READ THIS FIRST
Update: 3-4-2016: If you're finding this blog and looking for information related to Azure Mobile Services, I'd strongly recommend checking out Azure Mobile Apps. Azure Mobile Apps is a new version (consider it a v2) of Azure's mobile backend support. All of the same features of Azure Mobile Services are there, with a lot of other very cool features to go along. You can read more about Azure Mobile Apps, and how to transition from Azure Mobile Services, here.
Today I’m happy to announce the release of three different iOS Samples for Windows Azure Mobile Services. If you’re developing iOS apps, these samples should give you some great examples to go off of. If you’re going to play with these samples, all you’ll need is a Windows Azure account which is free to sign up for here.
EventBuddy
The first sample I want to talk about is an Event / Session management app that allows users to add new events and sessions, view those events and sessions, and also rate the sessions. This is a super awesome sample because it’s also available in a Windows Store and Windows Phone 8 version. That means you can pretty easily compare how this app works on the different operating systems. You can access the source code for this app here. There are a few steps you’ll need to take to get this setup and I’d advise actually walking through the full Windows Store flow first, even if it’s just to get your Mobile Service set up.
Tic Tac Toe Leaderboard
This sample is great if you’re building games. It’s a Tic Tac Toe game that will record each player’s wins, ties, and losses. In addition to the game, there is a screen that will show you how each player is doing compared to the others in a leaderboard. This concept could be easily adapted to any type of game that has a scoring system. You can access the source code for this app here. There is very little setup required in this app and it’s all documented in the readme on GitHub.
Feedback
This sample demonstrates how you can use Mobile Services to record user feedback from inside your application. The form in this app allows the user to enter comments, their email address, and a rating using a one to five star system. Additionally, you can easily take the code for the feedback out of the sample app and put it into your own app by copying the MSFeedback group from the Project Navigator in Xcode from the sample app to your own. All you need to do is configure the app’s FeedbackService.m class with your Mobile Service’s URL and Application Key. You can access the source code for this app here.
Both the Tic Tac Toe and the Feedback samples include a start folder that contains the source for the application before Mobile Services is “plugged in” and an end folder that contains the app all set with Mobile Services (you just need to configure your URL and Application Key).
These samples for iOS join an already impressive number of samples for Windows Store apps. In the near future I’ll post more information on these samples to explain exactly how they work. Additionally, I’ll be providing more samples that cover more scenarios on using Mobile Services with iOS applications.
