Category Archives: Objective C++

Creating a custom Key in Objective C

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When creating a custom key in Objective C for NSDictionary or NSCache or the like, you need to create an object which does the following:

Implements <NSCopying> protocol.

If your key is invariant, you can implement the method copyWithZone: as follows:

- (id)copyWithZone:(NSZone *)zone
{
    return self;
}

Of course if your key is invariant, ideally you would create the key entirely using a custom init function, and mark all the properties (readonly).

Implement the isEqual: method.

This is part of the NSObject protocol. Note that any class (or nil) could be passed in as the argument to isEqual: method, so you may want to use the method isKindOfClass: to verify that you got what you expected as the parameter.

Implement the hash method.

This is also part of the NSObject protocol, and returns a NSUInteger value which provides a hash function of the data you passed in.

The hash function doesn’t need to be complicated. For example, if your key is three integers, your hash function could be as simple as:

- (NSUInteger)hash
{
    return (self.a << 8) ^ (self.b << 4) ^ self.c;
}

What is important is that two keys passed into your system are unlikely to have a similar value.

Also note that many of the classes that you see used routinely as keys (such as NSString or NSNumber) also follow this protocol. Meaning if your custom key has a string in it, you can use the NSString’s hash function as one of the inputs to your own hashing function:

- (NSUInteger)hash
{
    return (self.intVal << 16) ^ [self.stringVal hash];
}

Objective C subscripting operators

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I keep forgetting where this link is, so I’m putting it here: CLang Reference: Objective C, Object Subscripting.

This documents the methods we need to define if we are declaring our own Objective C class and we want to implement array-style subscripting or dictionary-style subscripting.

Extracting from the text:

… Moreover, because the method names are selected by the type of the subscript, an object can be subscripted using both array and dictionary styles.

Meaning if the compiler detects the subscript is an integral type, it uses the array-style subscript method calls, and when the subscript is an Objective C pointer type, it uses a dictionary-style subscript method call.

For array subscripting, use either or both of the methods

- (id<NSObject>)objectAtIndexedSubscript:(NSInteger)index;
- (void)setObject:(id<NSObject>)value atIndexedSubscript:(NSInteger)index;

For dictionary-style subscripting, use either or both of the methods

- (id<NSObject>)objectForKeyedSubscript:(id<NSObject>)key;
- (void)setObject:(id<NSObject>)value forKeyedSubscript:(id<NSObject>)key;

This goes hand-in-hand with my earlier post Objective C declaration shortcuts, and has been a public service announcement.

First pass at a more formal language for JSON.

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So the single most common thing I run into, which is a source of all sorts of headaches when writing custom software for clients, is hooking into their back end system.

A very common pattern for me is to create a single interface which can perform a HTTP ‘get’ or ‘post’ call in order to obtain the contents, run everything through a JSON parser, and then handing the resulting NSDictionary or NSArray to an object which converts the results into a set of Objective C classes.

Up until now I’ve been using JSON Accelerator, which is a really nice little tool for converting JSON into a set of classes. But this runs into a couple of problems.

(1) A number of sites I integrate with have multiple JSON endpoints, each which return subtly different JSON results. Using JSON Accelerator and I wind up generating a lot of duplicate classes which represent more or less the same thing.

(2) Often those sites will change; after all, the back end is under development as well as the front end. I often have a hard time seeing the structure from the JSON; sometimes buried in a few hundred lines is a field that contains a null pointer or which was changed from a string to a JSON field–and tracking those bugs down can be a pain in the ass.

It seemed to me the best way to handle this is to have an intermediate representational language which allows me to see what it is that I’m working with, and to allow allow me to ‘tweak’ the results, so I can point out that the ‘Person’ record in call A is the exact same thing as the ‘Person’ record in call B, except for one of the fields being omitted.

So I built a simple analysis app and a simple compiler app to resolve this problem.

You can download the compiled tools and read the documentation (such as it is) from here.

The representational language is fairly simple: a set of objects, which can be compiled into Objective C and (when I have time) into Java. Each field in an object can be a primitive, an object or an array of objects. So, for example:

/*  Feed 
 *
 *      Top level of the feed
 */

Feed {
    id: integer,
    name: string,
    date: string,
    active: boolean,
    addressList: arrayof Address,
    phoneList: arrayof Phone,
}

/*  Address
 *
 *      The user's address
 */

Address {
    id: integer,
    name: string,
    address: string,
    address2: (optional) string, // optional in the data stream
    city: string,
    state: string,
    zip: string
}

/*  Phone
 *
 *      The user's phone
 */

Phone {
    id: integer,
    name: string,
    phone: string
}

Note that fields can also be marked as ‘nullable’:

Feed {
    id: integer,
    name: string,
    value: (nullable) real
}

This will translate into an NSNumber * field rather than into a double.

There are also a couple of tools: one that generates the Objective C code, and one which reads in a bunch of JSON (in fact, it will read multiple JSON objects all in a row), and makes a best guess at the underlying structure, collapsing common objects as needed, and even noting when the same field appears to contain ambiguous content.

At some point I will need to clean this up, add Java support, and push this out to GIT. But for now, there you go.

Let me know if this seems useful.

