Wednesday 13 June 2012

Over the last week, I spent time on trying to understand Objective-C needed for iPad programming. It's still a little confusing but I'm starting to get the hang of it slowly. I managed to create simple apps for the iPad. I will continue working on this and hopefully by next week, I will be able to start consuming some simple web services on the iPad. 

In terms of web services, I have a more thorough understanding about it now. The tutorials seemed to have helped.

I've also spent some time learning about Google App Engine and web services. I've managed to create a web service that will allow a user to store a file onto Google's datastore. The client (a Java application) was created that calls the web service to check if a user is logged in. If the user is logged in,  the client application will allow the user to choose a file on their system to upload onto Google datastore. The chosen file will then be encrypted and the encrypted file and its corresponding key are sent via SOAP to the web service, which will then store the data onto datastore. I have managed to complete all this. However, I have come across some problems: file bytes can't exceed 500 characters and hence this only works for very small files. I will look into this problem and see if there is a workaround. Will update once this issue is resolved. Once this is done, the file retrieval process will then take place and later on I can look at the concept of file sharing and collaboration amongst friends, etc.

Also this week, I prepared and attended the Research Methods Workshop, which is compulsory for my degree. I managed to write a draft literature review and draft proposal. On the day of the workshop, I learnt many useful things about writing literature reviews and proposals. Dr George Ridgway, facilitator of the workshop, shared some very interesting tips and kept us engaged with the activities and tasks and overall I found the workshop extremely useful. 

Sunday 3 June 2012

I've spent the last week carrying out tutorials on programming with the iPad/iPhone. I've managed to successfully create a simple 'Hello World' app but have not yet configured it to run on the iPad. As suggested by Suraj, I will speak to Kelvin to grant me access rights and to obtain the developer certificate that will allow me to test apps on the iPad. I'm still trying to get my head around the code.

I've also continued to learn about web services and SOAP. I've spent a lot of time creating a simple web application and web service using Java and Google App Engine. I am attempting to create an application that encrypts the users file and store the file and encryption key in Google's Blogstore Service. So far, I have created a web service that checks if a user is registered, and have yet to write methods for storing the file, and downloading the file. I have also managed to successfully call the web service using SOAP. I've learnt so much about web services already!

I've also started the writing of the draft literature review and thinking about how I'm going to structure the literature review.

I will continue to spend this week learning the Objective-C programming language on Xcode. I will also continue to spend more time writing the draft literature review and maybe get started on the draft proposal.