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UDID Tool for iOS

Mongo — Thu, 16 Dec 2010 15:49:08 +0000

If you ever want to work with an iOS developer in order to beta test their application, the first thing they will most likely ask for is the UDID of your device. The UDID is a unique id that is on every iOS device. Developers needs this ID in order to provision your device for a special “pre-release” ad-hoc build. Getting the UDID of the device is not hard, but the typical way of getting it involves plugging your device into your computer, launching iTunes, etc etc. Luckily, there are a ton of apps in the app store that are both free and can grab that ID for you. I’ve looked at a number of them, and most either contain ads (really? for a one time use app?), or have other features you don’t need or care about. After all, I just want the damn UDID to send to the developer after all.

After doing some searching and testing a number of apps, I ran across an app (appropriately named “UDID Tool“) that met all my requirements:

Straight and to the point, show’s me the UDID immediately, no having to tap another button to get it
Can send an email with the UDID from the app OR copy to the clipboard
Clean interface, not something I’d be hesitant or embarrassed to send to a client.
Designed to run on the iPhone, iPod, and the iPad

While true, an iPhone app can run on the iPad, it sure is nice to have an app that is already designed for the iPad and not look like crap when blown up to 2x. The other big thing for me was to have an app free of branding, spam, ads, etc that I could send to potential beta testers or clients, and this app fits the bill. It’s clean, looks like a tool, and does exactly what it advertises, and is free.

If you are in need of a tool to send to beta testers, or are a beta tester that needs a quick way of finding your UDID to send to the developer, this is the tool for you.

You can download UDID Tool from Apple’s app store by clicking this link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/udid-tool/id377602501?mt=8

Invalid certificate for certificate signing request

Mongo — Thu, 04 Nov 2010 16:24:01 +0000

Part of the process of setting up iOS apps for push notifications involves signing and submitting certificate signing requests in Apple’s iOS Provisioning Portal. Typically, if you can read and follow directions, this is not too big of a deal. However, if you do end up getting the dreaded “The Certificate file is invalid. Please check the file and try again.” error, then the cause may just have nothing to do with you, and everything to do with your browser.

I have run into this a couple of times now, and both times it was because I was using Google’s Chrome browser. For whatever reason, Chrome can’t seem to play nicely with the iOS provisioning portal and screws up the upload. If you switch over to Safari, you should have no problems submitting the certificate signing request. If you are still getting an error, then the problem is some where else.

If you get this screen and are using Chrome:

Switch to Safari and you should get this:

Moral of the story:

Xcode – key value coding compliant error

Mongo — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:16:29 +0000

If you have ever come across the following error, it can be pretty frustrating if you don’t know where to look:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception ‘NSUnknownKeyException’, reason: ‘[ setValue:forUndefinedKey:]: this class is not key value coding-compliant for the key someObjectView.’

Nearly every time I’ve seen this so far, it has been because I had removed a view (UIButton, UILabel, etc) and had forgotten to remove the connection in Interface Builder. So, if you are seeing this error and your code looks fine, remember to check IB!

Removing .svn directories on Mac OSX

Mongo — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 21:26:42 +0000

I recently needed to remove the SVN references from a project where the repository was no longer available. The trouble is that the .svn directories are hidden. Even if they were not, you would still have to find them all and delete them, which sucks. Below is a quick command you can run in terminal to recursively remove the .svn directories. You first need to navigate to the folder you want to remove them from, otherwise badness will occur!

It is a good idea to run this first, it will show you what will be deleted:

find . -type d -name .svn -depth

Then run this to delete the .svn directories

find . -type d -name .svn -depth -exec rm -rf {} “;”

Be sure to have the semi-colon at the end in quotes, otherwise terminal may “eat” it and the script won’t run. At least that was the case on my system :p

Code Comments

Mongo — Fri, 01 May 2009 21:26:49 +0000

I ran across this site this today via Stumble Upon. If you are a coder, you have got to check it out.

It is on the question/answer site stackoverflow.com, and the question asked was:

What is the best comment in source code you have ever encountered?

There are some real gems in there such as:

// sometimes I believe compiler ignores all my comments

// I dedicate all this code, all my work, to my wife, Darlene, who will
// have to support me and our three children and the dog once it gets
// released into the public.

//
// Dear maintainer:
//
// Once you are done trying to ‘optimize’ this routine,
// and have realized what a terrible mistake that was,
// please increment the following counter as a warning
// to the next guy:
//
// total_hours_wasted_here = 16
//

// Magic. Do not touch.

//When I wrote this, only God and I understood what I was doing
//Now, God only knows

So do yourself a favor and check it out, you won’t be dissapointed!

Stored Procedure Naming Conventions

Mongo — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 03:01:02 +0000

Any development shop you go to, there are coding naming conventions. Well, at least there should be. These can very from place to place, but one naming convention I’ve seen in pretty much every place I’ve worked has been the use of “sp_” as a prefix for MS SQL stored procedures.

I guess it makes sense, sp – stands for stored procedure. Well, guess what, if you are naming your sprocs with this prefix, you sir, are doing it wrong. I have had developers argue with me until they are blue in the face, that the only “proper” way of naming a sproc is to start it with sp_

Anyway, for any of you non believers out there, here is the word, straight from MS:

Don’t Use the sp_ prefix

The sp_ prefix is reserved for system stored procedures. The database engine will always look for stored procedures with this prefix first in the master database. This means that it will take just a bit longer to finish processing while the engine looks through the master database first, and then the database where the stored procedure actually resides. Also, if there happens to be a system stored procedure with an identical name, your procedure won’t get processed at all.

Source: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms973918.aspx

Well there you have it. Go forth and code.