Moving views around when the keyboard shows in iOS

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When the keyboard shows or hides in iOS, we receive an event to notify us that the keyboard is being shown and being hidden.

Ideally we want to get the animation parameters and the size of that keyboard so we can rearrange the views inside of our application to fit the keyboard. I’m only covering the case of the keyboard on the iPhone; on the iPad you also have the problem of the split keyboard, but the same ideas should hold there as well.

Step 1:

When the view controller that may show a keyboard appears, register for notifications for the keyboard being shown and hidden:

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
    [super viewDidLoad];

	// Do any additional setup after loading the view.
	[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(keyboardShowHide:) name:UIKeyboardWillShowNotification object:nil];
	[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] addObserver:self selector:@selector(keyboardShowHide:) name:UIKeyboardWillHideNotification object:nil];

	// other stuff here
}

Step 2:

Remember to unregister notifications when this goes away, to prevent problems.

- (void)dealloc
{
	[[NSNotificationCenter defaultCenter] removeObserver:self];
}

Step 3:

Receive the event in our new method, and extract the keyboard parameters and animation parameters.

- (void)keyboardShowHide:(NSNotification *)n
{
	CGRect krect;

	/* Extract the size of the keyboard when the animation stops */
	krect = [n.userInfo[UIKeyboardFrameEndUserInfoKey] CGRectValue];

	/* Convert that to the rectangle in our primary view. Note the raw
	 * keyboard size from above is in the window's frame, which could be
	 * turned on its side.
	 */
	krect = [self.view convertRect:krect fromView:nil];

	/* Get the animation duration, and animation curve */
	NSTimeInterval duration = [[n.userInfo objectForKey:UIKeyboardAnimationDurationUserInfoKey] doubleValue];
	UIViewAnimationCurve curve = [[n.userInfo objectForKey:UIKeyboardAnimationCurveUserInfoKey] intValue];

	/* Kick off the animation. What you do with the keyboard size is up to you */
	[UIView animateWithDuration:0 delay:duration options:UIViewAnimationOptionBeginFromCurrentState | curve animations:^{
			/* Set up the destination rectangle sizes given the keyboard size */
			Do something interesting here
		} completion:^(BOOL finished) {
			/* Finish up here */
			Do something interesting here
		}];
}

Wrapping text with ellipsis on iOS

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This is an extremely common pattern I encounter quite a few times, and worthy of it’s own “things to remember” post.

So you want to have some text which wraps, but when it hits the bottom of the window, you get an ellipsis, right? But [NSString drawInRect…] doesn’t do the trick, right?

Well, it turns out the answer is using an NSAttributedString.

The first step is to turn your label string into an attributed string. At this point you need to know the font and color of the text that will be rendered, so you need to bake these attributes into the string. So, for example:

- (NSAttributedString *)attributedStringWithString:(NSString *)str
{
	UIFont *font = [UIFont boldSystemFontWithSize:19]; /* Some font */
	UIColor *color = [UIColor blackColor]; /* Some color */
	NSDictionary *dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
		font, NSFontAttributeName,
		color, NSForegroundColorAttributeName,
		nil];
	return [[NSAttributedString alloc] initWithString:str attributes:d];
}

The next step is to draw the string in the rectangle area where it belongs:

	NSAttributedString *astr = [self attributedStringWithString:self.myLabel];
	[astr drawWithRect:r
		options:NSStringDrawingUsesLineFragmentOrigin | NSStringDrawingTruncatesLastVisibleLine
		context:nil];

And this will wrap the text, truncating the last line with an ellipsis.

The advantage of using NSAttributedString is that you can also easily insert segments of text which are of a different color or style. I find it easiest to build up the attributed string through concatenation of attributed segments into an NSMutableAttributedString object. So, for example, if you’re displaying a tweet from Twitter and you wish to bold all the hashtags, you simply parse the string (scanning for sequences staring with whitespace and a ‘#’, and including all the alphanumeric characters past the ‘#’), and create an attributed string of that segment as bold, concatenating all the strings into a single mutable string.

And for optimization purposes you can then hang onto the attributed string rather than the original string.

Targeted broadcasting of multithreaded results.

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Okay, so here’s a basic problem. You’re building an iOS application (or an Android application) which needs to download an image from a remote site for display in a view.

So you write code similar to the following:

- (void)setImageUrlTest:(NSString *)url
{
	/*
	 *	Request the download on a background thread. Once we've downloaded the
	 *	results, we kick off a new block in the main thread to update the
	 *	image for this image object, and then animate a fade-in
	 */
	
	dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0), ^{
		NSURLResponse *resp;
		NSURLRequest *req = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:url]];
		NSData *data = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:req returningResponse:&resp error:nil];
		if (data) {
			/*
			 *	We have the data from the remote server. Kick off into the main
			 *	thread the UI update
			 */
			
			dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
				/*
				 *	Be a little tricky: fade in from transparent with a half
				 *	second delay
				 */
				
				UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithData:data];
				self.alpha = 0;
				self.image = image;
				[UIView animateWithDuration:0.5 animations:^{
					self.alpha = 1;
				}];
			});
		} else {
			NSLog(@"An error occurred downloading image");
		}
	});
}

