Training: Development for iPhone and iPad using Objective-C: Animations, Gestures, REST and JSON

In this course we go over the basics of what it means to have a RESTful interface. We then review the Objective-C objects and methods we will use to interact with the remote service over http. Next we revise an application to use some basic http methods to download data from a Ruby server. Then we review the JSON information format. JSON objects map to Objective-C strings, numbers, dictionaries and arrays. We'll look at the format so we can predict from the raw data what types of objects we will get from the NSJSONSerialization class. Last but not least we create a custom NSObject subclass to hold JSON data.

In this course we look at the basic UITouch object that represents a touch, then use its properties and methods to manipulate the interface. Then gesture recognizers are introduced as Apple's solution to managing multiple types of interaction in the same view or views. Next we add zooming and rotating to the collection of gesture recognizers that will work on a view. Then we further refine our code to center all events and changes based on the centroid of the user interaction.

iOS was built for animation, and most properties of a view can be animated, either directly or through using a view's backing layer. The UIKit has a few built-in convenience class methods that allow you to animate changes of position, color, frame, opacity, and shadow to name a few. Then we look at animating transitions, either within the same view or in a change between views. We will create a subclass of UIImageView that has a front and back side, then use a sample flip animation to change sides.