Open Source: Active Record For Core Data Library
If you’ve developed with Ruby On Rails or similar framework then you are familiar with ActiveRecord, and you are familiar with how useful ActiveRecord is. I remember thinking how cool it was when I first played with RoR and began using ActiveRecord.
For those unfamiliar with RoR here’s the Wikipedia definition for Active Record:
Tutorial: Manipulating Images With Touch Gestures
You’ve already seen this in numerous apps. Images that can be dragged by holding, enlarged, shrunken and rotated with the pinch gesture. All that being said, if you’re new to programming UIGestureRecognizers this can be a somewhat difficult task.
I’ve found a tutorial demonstrating how to easily include this functionality that is immensely useful for many different kinds of photo apps.
There is also an excellent sample project included.
Tutorial: How To Use The iOS Keychain To Store Names And Passwords
If you have been using the Mac OS for any amount of time then you are likely aware of Apple’s password management system known as the Keychain. iOS devices also have a keychain system for storing user data securely.
If you need to store username/password data for a web service securely within your apps then you will likely want to use the iOS keychain service. I’ve found an excellent guide explaining the basics of reading and writing to the keychain. Also included is a sample project demonstrating keychain usage (you will need to run on an actual device to test real saving/loading to the keychain).
Open Source: Easily Extensible Objective-C Math Parser Library
Math parsing libraries can be extremely useful whenever you want to evaluate a complex mathematical expression. In Objective-C you can use NSPredicate. If you want to extend the functionality of NSPredicate however, this can be extremely difficult.
I came across a math parser that provides many advantages over NSPredicate, and other existing math libraries with in my opinion the key feature being the ease at which you can register new functions.
Open Source: Library For Easy Data Saving/Loading
There are many ways to save data on iOS devices. Some like a database are likely overkill for a game, and other methods like serialization are great, but things could still be easier.
I’ve found a very cool time saving library that allows you to easily save and load ints, floats, and NSString’s to an automatically created .PLIST file. No fuss at all just one line of code to save, or one line to load each of these datatypes. A nice simple quick solution if you want to install some simple data saving into an app. If you need to save a few floats of game data it is an ideal solution.