If we were doing this on Android, we could do this using a Java thread. (Ideally we’d want to create a thread queue, but for illustration purposes we will just create a new thread.)

    void setImageUrlTest(final String url)
    {
        final Handler h = new Handler();
        
        /*
         *  Request the download on a background thread. Once we've downloaded
         *  the results, we kick off a runnable in the main thread using the
         *  handler created above, animating a fade-in
         */
        new Thread() {
            @Override
            public void run()
            {
                try {
                    URL u = new URL(url);
                    URLConnection conn = u.openConnection();
                    InputStream is = conn.getInputStream();
                    final Bitmap bmap = BitmapFactory.decodeStream(is);
                    is.close();
                    
                    /*
                     * If we get here we have a bitmap. Put a runnable which
                     * will set the image in the main evnet loop
                     */
                    setVisibility(View.INVISIBLE);
                    setImageBitmap(bmap);
                    h.post(new Runnable() {
                        @Override
                        public void run()
                        {
                            AlphaAnimation a = new AlphaAnimation(0.0f, 1.0f);
                            a.setDuration(500);
                            a.setAnimationListener(new AnimationListener() {
                                @Override
                                public void onAnimationEnd(Animation animation)
                                {
                                }

                                @Override
                                public void onAnimationRepeat(Animation animation)
                                {
                                }

                                @Override
                                public void onAnimationStart(Animation animation)
                                {
                                    setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
                                }
                            });
                            startAnimation(a);
                        }
                    });
                }
                catch (Throwable th) {
                    Log.d("DownloadImageView","Failed to download image " + url, th);
                }
            }
        }.start();
    }

In both cases what we do is kick off a background task which downloads the image, then using a reference to the original image view, we then load the image into the image view (doing so on the main thread where all UI tasks need to take place), and finally we trigger an animation which fades in the view.

Question: What happens if the image view goes away?

On Android and on iOS, it’s fairly routine to have a slow internet connection, and the user may dismiss your view controller or activity before the view finishes downloading.

But there is a problem with that.

On iOS, the block object that you create has an implicit ‘retain’ on the UIImageView object. This means that, until the network operation completes, all the resources associated with the UIImageView cannot be released.

Things get worse on Android, which (ironically enough) has a much smaller memory footprint for typical applications: not only can’t the ImageView object go away, but the ImageView object contains a reference to the activity which launched the image. Meaning not only is the ImageView object retained by the anonymous thread declaration, but so is the activity that the image is contained in–along with the entire rest of the view hierarchy and all other activity resources associated with the containing activity.

Given that a network timeout can be up to 30 seconds, this means if the user is browsing in and out of different screens, you can very quickly run out of memory as memory is filled up with defunct views whose sole purpose is to exist as a target for a network activity that is no longer really necessary.

What to do?

Okay, the following is not a viable solution, despite my seeing it in multiple places:

	__weak UIImageView *weakSelf = self;
	dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0), ^{
		NSURLResponse *resp;
		NSURLRequest *req = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:url]];
		NSData *data = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:req returningResponse:&resp error:nil];
		if (data) {
			/*
			 *	We have the data from the remote server. Kick off into the main
			 *	thread the UI update
			 */
			
			dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
				/*
				 *	Be a little tricky: fade in from transparent with a half
				 *	second delay
				 */
				
				UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithData:data];
				weakSelf.alpha = 0;
				weakSelf.image = image;
				[UIView animateWithDuration:0.5 animations:^{
					weakSelf.alpha = 1;
				}];
			});
		} else {
			NSLog(@"An error occurred downloading image");
		}
	});

This doesn’t work because if the image is delayed during download and the image view goes away, the weakSelf reference now points to garbage, causing a crash.

Broadcast to the rescue

One possible solution on iOS is to use NSNotificationCenter to send notifications when a network operation completes successfully. The advantage of using NSNotificationCenter (or an equivalent broadcast/receive mechanism on Android) is that the receiver is effectively detached from the broadcaster: a receiver can detach itself on release, and if the broadcast message has no receivers, the message is dropped on the floor.

And in our case this is the right answer: once the image view has gone away we don’t care what the resulting image was supposed to be.

There is a problem with this, though: the code which handles the incoming message is also separated logically from the code that makes the request. And unless you insert code into the broadcast receiver which explicitly detaches the image view from the NSNotificationCenter once a response is received, you can have dozens (or even hundreds) of broadcast receivers listening to each incoming image.

Another way: CMBroadcastThreadPool

By combining the semantics of a block notification system with a broadcast/receiver pair we can circumvent these problems.

Internally we maintain a map between a request and the block receiving the response. Each block also is associated with a ‘handler’ object; the object which effectively ‘owns’ the response. So, in the case of our image view, the ‘handler’ object is our image view itself.

When our image view goes away, we can notify our thread pool object using the removeHandler: method; this walks through the table of requests and response blocks, deleting those response blocks associated with the handle being deleted:

- (void)dealloc
{
	[[CMNetworkRequest shared] removeHandler:self];
}

Note: CMNetworkRequest inherits CMBroadcastThreadPool to implement network semantics. More information later.

We can then submit a request using the request:handler:response: method; this takes in a request (in our case, the NSURLRequest for an image), the handler (that is, the object which will be receiving the response) and the block to invoke when the response is received.

