Top 10 iOS-Xcode Things I Constantly Forget

I mess around with a bunch of different programming languages. There’s always things you forget how to do as you switch between PHP, Java/’Droid, HTML-CSS-JS, and Obj-C. Rather than constantly google the same thing over and over, here’s my short reference list of the things I use frequently, but not enough to have it memorized about iOS, XCode, and OS-X:

1. String appending: Simple in Java, but in Objective-C its more like…C. Here’s how:
   [NSString stringWithFormat:@”%@ on %@ at %@”, visit.visitType.visitDescription, visit.dateOfVisit, visit.location];
2. Date Formatting: Create a formatter and then format the string:
   NSDateFormatter* _df;
   _df = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];
   [_df setDateStyle:NSDateFormatterMediumStyle];
   cell.date.text = [NSString stringWithFormat:@”Visited %@ %@”, visit.location, [_df stringFromDate:visit.dateOfVisit]];
3. How to load content into a webview component:
   [webView loadRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@”about” ofType:@”html”]isDirectory:NO]]];
4. To not use ARC for a specific file include this flag:
   -fno-objc-arc
5. How to dismiss a pesky keyboard:
   [self.view endEditing:YES];
6. App Launch Failure from Xcode
   Don’t forget to switch back to a dev signing cert when launching apps from Xcode or the app will hang. Pesky thing I forget.
7. If you really hate using iOS silly color formulas use a #define in your code:
   #define UIColorFromRGB(rgbValue) [UIColor colorWithRed:((float)((rgbValue & 0xFF0000) >> 16))/255.0 green:((float)((rgbValue & 0xFF00) >> 8))/255.0 blue:((float)(rgbValue & 0xFF))/255.0 alpha:1.0]
   And then you can do this in your code:
   self.backgroundColor = UIColorFromRGB(0x393B40);
8. Screenshots – always forget how:
   Command+Shift+3: takes a screenshot of the full screen (or screens if multiple monitors), and save it as a file to the desktop
   Command+Shift+4: brings up a selection box so you can specify an area to take a screenshot of, then save it as a file to the desktop
   Command+Shift+4, then spacebar, then click a window: takes a screenshot of a window only and saves it as a file to the desktop.
9. Kill a bad program:
   COMMAND-OPTION-ESC – always for get that one!
10. To add environment variables to OS-X, create a file called launchd.conf in /etc and add the paths with
    setenv MY_DIR /myDirectory/that/i/like
11. To add directories to the PATH use /etc/paths – one path per line.
12. To create environment variables add a .profile folder to your home directory and do it there.
13. To open hidden files in a GUI text editor like Text Wrangler or Sublime, hold the shift button while clicking Open.

Ok – that’s more than ten, but nothing wrong with a bonus!