritance, performing selectors, etc. Most of the heavy lifting is done by the runtime. It’s really amazing to see how simple it is to make this. I know I’ve thought the source code for NSObject must some crazy magic.

I highly recommend reading his article and checking out the source on GitHub.

The post Mike Ash reimplements most of NSObject functionality with MAObject for educational purposes appeared first on The Changelog.

require 'bundler'
Bundler.require

# Rack::CoreData requires a Sequel connection to a database  
DB = Sequel.connect(ENV['DATABASE_URL'] || "postgres://localhost:5432/coredata")

run Rack::CoreData('./Example.xcdatamodeld')

In summary:• AFIncrementalStore: *poof* no client code.• Rack::CoreData: *poof* no server code.

— Mattt Thompson (@mattt) July 24, 2012

View the Source for this project on GitHub.

The post Rack::CoreData – Automatically generate REST APIs for Core Data models appeared first on The Changelog.

- (void)viewDidLoad {
   [super viewDidLoad];
   self.pullToRefreshView = [[SSPullToRefreshView alloc] initWithScrollView:self.tableView delegate:self];
}


- (void)refresh {
   [self.pullToRefreshView startLoading];
   // Load data...
   [self.pullToRefreshView finishLoading];
}

- (void)pullToRefreshViewDidStartLoading:(SSPullToRefreshView *)view {
   [self refresh];
}

You can use a couple of provided content views or you can subclass and implement your own. Check out the source on GitHub or see it in action in Cheddar.

The post SSPullToRefresh – Simple pull to refresh view for iPhone appeared first on The Changelog.

Matt’s introductory blog post provides a deep introduction on the design or you can grab the source on GitHub. The license requires attribution, or you can purchase a non-attribution license online.

The post MGTileMenu – pop-up tile-based contextual menu for iOS5 appeared first on The Changelog.

The custom drawing is really simple. You just give it a block:

[self.window setTitleBarDrawingBlock:^(BOOL drawsAsMainWindow, CGRect drawingRect, CGPathRef clippingPath){
    // Custom drawing code!    
}];

David Keegan has a little demo app you can checkout as well.

The post INAppStoreWindow – A Mac App Store style Cocoa NSWindow subclass appeared first on The Changelog.

Items mentioned in the show:

• Eloy Durán, Ruby developer and creator of CocoaPods.
• CocoaPods, “the best way to manage library dependencies in Objective-C projects.”
• CocoaPods uses a Podfile to specify project dependencies.
• Eloy aspires to achieve the same level of “Twitter hate” that Bundler enjoys.
• CocoaPods started on MacRuby but now is powered by MRI.
• Patches for feature requests are welcomed.
• CocoaPods specs live on GitHub, similar to the Homebrew model.
• The Passenger pane lets you configure Phusion Passenger on the Mac really easily.
• Eloy wants a Ruby lib that shows a proper unified diff for Array, Hash, String with color support.
• Listener Jonah Williams asks how the community can increase adoption.
• Objective-C is the #10 most popular language on GitHub.
• Eloy wrote a file browser for MacVim because he likes Vim but is a “gui guy.”
• If the latest Xcode has got you down, you might try AppCode.
• BlocksKit, the Objective-C block utilities you always wish you had.
• QuincyKit offers crash report managment for your iOS apps.
• JSONKit, a very high performance Objective-C JSON library.
• Wynn likes Test Flight but Eloy has switched to Hockey App.
• Laurent Sansonetti, lead developer of MacRuby is Eloy’s programming hero.

The post Episode 0.7.8 – CocoaPods, MacRuby, and more with Eloy Durán appeared first on The Changelog.

MBRequest from Mobiata does the same for iOS and OSX:

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/standardfeeds/top_rated?alt=json?time=this_week"];
NSMutableURLRequest *urlRequest = [NSMutableURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[urlRequest setValue:@"gzip" forHTTPHeaderField:@"Accept-Encoding"];
MBJSONRequest *jsonRequest = [[[MBJSONRequest alloc] init] autorelease];
[jsonRequest performJSONRequest:urlRequest completionHandler:^(id responseJSON, NSError *error) {
    if (error != nil)
    {
        NSLog(@"Error requesting top-rated videos: %@", error);
    }
    else
    {
        NSArray *videos = [[responseJSON objectForKey:@"feed"] objectForKey:@"entry"];
        for (NSDictionary *videoInfo in videos)
        {
            NSString *title = [[videoInfo objectForKey:@"title"] objectForKey:@"$t"];
            NSString *author = [[[[videoInfo objectForKey:@"author"] objectAtIndex:0] objectForKey:@"name"] objectForKey:@"$t"];
            NSLog(@"'%@' by %@", title, author);
        }
    }
}];

Check out the examples folder in the project source for implementation ideas.