- (void)setImageUrl:(NSString *)url
{
	CMNetworkRequest *req = [CMNetworkRequest shared];
	[req removeHandler:self];	/* Remove old handler */
	NSURLRequest *rurl = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:url]];
	[req request:rurl handler:self response:^(NSData *data) {
		UIImage *image = [UIImage imageWithData:data];
		self.alpha = 0;
		self.image = image;
		[UIView animateWithDuration:0.5 animations:^{
			self.alpha = 1;
		}];
	}];
}

The call to request:handler:response: stores the handler and response in association with the request, then executes the request in a background thread. Once the response is received, the CMBroadcastThreadPool object looks up the handler and block to invoke, and if present, invokes the block.

However, if the UIImageView has gone away, there are no blocks to invoke–and the network response is dropped on the floor.

Internally our CMBroadcastThreadPool class on iOS invokes an internal method responseForRequest: to process the request. This method is invoked on a block passed into a background thread via Grand Central Dispatch.

The class itself is presented in full here:

CMBroadcastThreadPool.h

//
//  CMBroadcastThreadPool.h
//  TestThreadPool
//
//  Created by William Woody on 7/20/13.
//  Copyright (c) 2013 William Woody. All rights reserved.
//

#import <Foundation/Foundation.h>

@interface CMBroadcastThreadPool : NSObject
{
	@private
		NSMutableSet *inProcess;
		NSMutableDictionary *receivers;
}

- (void)request:(id<NSObject, NSCopying>)request handler:(id<NSObject>)h response:(void (^)(id<NSObject>))resp;
- (void)removeHandler:(id<NSObject>)h;

/* Override this method for processing requests */
- (id<NSObject>)responseForRequest:(id<NSObject, NSCopying>)request;

@end

CMBroadcastThreadPool.m

//
//  CMBroadcastThreadPool.m
//  TestThreadPool
//
//  Created by William Woody on 7/20/13.
//  Copyright (c) 2013 William Woody. All rights reserved.
//

#import "CMBroadcastThreadPool.h"

/************************************************************************/
/*																		*/
/*	Internal Storage													*/
/*																		*/
/************************************************************************/

@interface CMBroadcastStore : NSObject
@property (retain) id<NSObject> handler;
@property (copy) void (^response)(id<NSObject>);
@end

@implementation CMBroadcastStore

#if !__has_feature(objc_arc)
- (void)dealloc
{
	[handler release];
	[response release];
	[super dealloc];
}
#endif

@end

/************************************************************************/
/*																		*/
/*	Thread pool															*/
/*																		*/
/************************************************************************/

@implementation CMBroadcastThreadPool

- (id)init
{
	if (nil != (self = [super init])) {
		inProcess = [[NSMutableSet alloc] initWithCapacity:10];
		receivers = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] initWithCapacity:10];
	}
	return self;
}

#if !__has_feature(objc_arc)
- (void)dealloc
{
	[inProcess release];
	[receivers release];
	[super dealloc];
}
#endif

/*	request:handler:response:
 *
 *		Submit a request that will be sent to the specified hanlder, via the
 *	response block
 */

- (void)request:(id<NSObject, NSCopying>)request handler:(id<NSObject>)h response:(void (^)(id<NSObject>))resp
{
	@synchronized(self) {
		/*
		 *	Add this to the map of handlers for this request
		 */
		
		NSMutableArray *recarray = [receivers objectForKey:request];
		if (!recarray) {
			recarray = [[NSMutableArray alloc] initWithCapacity:10];
			[receivers setObject:recarray forKey:request];
#if !__has_feature(objc_arc)
			[recarray release];
#endif
		}
		
		CMBroadcastStore *store = [[CMBroadcastStore alloc] init];
		store.handler = h;
		store.response = resp;
		[recarray addObject:store];
#if !__has_feature(objc_arc)
		[store release];
#endif

		/*
		 *	Now enqueue a request in GCD. This only enqueues the item if the
		 *	item is not presently in the queue.
		 */
		 
		if (![inProcess containsObject:request]) {
			[inProcess addObject:request];
			
			dispatch_async(dispatch_get_global_queue(DISPATCH_QUEUE_PRIORITY_DEFAULT, 0), ^{
				
				/* Process for response */
				id<NSObject> response = [self responseForRequest:request];
				
				/* Get the list of receivers; if any exist, trigger response */
				@synchronized(self) {
					NSMutableArray *a = [receivers objectForKey:request];
					if (a) {
						dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
							for (CMBroadcastStore *s in a) {
								s.response(response);
							}
						});
						[receivers removeObjectForKey:request];
					} else {
						NSLog(@"No receivers");
					}
					
					/* Remove from list of items in queue */
					[inProcess removeObject:request];
				}
			});
		}
		
	}
}

/*	removeHandler:
 *
 *		Remove the handler, removing all the receivers for this incoming
 *	message
 */

- (void)removeHandler:(id<NSObject>)h
{
	@synchronized(self) {
		NSArray *keys = [receivers allKeys];
		for (id request in keys) {
			/*
			 *	Remove selected handlers associated with this receiver
			 */
			
