Introducing iOS Boilerplate A base template for iOS apps

iOS Boilerplate includes ASIHTTPRequest AFNetworking, a great library for handling HTTP requests. See HTTPHUDExample to view a simple example of how to use this library.

iOS Boilerplate also includes AFURLCache that implements both in-memory and in-disk caches (great for images!). AFURLCache has been developed by steipete.

See AsyncImageExample.m for a basic example on how to load images.

If you are interested in loading async images in a UITableView there is a complete example about async images inside UITableViewCells. See AsyncCellImagesExample.m

FastCells

Inspired on this article of Atebits iOS Boilerplate includes a base class for implementing cells with fast scrolling. The base class is FastCell. There are some examples that extend this class. See AsyncCellImagesExample, VariableHeightExample and SwipeableTableCellExample.

Pull-down-to-refresh

iOS Boilerplate includes EGOTableViewPullRefresh but simplifies its use. You can extend ListViewController.

// This is the core method you should implement
- (void)reloadTableViewDataSource {
	_reloading = YES;

    // Here you would make an HTTP request or something like that
    // Call [self doneLoadingTableViewData] when you are done
    [self performSelector:@selector(doneLoadingTableViewData) withObject:nil afterDelay:3.0];
}

You just need to implement something like the above code and initialize the self.table object. You can initialize it with InterfaceBuilder (drop a UITableView component and make the link between the outlet and the component). You should also implement at least the UITableViewDataSource protocol. For a complete example see PullDownExample.

Swipeable cells

There is an example of how to implement a swipeable UITableViewCell extending FastCell. Some code is also needed in the ViewController. See SwipeableTableViewExample for a complete example.

Thanks to nbuggia you can now open URLs inside your application just opening them as always:

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];

A new viewController will be shown without exiting your app. However, what happens if you really need to open a URL in Safari? No worries, just use this method instead:

[(MyApplication*)[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url forceOpenInSafari:YES];

What if you don't want this to be the default behaviour? What if you want to open URLs by default in Safari? Just edit main.m. Put nil instead of @"MyApplication"

And now, to use the built-in web browser explicitly use this:

BrowserViewController *bvc = [[BrowserViewController alloc] initWithUrls:url];
[self.navigationController pushViewController:bvc animated:YES];
[bvc release];