Starting my first real iPhone application for the App Store

I think that it’s time to apply what I learn on a real project. I have several ideas of applications that didn’t really exist yet but was more excited about one of them so I’m starting with this one. I’ll call this the App#1 as it’s the first real one.
I prefer not talking about it on the blog yet before it’s released on the app store. I’m new at iPhone programming and will take time to build this first application so sharing my idea on the web may result in someone else doing it before me. Not cool don’t u think? That being said, I’ll share on this blog the process of creating it so others can learn from it.
At a high level, this application will present data in table views and maps to users to help them use a service provided by cities around the world (no, it’s not the subway). It’s a good project for me to apply what I learned in books so far. The project will help me cover quite a few areas of the iPhone programming as well as web programming. The list below gives an overview but I’ll go in detail for each of them and share in this blog what source I used to code them.

Building REST server
IThe data that will be displayed on the application exist in different format on the web. Some through web service APIs (by far the easiest to access), some through regular web sites. In order to cover many cities, I’ll be building my own REST server. This server will be in charge of extracting data from all cities (regardless of the way the data is presented) and presenting it to my iPhone application using JSON.

Accessing data from web asynchronously
I’ll need to be able to access my REST server asynchronously to download the data and present them on the iPhone and will use NSURLConnection for that.

Localization and Internationalization
The service I’m talking about here is in multiple cities and multiple countries so it’s important for me to build an application in multiple languages right away. Being fluent in English and French, I’ll start with those 2 languages before I add more.

Data persistence using Core Data
Some data will need to be saved locally on the iPhone application and I’m planning to use core data for this.

Tab Bars
The application will have multiple screens so I decided to use tab bars to provide an easy navigation between the screens to the users.

Maps using MapKit
Some data will need to be located on maps to MapKit will be good to use.

Core Location
I’ll need to show the users where they are on the map and will use Core Location to do so. This will return me the latitude and longitude of the

iPhone 3.0 and above
Core data and MapKit being introduced with the SDK 3.0, this will be a requirement to have this SDK and above to use the application. This is limiting the number of users but I’m ok with it as it’s allowing me to user features that are important in iPhone programming.

In App Purchase
I’m planning to sell the application for a few bucks but also to have a free version to people can use a limited version of the application and buy it if they like it. Many developers are doing this by having 2 versions of the same application (a “Lite” one and a “Full Version” one). Apple introduced few months ago the “In App Purchase” features which allow developers to build one single application that let users download a free application and they upgrade without having to download a different version.

I’m sure that this list is not complete and that I’m forgetting things along the way. But there is enough in this list to keep me working for a while. Let’s just hope that at the end at least 1 person will buy my app…

Tags: app store, Core Data, Core Location, In App Purchase, Internationalization, iphone, JSON, localization, MapKit, NSURLConnection, programming, REST, SDK, Tab Bars