			NSMutableArray *a = [receivers objectForKey:request];
			int i,len = [a count];
			for (i = len-1; i >= 0; --i) {
				CMBroadcastStore *store = [a objectAtIndex:i];
				if (store.handler == h) {
					[a removeObjectAtIndex:i];
				}
			}
			if ([a count] <= 0) {
				/*
				 *	If empty, remove the array of responses.
				 */
				
				[receivers removeObjectForKey:request];
			}
		}
	}
}

/*	responseForRequest:
 *
 *		This returns a response for the specified request. This should be
 *	overridden if possible
 */

- (id<NSObject>)responseForRequest:(id<NSObject, NSCopying>)request
{
	return nil;
}

@end

In Java

For Java I’ve done the same sort of thing, except I’ve also included a thread pool mechanism which manages a finite number of background threads. I’ve also added code which causes a request to be dropped entirely if it is not being processed. For example, if you’re attempting to download an image, but the image view goes away, and the request to download the image hasn’t started being processed by a background thread, then we drop the request entirely.

To use in Android you need to override runOnMainThread to put the runnable into the main thread. (This can be done using Android’s ‘Handler’ class.) You also need to provide the processRequest method.

BroadcastThreadPool.java

/*  BroadcastThreadPool.java
 *
 *  Created on Jul 20, 2013 by William Edward Woody
 */

package com.glenviewsoftware.bthreadpool;

import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.HashSet;
import java.util.Iterator;
import java.util.LinkedList;
import java.util.Map;

/**
 * A thread pool which sends the response to a request to a broadcast list,
 * which can be disposed of at any time.
 */
public abstract class BroadcastThreadPool<Response,Request,Handler>
{
    /// The number of threads that can simultaneously run
    private int fMaxThreads;
    
    /// The number of threads currently operating
    private int fCurThreads;
    
    /// The number of waiting threads
    private int fWaitingThreads;
    
    /// The request queue; a queue of requests to be processed
    private LinkedList<Request> fRequestQueue;
    
    /// The list of requests tha are being processed
    private HashSet<Request> fInProcess;
    
    /// The request response mapping; this maps requests to their responses.
    private HashMap<Request,HashMap<Handler,ArrayList<Receiver<Response>>>> fReceivers;
    
    
    private class BackgroundThread implements Runnable
    {

        @Override
        public void run()
        {
            ++fCurThreads;
            ++fWaitingThreads;
            
            for (;;) {
                /*
                 * Get the current request
                 */
                
                Request req;
                
                synchronized(BroadcastThreadPool.this) {
                    while (fRequestQueue.isEmpty()) {
                        try {
                            BroadcastThreadPool.this.wait();
                        }
                        catch (InterruptedException e) {
                        }
                    }
                    
                    /* When we get a request, note it's in process and mark thread in use */
                    req = fRequestQueue.removeFirst();
                    fInProcess.add(req);
                    --fWaitingThreads;
                }
                
                /*
                 * Process the response. If an exception happens, set the response
                 * to null. (Is this right?)
                 */
                
                Response resp;
                try {
                    resp = processRequest(req);
                }
                catch (Throwable th) {
                    /* Unexpected failure. */
                    resp = null;
                }
                
                /*
                 * Now send the response
                 */
                
                synchronized(BroadcastThreadPool.this) {
                    /* Remove request from list of in-process requests */
                    fInProcess.remove(req);
                    
                    /* Get map of receivers for this request and remove from list */
                    final HashMap<Handler,ArrayList<Receiver<Response>>> rmap = fReceivers.get(req);
                    fReceivers.remove(req);
                    
                    /* Send response to all receivers */
                    final Response respFinal = resp;
                    runOnMainThread(new Runnable() {
                        @Override
                        public void run()
                        {
                            for (ArrayList<Receiver<Response>> l: rmap.values()) {
                                for (Receiver<Response> rec: l) {
                                    rec.processResponse(respFinal);
                                }
                            }
                        }
                    });
                    
                    ++fWaitingThreads;
                }
            }
        }
        
    }
    
    /**
     *	Broadcast receiver. This is the interface to the abstract class which
     *  will receive the response once the message has been processed.
     */
    public interface Receiver<Response>
    {
        void processResponse(Response r);
    }
    
    /**
     * Create a new thread pool which uses a broadcast/receiver pair to handle
     * requests.
     * @param maxThreads
     */
    public BroadcastThreadPool(int maxThreads)
    {
        fMaxThreads = maxThreads;
        
        fReceivers = new HashMap<Request,HashMap<Handler,ArrayList<Receiver<Response>>>>();
        fRequestQueue = new LinkedList<Request>();
        fInProcess = new HashSet<Request>();
    }
    
    /**
     * This enqueues the request, adds the response ot the list of listeners
     * @param r
     * @param h
     * @param resp
     */
    public synchronized void request(Request r, Handler h, Receiver<Response> resp)
    {
        boolean enqueue = false;
        
        /*
         *  Step 1: Add this to the hash map of handlers. If we need to
         *  create a new entry, we probably have to enqueue the request
         */
        
        HashMap<Handler,ArrayList<Receiver<Response>>> rm = fReceivers.get(h);
        if (rm == null) {
            /* Enqueue if we're not currently processing the request */
            enqueue = !fInProcess.contains(r);
            