The post MBRequest – Easier API wrappers in iOS and OSX appeared first on The Changelog.

The mobile landscape is a bit different. While most mobile applications speak Web, consuming REST-ful APIs and other web resources, quite often they’re little silos of vertical, site or brand-specific functionality. Did you know that for iOS developers Apple makes it possible to register your own URL scheme, as in this Gowalla example:

• Launch with gowalla://
• Open Paddington Station spot gowalla://spots/19264
• Open pengwynn user 123 gowalla://users/pengwynn
• Open Walt Disney World Resort trip gowalla://trips/24622

The list of known iOS applications supporting OpenURL is growing daily.

Beyond application launching

As handy as these custom iOS URL schemes are in launching other applications, mobile developer Greg Pierce wants to the community to extend the idea of custom URL schemes and adopt a standard for inter-app communication. X-Callback-URL is a draft specification for one-way and two-way communication between mobile apps on iOS and looks like this:

[scheme]://[host]/[version]/[action]?[x-callback parameters]&[action parameters]

Let’s look at a real world example from Greg’s popular Terminology, a language reference app for iPhone and iPad:

terminology://x-callback-url/1.0/lookup?text=a%20good%20deal

• scheme: The app’s custom URL scheme, terminology in the above example
• host: Callback URLs are identified by a host value of x-callback-url
• version: The X-Callback-URL spec version, currently 1.0
• action: The action to perform in the target app. In this case, Terminology will perform a lookup action.
• x-callback parameters: Optional. Not used in this example
• action parameters: The parameters to pass to the executing action, “a good deal” in this example

This approach provides a robust way to not only launch an app, but also request that the app handle an action, which may or may not have a UI associated with it.

Two-way communication

The real power of X-Callback-URLs lies in two-way inter-app communication. By using the x-callback parameters in the spec, we can ask the target app to call us back on our own URLs, even handling success and error scenarios. Sort of like custom HTTP headers, these callback parameters are identified with an x- namespace:

• x-source : The friendly name of the source app calling the action. If the action in the target app requires user interface elements, it may be necessary to identify to the user the app requesting the action.
• x-success : If the action in the target method is intended to return a result to the source app, the x-callback parameter should be included and provide a URL to open to return to the source app. On completion of the action, the target app will open this URL, possibly with additional parameters tacked on to return a result to the source app. If x-success is not provided, it is assumed that the user will stay in the target app on successful completion of the action.
• x-error : URL to open if the requested action generates an error in the target app. This URL will be open with at least the parameters “errorCode=code&errorMessage=message. If x-error is not present, and a error occurs, it is assumed the target app will report the failure to the user and remain in the target app.

Here’s how you’d build a URL to allow your users to select some text in your app, choose a replacement in Terminology, and have to return back to your app.

terminology://x-callback-url/1.0/replace?text=white&x-source=MyAppName&x-success=myappurl://x-callback-url/1.0/returnAction

Greg has a great screencast that demonstrates the process end-to-end:

Be sure and check out the full documentation for all of Terminology’s callbacks on Greg’s site as well as implemenation examples on GitHub. If you decide to implement X-Callback-URL in your application, please add it to the directory so the community knows how to integrate with you.

[Source on GitHub] [Home page] [@xcallbackurl on Twitter] [Discuss on HackerNews]

The post X-Callback-URL: URL specification for iOS interapp communication appeared first on The Changelog.

In a blog post announcing their part in raising over $25,000 for charity, Semi Secret Software has released the source to Flixel iOS, the game engine behind their popular iOS title Canabalt.

A port of Flixel, the Action Script Flash game framework, Flixel iOS handles texture atlas generation, particle rendering, collisions, and animated sprites.

...

#import "Smoke.h"
#import <SemiSecret/SemiSecretTexture.h>

static NSString * ImgSmoke = @"smoke.png";

@interface Smoke ()
- (id) initWithGLData:(SmokeGLData *)glData texture:(SemiSecretTexture *)texture;
- (void) setupVertices;
- (void) setupTexCoords;
@end

...

If your app does Twitter, check out their previously released Twitter xAuth project. Need more? Go ahead and fork the project and improve upon it.

