iPhone Location Aware Apps by Example: Beginners Guide

387 Pages·2012·14.529 MB·English

by  Zeeshan Chawdhary

iPhone Location Aware Apps
by Example
Beginner's Guide
Build five complete location-enabled apps from scratch—from
idea to implementation!

Zeeshan Chawdhary
BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI
iPhone Location Aware Apps by Example
Beginner's Guide
Copyright © 2012 Packt Publishing
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First published: March 2012
Production Reference: 1160312
Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.
Livery Place
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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.
ISBN 978-1-84969-224-3
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Cover Image by Asher Wishkerman ([email protected])
Credits
Author Project Coordinator
Zeeshan Chawdhary Leena Purkait
Reviewers Proofreader
Sebastian Borggrewe Mario Cecere
Taylor Jasko
Robb Lewis Copy Editor
Leonard D'silva
Jose Luis Manners
Shuxuan Nie
Indexer
Martin Selva
Monica Ajmera
Alex Zaltsman
Graphics
Acquisition Editor Manu Joseph
Alina Lewis
Production Coordinator
Lead Technical Editor Shantanu Zagade
Susmita Panda
Cover Work
Technical Editors Shantanu Zagade
Lubna Shaikh
LLewellyn Rosario
About the Author
Zeeshan Chawdhary has been a keen developer for the last six years, and has worked
in the location-based space for the past five years. He is currently the Chief Technology
Officer of Wcities Inc, a San Francisco-based Location Content Provider. He is currently
experimenting with PostGIS, PhoneGap, and iOS 5, and is currently trying his hand at
blogging again at http://justgeeks.in.
I would like to thank all the lovely people at PacktPub, especially Mary
Nadar for having introduced me to the PacktPub family.

A special thanks to Leena, Susmita, Lubna, and Llewellyn for working with
me tirelessly on the book.

I would also thank Christopher D. Sloop from WeatherBug, Lauren Sperber
and Janine Iamunno from AOL Patch.com, Tim Breidigan, and Robert
Martindale from Eventful.com – for having allowed me to use their
respective APIs in the book, you guys rock man!
About the Reviewers
Sebastian Borggrewe, born and raised in Germany, is a computer science Master's
student at the University of Edinburgh/RWTH Aachen. Since he was 16, he has been
freelancing for several web and mobile agencies, and has founded his own agency.
Currently, he is the co-founder and CTO of Loyalli Ltd., a London-based startup, developing
mobile loyalty card solutions (http://www.loyalli.com).
When he is not coding, he is searching for new technology or ways to use technology to
make life even more fun. You will probably find him hanging out with friends, hitting the
gym, cooking, or playing the guitar in his 60's band.
One of his goals in life, apart from working in a kick-ass office in central London with an
"office slide", is obtaining a pilot license.
More information about Sebastian, and his projects can be found at
http://www.sebastianborggrewe.de.

Taylor Jasko has been fascinated with technology ever since the day he laid his hands on
a Windows 95-based computer. Since then, now being eighteen years old, he has dived into
web design and development, computer programming, and even system administration with
his favorite server-oriented operating system, Debian Linux.
He founded the technology blog Tech Cores (http://techcores.com), and has been
working on it ever since it was created back in late 2008. Tech Cores is a great example of
his work; he designed and created it using the powerful WordPress content management
system, and with the help of his Wacom Intuos4 graphic tablet plus Adobe Photoshop.
While in school, he can be found freelancing graphic design and programming work. His
technical strengths include PHP, JavaScript (including libraries such as jQuery), AJAX, HTML,
CSS, Perl, Objective-C, Linux/UNIX, MySQL, Apache, Nginx, and to finish it all off, a dab of
Python. Essentially, he is a programmer, system admin, and a designer!
He can be reached at [email protected].
Jose Luis Manners is a seasoned IT professional with over 20 years of software
development experience, including project management, technical architecture, and full
life-cycle systems development. His software development experience includes enterprise
systems for Fortune 500 clients as well as federal, state, and local governments. Mr. Manners
has been recognized on several occasions by Microsoft with their Most Valuable Professional
award for his outstanding work with .NET, and his contributions to Microsoft's product
teams. He specializes in .NET, iOS, and Android mobile development for clients in the
Washington, DC metropolitan area.
He can be reached at [email protected].
Shuxuan Nie is a SOA Consultant, specializing in SOA and Java technologies. She has more
than 10 years of experience in the IT industry that includes SOA technologies, such as BPEL,
ESB, SOAP, XML, and Enterprise Java technologies, Eclipse plugins, and other areas, such as
C++ cross-platform development.
Since 2010, Shuxuan has been working in Rubiconred, and has been helping customers
resolve integration issues.
From 2007 to 2010, Shuxuan had been working in Oracle Global Customer Support team,
and focussed on helping customers solve their middleware/SOA integration problems.
Before joining Orcale, Shuxuan had been working in IBM China Software Development Lab
for four years as staff software engineer, where she participated in several complex products
on IBM Lotus Workplace, Webshpere and Eclipse platform, and then joined the Australia
Bureau of Meteorology Research Center, which is responsible for implementation of
Automated Thunderstorm Interactive Forecast System for Aviation and Defence.
Shuxuan holds an MS in the Computer Science degree from Beijing University of Aeronautics
and Astronautics.
Martin Selva heads the Gaming team at Hungama Digital Media Entertainment Pvt Ltd,
with over nine years of experience. His passion, experience, and expertise have also helped
him develop a keen interest in Product Development for Online & Devices.
At Hungama, Martin is responsible for building a gaming portal called www.thegamebox.
com, and heads a Gaming Studio that comprises of iOS Developers, PHP Developers, Game
Designers, and Content Writers.
He can be reached at [email protected] and [email protected].
Alex Zaltsman is the CEO and founder of Xcela Mobile, a software and mobile cloud
infrastructure hosting company that develops applications for mobile devices, such as the
iPhone, iPad, and Android. Prior to finding TourSpot, Alex was a co-founder and managing
partner of a technology services company. Alex has been in the technology field for over 15
years. Prior to founding the technology services company, Mr. Zaltsman worked at Lucent
Technologies, AT&T Labs, and Johnson & Johnson, in technical and management capacities.
Alex is also on the Board of Advisors of BizWorld, a non-profit organization that has created
curriculum for teaching entrepreneurship and money management to kids. Alex is on
the Board of Directors for the New Jersey chapter for Entrepreneurs Organization
(http://www.eonetwork.org).
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Table of Contents
Preface 1
Chapter 1: The Location-based World 7
Understanding Location-based Services 8
Time for action – consuming Location-based Services with Google 9
Buzzwords in the Location-based Industry 11
Application of LBS and common use cases 13
Military 13
Government 13
Commercial 13
How Apple uses LBS in the iPhone, iPad, and iPod devices 14
iOS location API 15
Time for action – turning off Location Tracking in your iPhone 15
Behind LBS – GPS 17
User segment 17
Space segment 18
Control segment 18
Push and Pull methods of Location Services 18
Push Service 18
Pull Service 19
Life without GPS: Wi-Fi-based location detection 19
Life without GPS: cell ID positioning and cell tower triangulation 21
Time for action – using the SkyHook Wireless Loki framework to
determine your location 22
Life without GPS: Google Maps API 23
Understanding Indoor and Outdoor Navigation 26
Summary 27