            /* Add this receiver */
            rm = new HashMap<Handler,ArrayList<Receiver<Response>>>();
            fReceivers.put(r,rm);
        }
        
        /*
         * Step 2: Add this receiver to the list of receivers associated with
         * the specified handler
         */
        ArrayList<Receiver<Response>> list = rm.get(h);
        if (list == null) {
            list = new ArrayList<Receiver<Response>>();
            rm.put(h, list);
        }
        list.add(resp);
        
        /*
         * Step 3: If we need to enqueue the request, then enqueue it and wake
         * up a thread to process. Note we only enqueue a request if the same
         * request hasn't already been enqueued.
         */
        
        if (enqueue) {
            fRequestQueue.addLast(r);
            
            if ((fWaitingThreads <= 0) && (fCurThreads < fMaxThreads)) {
                /*
                 * Create new processing thread
                 */
                
                Thread th = new Thread(new BackgroundThread(),"BThread Proc");
                th.setDaemon(true);
                th.start();
            }
            
            notify();
        }
    }
    
    /**
     * This is called when my handler is being disposed or going inactive and
     * is no longer interested in the response. The handler will be removed
     * and all of the responses will go away
     * @param h
     */
    public synchronized void remove(Handler h)
    {
        Iterator<Map.Entry<Request,HashMap<Handler,ArrayList<Receiver<Response>>>>> iter;
        
        /*
         * Iterate through all requests, removing handlers. If the request
         * goes empty, remove
         */
        
        iter = fReceivers.entrySet().iterator();
        while (iter.hasNext()) {
            Map.Entry<Request,HashMap<Handler,ArrayList<Receiver<Response>>>> e = iter.next();
            
            HashMap<Handler,ArrayList<Receiver<Response>>> pm = e.getValue();
            pm.remove(h);
            if (pm.isEmpty()) {
                /*
                 * The request is no longer needed. If it is not in process,
                 * remove from the queue, as it doesn't need to be processed.
                 */
                
                Request req = e.getKey();
                if (!fInProcess.contains(req)) {
                    fRequestQueue.remove(req);
                }
            }
        }
    }
    
    /**
     * runOnMainThread: override on an OS which requires responses on the
     * main thread. For now, this just executes directly
     * @param r
     */
    protected void runOnMainThread(Runnable r)
    {
        r.run();
    }

    /**
     * This is the abstract method executed in the thread queue which responds
     * with a specified response.
     * @param req
     * @return
     */
    protected abstract Response processRequest(Request req);
}

Here is an example of using this class to receive data from a remote network connection. We would pass in a string and receive a byte array of the data from the remote server.

NetworkThreadPool.java

/*  NetworkThreadPool.java
 *
 *  Created on Jul 22, 2013 by William Edward Woody
 */

package com.glenviewsoftware.bthreadpool;

import java.io.ByteArrayOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStream;
import java.net.URL;
import java.net.URLConnection;

public class NetworkThreadPool extends BroadcastThreadPool<byte[], String, Object>
{
    public NetworkThreadPool()
    {
        /* Max of 5 background threads */
        super(5);
    }
    
    private byte[] readFromInput(InputStream is) throws IOException
    {
        byte[] buffer = new byte[512];
        ByteArrayOutputStream baos = new ByteArrayOutputStream();
        int rlen;
        
        while (0 < (rlen = is.read(buffer))) {
            baos.write(buffer, 0, rlen);
        }
        
        return baos.toByteArray();
    }

    @Override
    protected byte[] processRequest(String req)
    {
        try {
            URL url = new URL(req);
            URLConnection conn = url.openConnection();
            InputStream is = conn.getInputStream();
            byte[] buffer = readFromInput(is);
            is.close();
            return buffer;
        }
        catch (Throwable th) {
            // Handle exception
            return null;
        }
    }

    public static NetworkThreadPool shared()
    {
        if (gNetworkThreadPool == null) gNetworkThreadPool = new NetworkThreadPool();
        return gNetworkThreadPool;
    }
}

We can then invoke this by writing:

        NetworkThreadPool.shared().request(imageUrl, this, new NetworkThreadPool.Receiver() {
            @Override
            public void processResponse(byte[] r)
            {
                /* Convert to image bitmap and load */
                ...
            }
        });

and of course when the image view goes away, we can (on onDetachedFromWindow) write:

void onDetachedFromWindow()
{
    super.onDetachedFromWindow();
    NetworkThreadPool.shared().remove(this);
}

Disclaimer:

This code is loosely sketched together in order to illustrate the concept of using a thread pool married with a broadcast/receiver model to allow us to handle the case where the receiver no longer exists prior to a request completing in the background.

I believe the code works but it is not throughly tested. There may be better ways to do this.

Feel free to use any of the above code in your own projects.

And if you need a dynamite Android or iOS developer on a contract basis, drop me a line. 🙂

OpenGL ES for iOS

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I’m working on an application that needs to use OpenGL ES v2.0 on iOS and Android. And one problem I’m running into is getting a good in-depth discussion of OpenGL ES shaders on iOS: one book I have covers shaders well but sample code was written for Microsoft Windows. Another book was rated highly on Amazon–but the discussion seems to be geared to people who have never worked with OpenGL or with iOS before.

