New iOS player - Dropbox, Load previously loaded projects without IDE

SimpleLoop

Wasn't sure quite where to put this.

This started as a personal project for me as I have Textastic on my iPhone and iPad and therefore can write apps using Gideros on my mobile devices when I am away from my computer and sync them using Dropbox back to my computer.

The main problem I had with this was not being able to see what I was making while I wrote it and therefore would spend a while debugging them and tweaking things when I got back to my computer.

Therefore I decided to see if it would be possible to modify the Gideros player app to load apps directly from Dropbox.
So I started on this, I looked into the basic file system behind the Gideros player app and it didn't seem too complicated but I am sure there is a lot more going on then I can see.

I noticed that if I am going to add dropbox support the gui will have to be completely changed as we will need a way to download it from dropbox into the player then load it.

While looking into the filesystem I noticed that all of the apps I had loaded into the player previously were still in there and so I thought why not let us access them too. This would be great say if you were out somewhere and were saying you were working on this awesome app and wanted to show someone but you hadn't build it as an app yet so it wasn't on your phone and you didn't have your computer near to load it up.

So what I have done so far is I have redesigned and implemented my new UI into the player app.

I have added 2 buttons along the top one for the normal IDE which will just load the player as normal ready for debugging.
@atilim it would be great if I could get this to automatically go to the normal player view if it detects a signal from the IDE like when it loads normally.

and one for dropbox login which will log you into dropbox using the dropbox framework and standard iOS dropbox dialogs.
@atilim may need a lil help with how the md5.txt would be generated when downloading them from dropbox and loading the app once it is downloaded but I think the rest of it I can figure out.

And last of all I have added a table with all the apps that are currently saved into the player app in it.
again @atilim a lil help on how I might load the apps when they are tapped in the table view would be great and this would also allow me to load them when downloaded from dropbox.

The only other thing I thought could cause a problem is the debugger as there wouldn't be one, so I was thinking maybe if there was a way I could hook the error message then when it is loaded locally I could just print it into a text field on another view then you could even debug on the device which would be awesome.

I will attach a screenshot of my new UI so I can get feedback on it.
It is all written in XCode and is a modification of the original player app, I have added no images to the project everything seen is drawn in code to keep the size of the player itself nice and low.

@atilim hope you or someone else can help out with this as I think it would be really cool to be able to develop and test fully on the device you're actually building for. And it could also be used in conjunction with another iOS device so you could write on an iPad say and see the changes etc on an iPhone. And could add an auto reload that detects changes on the files on dropbox and reloads the player automatically.

Sorry about the long post :P
Thanks for any help anyone can give me

SimpleLoop

Pressing the run button in the Gideros Studio IDE will now load the project automatically therefore I can remove the IDE button in the player and instead just display the IP Addresses of the device.

Just gotta get it to load projects when tapped on in the tableView in the player and download from Dropbox.

ar2rsawseen

@SimpleLoop you can check this blogpost from @magnusviri
http://blog.magnusviri.com/gideros-downloader.html

SimpleLoop

@ar2rsawseen Thanks, the only problem I have with that is it requires you to add dropbox links for each of your files you need it to download into the app and then build it.
Therefore you would have to rebuild that app for each of your apps you want to test and if you add a new file to the app you are testing you would also have to rebuild the app with the new dropbox links.

So adding it to the player you will be able to do pretty much everything on a mobile device as it will automatically find all the files needed using the gproj file.

The only problem I can see is the gproj file which is normally generated by the Gideros Studio IDE so you would need to add the files to the .gproj file manually then the player app should be able to generate the md5.txt file from it as the md5.txt file appears to be an encrypted version of the .gproj file.

The syntax in the .gproj file isn't too complicated though so I'm sure us coders can handle adding a few lines to it manually to add files.

fuzzeemic

@SimpleLoop - great idea.
Are you planning to share it?

SimpleLoop

@fuzzeemic yes, when it is completed I will post a link to download the xCode project on here.

Magnusviri

@SimpleLoop, I actually have an Xcode project that downloads a public URL that can be changed in the prefs (could point to a public Dropbox URL). I haven't published it because it needs to be updated every time Gideros is updated and that's more maintenance then I can handle. I suppose I could post the project with no promise of updating it. What you describe would be awesome with the full Dropbox access.

Magnusviri

Oh and debugging this way is a real bugger and show stopper sometimes. It requires enourmous discipline to code in agile ways (make a lot of small changes at a time and try to keep the app always working no matter what you do), that way when the app crashes you can get an idea of where to look for the errors. I do run the code in a protected function call and I can catch those errors a lot but sometimes it just doesn't launch. Look at my blog post linked above to see the Lua code.

Magnusviri

Here is the Xcode project I use. Set the url with the Settings app.

http://firebolt.scl.utah.edu/public/Gideros/xcode.zip

Mells

@SimpleLoop
I am really interested in seeing where this project is going.
Did you get any answer from @atilim (public forum, or privately)?

SimpleLoop

@Magnusviri thanks that will be very useful. I have been rather busy lately and haven't had a chance to look at it yet but I should get round to it soon.

@Mells no, no answer from @atilim yet. I guess he's busy working on making Gideros awesome :P