The API is sweeeeet & very simple to use. I had a few zsh aliases up and running in minutes.

First thing I did was find out where the bridge was:

curl "http://www.meethue.com/api/nupnp"

This sends you back JSON with the IP address and what not.

Then just create a user, which involves pressing the button on the bridge and issuing this command:

curl -X POST -d "{\"devicetype\": \"commandline\", \"username\": \"philipshue\"}" "http://10.0.1.25/api"

When that works, you can issue simple commands the same way by using the username. For example, here is my ‘dim’ command:

curl -X PUT -d "{\"bri\":5}" "http://10.0.1.25/api/philipshue/groups/0/action"

I put a file of all the commands I use in my setupfiles repo on github.

If you include FormatterKit and import TTTURLRequestFormatter.h in your file, you’ll be able to call a line of code like this:

[TTTURLRequestFormatter cURLCommandFromURLRequest:operation.request];

But that gets kind of noisy to do every request, even if you limit it to debug only. I usually only need that curl line when I am debugging, so it’d be great to have a debugger command to get the curl line for me, by calling the above function.

Enter .lldbinit setupfile!

Here is my .lldbinit file, which just goes in my home directory like any other setup file:

Then if you restart Xcode and set a breakpoint inside the success block of the request, you can issue a command in the debugger like this:

curlme operation.request

This will spit out the full cURL command which you can use in the terminal for debugging!  Sweet!

Remote Server Setup

Copy SSH key

(on local machine) cd .ssh
(on local machine) scp id_rsa.pub name@servername:~/ (will need password)
(on local machine) ssh name@servername (will need password)
(on remote server) cat id_rsa.pub >> .ssh/authorized_keys
(on remote server) exit
(on local machine) ssh name@servername (shouldn’t need password)

Create bare remote repo

(On remote server) A ‘bare’ repo is a repo that is only the .git folder. Useful for this case where we are going to copy the files elsewhere.

cd to /home/username
mkdir mywebsite.git
cd mywebsite.git
git init –bare

Create post receive

(On remote server) A ‘post-receive’ is a script run whenever the repo receives content (i.e.: when someone pushes)

Create a file named ‘post-receive’ inside /home/someuser/mywebsite.git/hooks containing:

#!/bin/sh
GIT_WORK_TREE=/path/to/webroot/of/mywebsite git checkout -f

This file is just a script file, so it can contain any other script commands needed (schema updates etc). The above command will checkout the repo to the path given.

Add remote to server we just configured

(On local machine) This adds the remote into an existing repo on our local machine. It is not saved in everyones repo, it is local to the person adding it.

git remote add production username@servername.com:mywebsite.git

Push To Server!

(On local machine) This sets up the initial push to the ‘production’ remote, and pushes to production, executing the script in post-receive. In the future, you will only need ‘git push production’

git push production +master:refs/heads/master

Update Process w/ Examples

Because of the setup above, all the following can be done on our local machine.

Here is the initial setup for my appwebsites git repo:

Now, I’ll make and commit a local change to my repo:

Now I will push to github: git push

Whenever I am ready, I’ll push to production with the command: git push production
(This will execute the script in post-receive), leaving my repo looking like this:

Other Tricks

With this method, you can reset your local master to wherever you want, and push that to production. For example, I will reset my local master to the second commit in the repo by doing a: git reset –hard ae72d0e

Then to make production reset I do a: git push -f production master This forces the production remote to be where master is.

DEComposeViewController is a generic message entry view controller using the style of iOS compose view controllers (like tweet sheets).

Based on the excellent tweet sheet based control DETweetComposeViewController from DoubleEncore.

Example Usage

Get code here: GitHub

I leave for WWDC in a couple days. While this is my first time in person, usually I am huddled around my monitor watching the live blogging, with a day of extremely low productivity. This is also the first year I am a iOS developer professionally, previous years iOS was a merely hobby. (Kind of like TVs to Apple, zing!)

There are plenty of blog posts on what to expect, filled with rumors. I thought I would write up what a regular, every day iOS developer would LOVE to see. After the conference, I will write a follow up.

1) Ability to combine Apple IDs

Since the very beginning, I have had a ‘developer’ Apple ID, and my regular iTunes Apple ID. So while I buy all my books,music & apps with my ‘regular’ Apple ID, I had to buy my WWDC ticket with my ‘developer’ Apple ID. Annoying, but thats all. However, with the ever expanding world of iCloud, everything is controlled by your Apple ID. Having such little control over them is unacceptable. My simple #1 request is the ability to combine & better control Apple IDs.

2) More Developer Center Upgrades

One word: analytics. It is insane that I don’t know anything about when someone is driven to the app store to my app. I want to be able to make a funnel from my app landing page to the app store. There are rumors about improvements surrounding privacy and a UDID replacement, so it will be interesting to see if this indicates a larger improvement to the developer center (or iTunes Connect).

3) Clarification on how to create an iOS framework

Apple doesn’t seem to want developers to create frameworks on iOS, even though there are several out there. If this is an acceptable thing, there should be an Xcode template for it. Make it easy.

4) ‘Reader’ view for UIWebView

The awesome ‘reader’ functionality of Safari needs to be exposed via APIs thru UIWebView. That would make showing content SOOO much easier.

5) Better git integration with Xcode

It seems like Xcode gets confused whenever I switch branches. Xcode ends up ‘indexing’ over and over. Something is wrong here. I think it has to do with Xcode preprocessing files that git changes? If it is a setup issue, maybe Xcode should include a built in .gitignore file for Xcode projects?

6) Typical Things

I am a full on Apple fanboy, so I do want all the things that other websites mention as well: Facebook integration, 3d Maps, a new iPhone & a new Apple TV.

Stay tuned for a follow up post after the conference!

Wrote EasyCSV2SQLite last year as a utility to help with some other projects. Unfortunately, I never really continued developing it, howver I think it could be useful to people. So I figured I’d open source it!

It is still available on the app store if you want to download the binary. Here is the description:

EasyCSV2SQLite makes it easy to convert comma delimited text files to sqlite databases. The primary use would be to include datasets inside development projects. To further enable this, EasyCSV2SQLite will generate objective-c code necessary to read the created SQLite database.

EasyCSV2SQLite is a very simple application, but does its job well!

- each column is a VARCHAR(255)
- line endings for the CSV file can be LF/CR/CRLF
- first line used as column headers
- objective-c code generated for reading database
- uses NSScanner rather than componentsSeparatedByString so it properly parses commas in quotation marks

The code generation was initially based on code from a blog post at dBlog.com.au. Thanks to them for showing how easy it is to read SQLite from objective-c!

https://github.com/pj4533/EasyCSV2SQLite

LOCPix allows anyone to quickly search and browse the vast image collections from the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress contains nearly a million photographs and posters to explore with LOCPix simple and friendly user interface.

View On AppStore!

Here is a quick demo of the new version of GovConTrack, which adds the ability to query USASpending.gov. Will be released soon.