The basic problem I’m running into is getting a basic OpenGL ES app running. I finally have something, so I’m posting it here for future reference, and in case it works well for other people.

This basically marries the OpenGL ES sample code from both books; incorporating shaders from one with the iOS base of the other.

This relies on GLKit; at this point, with iOS 6 on most devices and iOS 5 on most of the rest, there is no reason not to use GLKit. I’m only using GLKView, however; the types of applications I’m working on do not require constant rendering (like a OpenGL game), so I’m not using GLKViewController, which provides a timer loop which constantly renders frames for continuous smooth animation. (To plug in GLKViewController you just change GSViewController’s parent to GLKViewController, and remove the delegate assignment to self.view in viewDidLoad.

Also note I’m releasing resources on viewDidDisappear rather than on viewDidUnload; iOS 6 deprecates viewDidUnload.

GSViewController nib

This is actually very simple: the GSViewController nib contains one view: a GLKView. Not posted here because it’s so simple.

Note if you have other views and you want to move the GLKView to a different location in the hierarchy, modify the GSViewController.m/h class to provide an outlet to the view.

GSViewController.h

//
//  GSViewController.h
//  TestOpenGL
//
//  Created by William Woody on 6/12/13.
//  Copyright (c) 2013 Glenview Software. All rights reserved.
//

#import 
#import 

@interface GSViewController : UIViewController 
{
	EAGLContext *context;
	GLuint vertexBufferID;
	
	GLuint programObject;
}

@end

This implements the basic example out of the book OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide. Note, however, that instead of creating a ‘UserData’ object and storing that in an ‘ESContext’ (which isn’t on iOS AFAIK), instead, I keep the contents of the ‘UserData’ record (the programObject field), along with a reference to the EAGLContext (the ‘ESContext’ of iOS), and a reference to the vertex buffer I’m using.

GSViewController.m

//
//  GSViewController.m
//  TestOpenGL
//
//  Created by William Woody on 6/12/13.
//  Copyright (c) 2013 Glenview Software. All rights reserved.
//

#import "GSViewController.h"

typedef struct {
	GLKVector3 postiionCoords;
} SceneVertex;

static const SceneVertex vertices[] = {
	{ {  0.0f,  0.5f, 0.0f } },
	{ { -0.5f, -0.5f, 0.0f } },
	{ {  0.5f, -0.5f, 0.0f } }
};

@implementation GSViewController

GLuint LoadShader(GLenum type, const char *shaderSrc)
{
	GLuint shader;
	GLint compiled;
	
	shader = glCreateShader(type);
	if (shader == 0) return 0;
	
	glShaderSource(shader, 1, &shaderSrc, NULL);
	glCompileShader(shader);
	
	glGetShaderiv(shader, GL_COMPILE_STATUS, &compiled);
	if (!compiled) {
		GLint infoLen = 0;
		glGetShaderiv(shader, GL_INFO_LOG_LENGTH, &infoLen);
		if (infoLen > 1) {
			char *infoLog = malloc(sizeof(char) * infoLen);
			glGetShaderInfoLog(shader, infoLen, NULL, infoLog);
			NSLog(@"Error compiling shader: %s",infoLog);
			free(infoLog);
		}
		glDeleteShader(shader);
		return 0;
	}
	return shader;
}

- (BOOL)internalInit
{
	const char vShaderStr[] =
		"attribute vec4 vPosition;                                           n"
		"void main()                                                         n"
		"{                                                                   n"
		"    gl_Position = vPosition;                                        n"
		"}                                                                   n";
	const char fShaderStr[] =
		"precision mediump float;                                            n"
		"void main()                                                         n"
		"{                                                                   n"
		"    gl_FragColor = vec4(1.0,0.0,0.0,1.0);                           n"
		"}                                                                   n";
		
	GLuint vertexShader;
	GLuint fragmentShader;
	GLint linked;
	
	vertexShader = LoadShader(GL_VERTEX_SHADER,vShaderStr);
	fragmentShader = LoadShader(GL_FRAGMENT_SHADER, fShaderStr);
	
	programObject = glCreateProgram();
	if (programObject == 0) return NO;
	
	glAttachShader(programObject, vertexShader);
	glAttachShader(programObject, fragmentShader);
	glBindAttribLocation(programObject, 0, "vPosition");
	glLinkProgram(programObject);
	
	glGetProgramiv(programObject, GL_COMPILE_STATUS, &linked);
	if (!linked) {
		GLint infoLen = 0;
		glGetProgramiv(programObject, GL_INFO_LOG_LENGTH, &infoLen);
		if (infoLen > 1) {
			char *infoLog = malloc(sizeof(char) * infoLen);
			glGetProgramInfoLog(programObject, infoLen, NULL, infoLog);
			NSLog(@"Error linking shader: %s",infoLog);
			free(infoLog);
		}
		glDeleteProgram(programObject);
		programObject = 0;
		return NO;
	}
	return YES;
}

- (void)viewDidLoad
{
	[super viewDidLoad];
	
