Mike Miller CS 526

 General Introduction  Hungry Guide Project Introduction  Previous Application Workflow  Design Goals for new Workflow  Design Overview  Implementation  Outcomes  Future Iterations  Sources

 Business overview  We produce a variety of iPhone applications  Content generally comes from third parties  iPhone development overview  We write iPhone exclusively in Objective-C  Supporting technologies include RoR, PHP and DHTML  Apple’s DRM complicates distribution

 Each book follows a predefined structure  Contains venues for a specific location in a city  LA client provides content  COS location houses codebase and application development  Client wants to produce over 300 guides

 Assets and content come from LA  Codebase, development tool chain and DRM in COS  Current template is poorly designed  Embedding content is tedious and error- prone

 Enforce better defined workflow  Allow for multiple projects to be created at once  Remove tedious, error prone process of inserting assets into a template  Streamline template-to-application process

 Use a common backend  Write a custom CMS for client input  Allow client to input all assets and content  Allow client to create associations between data models  Create a process for generating a preview for client signoff  Create a process for compiling iPhone applications after client signoff  Create a generic reader application and bundle assets to package for it

 MySQL chosen for backend  CMS was written using RoR  Workflow for uploading content and creating venues  Workflow for creating books from a list of venues  Acts as Attachment for Asset management  CMS made heavy use of AJAX and REST

 PHP process provided preview and signoff  Ruby process compiled HTML pages and bundled assets for phone  Obj-C generic reader to parse HTML structure

 Production was finished  Final product buggy on iPhone  UIWebview issues  Static HTML structure insufficient for dynamic app  Overall process shows promise  Process possible to refine to meet new demands  Lessons learned  Manage scope creep  Look into a premade CMS solution  Favor a native solution  Keep the technology stack small

 Adding to book creation workflow in CMS  Implementing client preview in RoR instead of PHP  Creating and bundling Obj-C source instead of DHTML  Creating secure download server for Obj-C source

 Apache usage documentation  Apple development documentation  Thomas Fielding’s Doctoral Dissertation [related chapters]  Rails Acts As Attachment documentation