Synopses & Reviews
Take advantage of iPhone and iPad sensors and advanced geolocation technologies to build state-of-the-art location applications. In this concise hands-on guide, author Alasdair Allan (Learning iOS Programming) takes you deep inside Apples Core Location framework, Map Kit, and other iOS tools, using illustrative examples and sample Objective-C code. Learn how to build location-aware apps for both iPhones and iPads, using code that detects hardware features and then adjusts your apps behavior.
If youre a programmer with iOS experience, or a Mac developer familiar with Objective-C, this book helps you get off to a solid start in location-based app development.
Youll learn about:
- Core Location: Understand the significant-change location service and geo-fencing capabilities
- Map Kit: Embed maps into your applications views
- Magnetometer: Use the on-board sensor as a digital compass
- Geocoding capabilities: Translate geographic coordinates into place names, and vice versa
- Heat maps: Get a code walkthrough for displaying these maps on top of a standard MapKit view
- Third-party SDKs: Add unique geo-location capabilities to your app from SkyHook Wireless, MapBox, and other providers
Synopsis
The iPhone and iPad allow user positioning via multiple methods, including GPS. The growing number location-aware, and location-fenced, applications now arriving in the App Store make heavy use of these abilities. This book walks you through the basic tools you need to build geo-aware applications before diving into the available third-party geo-SDKs available for the iOS platform.
This short book is part of a collection that will, along with new material, be compiled into a larger book, iOS Sensor Programming. The other books in this collection are Augmented Reality in iOS, iOS Sensor Apps with Arduino, and Basic Sensors in iOS.
About the Author
Alasdair Allan is a senior research fellow in Astronomy at the University of Exeter, where he is building an autonomous, distributed peer-to-peer network of telescopes that reactively schedule observations of time-critical events. He also runs a small technology consulting business writing bespoke software and building open hardware, and is currently developing a series of iPhone applications to monitor and manage cloud-based services and distributed sensor networks.
Table of Contents
Preface; Who Should Read This Book?; What Should You Already Know?; What Will You Learn?; What's In This Book?; Conventions Used in This Book; Using Code Examples; Safari® Books Online; How to Contact Us; Acknowledgments; Chapter 1: Introduction; 1.1 Hardware Support; 1.2 Detecting Hardware Differences; 1.3 Setting Required Hardware Capabilities; Chapter 2: Core Location; 2.1 The Standard Location Service; 2.2 Significant Location Monitoring; 2.3 Region Monitoring; Chapter 3: Map Kit; 3.1 Adding a Map; 3.2 Annotating Maps; 3.3 Adding Overlays; Chapter 4: Digital Compass; 4.1 About the Magnetometer; 4.2 Writing a Compass Application; Chapter 5: Geocoding; 5.1 Reverse Geocoding; 5.2 Forward Geocoding; 5.3 Building an Example App; Chapter 6: Drawing Heat Maps; 6.1 Building an Earthquake Map; 6.2 Overlaying Other Types of Images; Chapter 7: Further Information and Third-Party SDKs; 7.1 Skyhook Wireless; 7.2 GeoLoqi; 7.3 MapBox; 7.4 Bing Maps Control for iOS; 7.5 ArcGIS for iOS; 7.6 Urban Airship; 7.7 Foursquare; Colophon;