Head First Practices

A collection of five iOS practice applications built with Objective-C in Xcode, following the exercises from the "Head First iPhone and iPad Development" book series. Each sub-project explores different UIKit components and iOS SDK features, progressing from basic view management to Core Data persistence and Twitter integration. Development discontinued on 2012-02-16.

Sub-Projects

Hello World

A multi-view exploration app with six different UIViewController subclasses demonstrating:

• View switching with a SwitchViewController that manages transitions between views
• UIPickerView with data loaded from a plist file (DBPickerView.plist)
• Action sheets with custom button images (normal and selected states)
• Multiple XIB files (View2 through View6), each with its own controller
• Image handling with landscape and portrait Apple logos

iDecide

A minimal decision-making app with a single button that displays "Go for it!" when pressed. Demonstrates basic IBAction wiring and UILabel updates.

DrinkMixer

A full CRUD drink recipe manager featuring:

• UITableView with UINavigationController for master-detail navigation
• Add, edit, and delete drinks with a modal AddViewController
• Plist-based persistence -- drinks are loaded from and saved to DrinkDirections.plist
• Edit mode with swipe-to-delete and an Edit button in the navigation bar
• NSNotificationCenter observer to save data on application termination
• Constants file (DrinkConstats.h) defining NAME_KEY and DIRECTION_KEY

InstaTwit

A Twitter posting app combining:

• Two-component UIPickerView -- activities ("sleeping", "eating", "working"...) and feelings ("awesome", "sad", "happy"...)
• UITextField for custom notes
• Twitter API integration via NSMutableURLRequest with HTTP POST to the Twitter status update XML endpoint
• Keyboard dismissal via DoneKeyBoard: action

iBountyHunter

The most advanced sub-project, implementing:

• Core Data persistence with a Fugitive managed object entity
• NSFetchedResultsController for efficient table view data sourcing with sort descriptors
• Tab-based navigation with separate lists for fugitives and captured targets
• Detail views for viewing fugitive information (FugitiveDetailViewController)
• Camera integration for captured photo documentation (CapturedPhotoViewController)
• Cache-based fetching with named caches (captured_list.cache)

Technologies

• Objective-C (manual reference counting, no ARC)
• Xcode with Interface Builder (XIB files)
• UIKit -- UITableView, UIPickerView, UINavigationController, UIActionSheet, UIAlertView
• Core Data -- NSManagedObjectContext, NSFetchedResultsController, NSEntityDescription
• Foundation -- NSMutableArray, NSDictionary, plist serialization
• iOS SDK 5.x (deployment target era)

Project Structure

hf-practices/
├── Hello World/
│   ├── Hello World.xcodeproj/
│   └── Hello World/
│       ├── AppDelegate.{h,m}
│       ├── SwitchView.{h,m}              # Custom view
│       ├── SwitchViewController.{h,m}    # Multi-view switcher
│       ├── ViewController{2..6}.{h,m}    # Individual view controllers
│       ├── MainWindow.xib
│       ├── View{2..6}.xib                # View XIBs
│       └── DBPickerView.plist            # Picker data source
├── iDecide/
│   ├── iDecide.xcodeproj/
│   └── iDecide/
│       ├── AppDelegate.{h,m}
│       └── ViewController.{h,m}          # Single-button decision maker
├── DrinkMixer/
│   ├── DrinkMixer.xcodeproj/
│   └── DrinkMixer/
│       ├── AppDelegate.{h,m}
│       ├── MasterViewController.{h,m}    # Table view with drink list
│       ├── DetailViewController.{h,m}    # Drink detail display
│       ├── AddViewController.{h,m}       # Add/edit drink form
│       ├── DrinkConstats.h               # Key constants
│       └── DrinkDirections.plist         # Drink recipe data
├── InstaTwit/
│   ├── InstaTwit.xcodeproj/
│   └── InstaTwit/
│       ├── AppDelegate.{h,m}
│       └── ViewController.{h,m}          # Picker + Twitter posting
├── iBountyHunter/
│   ├── iBountyHunter.xcodeproj/
│   └── iBountyHunter/
│       ├── AppDelegate.{h,m}
│       ├── Fugitive.{h,m}                       # Core Data entity
│       ├── FugitiveListViewController.{h,m}      # Fugitive list with NSFetchedResultsController
│       ├── FugitiveDetailViewController.{h,m}    # Fugitive detail view
│       ├── CapturedListViewController.{h,m}      # Captured fugitives list
│       └── CapturedPhotoViewController.{h,m}     # Camera photo capture
└── LICENSE

Installation

1. Install Xcode (the projects were created with Xcode 4.x for iOS SDK 5.x)
2. Open any sub-project's .xcodeproj file
3. Select an iOS Simulator target and build (Cmd+B) then run (Cmd+R)

Note: These projects use manual reference counting (MRC). Modern Xcode versions may require disabling ARC or adding -fno-objc-arc compiler flags.

Contributing

This project is no longer actively maintained. See CONTRIBUTING.md for historical build information.

License

This project is licensed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.