	GLKView *view = (GLKView *)self.view;
	NSAssert([view isKindOfClass:[GLKView class]],@"View controller's view is not a GLKView");
	context = [[EAGLContext alloc] initWithAPI:kEAGLRenderingAPIOpenGLES2];
	view.context = context;
	view.delegate = self;
	[EAGLContext setCurrentContext:context];
	
	glClearColor(0.0f,0.0f,0.0f,1.0f);
	
	[self internalInit];
	
	// Generate, bind and initialize contents of a buffer to be used in GLU memory
	glGenBuffers(1, &vertexBufferID);
	glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vertexBufferID);
	glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(vertices), vertices, GL_STATIC_DRAW);
}

- (void)viewDidDisappear:(BOOL)animated
{
	[super viewDidDisappear:animated];
	
	GLKView *view = (GLKView *)self.view;
	[EAGLContext setCurrentContext:view.context];
	
	if (0 != vertexBufferID) {
		glDeleteBuffers(1, &vertexBufferID);
		vertexBufferID = 0;
	}
	
	view.context = nil;
	[EAGLContext setCurrentContext:nil];
	
	glDeleteProgram(programObject);
	programObject = 0;
	[context release];
	context = nil;
}

- (void)glkView:(GLKView *)view drawInRect:(CGRect)rect
{
	glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT);
	
	glUseProgram(programObject);
	
	glEnableVertexAttribArray(GLKVertexAttribPosition);
	glVertexAttribPointer(GLKVertexAttribPosition, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, sizeof(SceneVertex), NULL + offsetof(SceneVertex, postiionCoords));
	glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, 3);
}

@end

Note a few things. First, I’m setting up a GLKView for rendering; this is all handled in -viewDidLoad. I’m also setting up a vertex buffer in viewDidLoad; the OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guide example puts that initialization in Init() instead. The -viewDidLoad method also replaces some of the setup in the example’s main() method.

Also note that -(BOOL)internalInit replaces most of the rest of Init()’s functionality. Specifically we handle compiling the shaders and creating a program there.

I handle cleanup in -viewDidDisappear; keep in mind the example OpenGL ES application doesn’t do any cleanup. We do it here because our application may continue to run even after our view controller disappears, so we need to be a good citizen.

And our draw routine (glkView:drawInRect:) delegate doesn’t set up the viewport, nor does it need to call to swap buffers.

Yes, there are a lot of problems with this code. It’s a quick and dirty application that I’m using to understand shaders in OpenGL ES 2.0.

But I do get a triangle.

UDIDs are gone.

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After warning from Apple, apps using UDIDs now being rejected

UDIDs are now gone.

But it’s easy enough if you need a device unique identifier to generate one and track the device that way. Of course because you have your own unique identifier you cannot match numbers against other software makers, and you can’t guarantee the user will uninstall and reinstall the application–but on the other hand, if you save the unique identifier with the device and the user upgrades his phone, the identifier will move to the new phone, following the user.

Step 1: Create a UUID.

You can create the UUID using Apple’s built in UUID routines.

	CFUUIDRef ref = CFUUIDCreate(nil);
	uuid = (NSString *)CFUUIDCreateString(nil,ref);		CFRelease(ref);

Step 2: Write the UUID out to the Documents folder, so the UUID gets backed up with the phone.

Because under the hood iOS is basically Unix, we can use the C standard library to handle creating and writing the file for us:

	char buf[256];
     /* HOME is the sandbox root directory for the application */
	strcpy(buf,getenv("HOME"));
	strcat(buf,"/Documents/appuuid.data");

	f = fopen(buf,"w");
	fputs([uuid UTF8String], f);
	fclose(f);

Step 3: If the file is already there, use what’s in the file rather than generating a new UUID. (After all, that’s the whole point of this exercise; to have a stable UUID.)

Putting all of this together, we get the following routine, which can be called when your application starts up in the main UIApplicationDelegate when you load the main window:

- (void)loadUUID
{
	char buf[256];
	strcpy(buf,getenv("HOME"));
	strcat(buf,"/Documents/appuuid.data");
	FILE *f = fopen(buf,"r");
	if (f == NULL) {
		/*
		 *	UUID doesn't exist. Create
		 */
		
		CFUUIDRef ref = CFUUIDCreate(nil);
		uuid = (NSString *)CFUUIDCreateString(nil,ref);
		CFRelease(ref);
		
		/*
		 *	Write to our file
		 */
		
		f = fopen(buf,"w");
		fputs([uuid UTF8String], f);
		fclose(f);
	} else {
		/*
		 *	UUID exists. Read from file
		 */
		
		fgets(buf,sizeof(buf),f);
		fclose(f);
		uuid = [[NSString alloc] initWithUTF8String:buf];
	}
}

This will set the uuid field in your AppDelegate class to a unique identifier, retaining it across application invocations.

Now any place where you would need the UDID, you can use the loaded uuid instead. This also has the nice property that the generated uuid is 36 characters long, 4 characters narrower than the 40 character UDID returned by iOS; thus, you can simply drop in the uuid into your back-end database code without having to widen the table column size of your existing back-end infrastructure. Further, because the UDID format and the uuid formats are different, you won’t get any accidental collisions between the old and new formats.