[Source on GitHub] [Blog post]

The post Canabalt: Engine behind popular iOS game now open source appeared first on The Changelog.

Built from the ground to feel like a native OS X app, Kod sports Chrome-style tear-off tabs and aims for full concurrency, taking advantage of additional CPU cores when loading files, performing syntax highlighting, and other intensive tasks.

Even with the provided integrated scripting environment powered by Node.js, perhaps the most impressive feature for the web geek is that Kod is fully themable using CSS3.

So if you’re still waiting on TextMate 2.0 and Vim or emacs isn’t your bag, then give Kod a try.

[Source on GitHub] [Web site]

The post kod: CSS3 themable, Node.js powered editor for OS X appeared first on The Changelog.

We are a bit late to blog about this, but if you follow The Changelog on Twitter you would have seen tweets from us mentioning this project.

On December 3rd we chipped in to back a Kickstarter project started by Erik Michaels-Ober to fund Hubcap, a proposed native Mac client for GitHub. Erik’s plan is to bring the elegance of various Twitter clients for the Mac, including Tweetie, Hibari, Itsy, and Echofon to GitHub and increase social engagement. Obviously, we’re excited about this project, as are the guys at GitHub.

As of today’s date (Sunday – December 12nd, 2010) the Kickstarter project has 93 backers and has raised over $3000 dollars. Erik’s original goal was to raise $2222 (I’d love to know where that number came from) by December 16th, so that means this project “is on”, and awaits the release of the funding this Thursday on the 16th at 5:00pm EST.

If this is something you are interested in suporting, consider making a pledge to the cause.

Hubcap will leverage the GitHub API to display your activity feed, notifications, and inbox messages. It will also allow you to compose and send new messages, follow new people or projects, and read the news feed of individuals, organizations, or projects. Hubcap will be a Cocoa app written primarily in MacRuby.

Erik tells us to expect to have an alpha version completed in April 2011, with beta versions coming in the early summer and the 1.0 shipping in the fall. What’s the best part? Once the 1.0 ships, the source code will be made available on GitHub to everyone.

[Project on GitHub (private for now)] [Kicksarter Project]

The post Hubcap – A GitHub client for Mac OS X appeared first on The Changelog.

Well, Clint Shryock has created just such an app. Github Notifier is a simple menu bar application for OS X that listens for GitHub updates in any of your repos and then alerts you via Growl:

To install, you can download the latest release and drag to and launch from your /Applications folder. Add your GitHub login and API Token

… and set your refresh interval.

[Source on GitHub]

The post GithubNotifier: Growl notifications for GitHub updates appeared first on The Changelog.

The OmniGroup Frameworks are a set of Objective-C code libraries for both Mac and iOS that peform a wide range of common tasks.

• OmniFoundation includes a set of low-level objects like OFStringScanner for scanning Unicode strings, OFRegularExpression for Regex, and OFMessageQueue & OFQueueProcessor for multithreaded operations.
• OmniDataObjects resemble CoreData light, built on top of SQLite for Mac and iOS.
• OmniAppKit provides types like OAOSAScript for enabling AppleScript in your app, OAPreferences for multi-pane preferences windows, and OAFindPanel for find-and-replace tasks.
• OmniInspector is the inspector seen at work in OmniGraffle, OmniFocus, OmniOutliner and OmniPlan
• OmniNetworking provides higher-level types to work with TCP, UDP and Multicast networking.

[Source on GitHub] [Framework forums]

The post OmniGroup Frameworks: Objective-C frameworks for Mac OSX and iOS apps appeared first on The Changelog.

Source on GitHub

The post PullToRefresh: Because the iPhone has no F5 appeared first on The Changelog.

• A frame that sits on top of the simulator and adds shine and an iPhone 3G look
• A halo around the pointer to indicate touch events
• Ability to set the carrier text
• Fake apps (and dock badge counts) so that your app isn’t so lonely on the home screen.

Notice that we say ‘mobile apps’ and not ‘iPhone’ or ‘Touch’ apps because a fork from @kreutz adds support for the PalmPre simulator.

[Source on GitHub] [Original blog post] [Palm fork]

The post SimFinger – make awesome screencasts of your mobile apps on your Mac appeared first on The Changelog.

[Source on GitHub] [Homepage]

The post FoursquareX: Foursquare client for OSX appeared first on The Changelog.

[Source on GitHub]

The post MBCoverFlowView – open source Cover Flow for Obj-C appeared first on The Changelog.