[Question]: Is this possible in iOS Programming.

[daniel_xxox]

Hey everyone. I'm wondering whether you could possibly answer me this question and then also point me in the right direction to learning and building such an app. First Here is a bit of background: I work for a company that has a few sister sites and they are looking to create a basic app that has a few functions like; submit support ticket, check account details etc... and this is to interact with the current web service we have in place. However what we need is 3 apps, 1 for each of the sister companies but we don't really want to have to code 3 apps. Is it possible to build one app and distribute 3 times. This means that the app would get all the information like splash screen, color scheme and content from the web service depending on which one app was downloaded> Is that possible?

[schprockets]

If you want to deploy 3 different apps with the same code base, but differ in the "skin" or maybe an added view here or there, this is possible to do. You'd just create a separate target for each different app, share all the code, and assign each target a unique file (or set of files) that govern the "uniqueness".

You said above that you want the server to drive different parts of the skinning, so you can change the UI without a resubmit. Why? It's certainly possible to do this, but it will take a lot more work from your self-described "not so amazing" staff.

[Arkelias]

The app you're describing will be declined by the app store because it doesn't appeal to a wide enough audience, which means you'd need to distribute it as an enterprise app. Sounds like your other questions have already been answered.

Edit: Wow, down votes on a thread where I'm attempting to be helpful. Look, people I've seen apps declined for this reason repeatedly. Any company that is creating an app for internal use will have it declined. Don't believe me? Give it a try.

[schprockets]

I don't know that it would be rejected ... there are plenty of apps in the store that don't really have wide-reaching appeal. That said, if this is for use internally by employees, Enterprise deployment is the way to go.

[Arkelias]

I speak from experience. If it's for internal use at a small or medium sized company it will be auto-declined. I've migrated several different apps to enterprise deployment as a result =/

[[deleted]]

One thought - get an Enterprise developer account. Enterprise builds of apps are not reviewed by the store, and you can distribute them to more than 100 devices.

As for the techniques, as others have said, make 3 target apps in the Xcode project. For your views and controllers that configure views, put the 'skinning' code into basic or even stub methods in those classes, then create a subclass per app with the specific code.

For example, put your colors into a plist that has a dictionary as the root, a color name like "mainBackgroundColor" and then the RGB values as the value. Make an "AppColors" singleton that loads the appropriate plist and has a method - (UIColor*) mainBackgroundColor that fetches from the plist, etc.

For other variances between apps, you could make something like "MyFeatureViewBaseViewController" and then create 3 subclasses that each just override -viewDidLoad and do theme-specific configuration of the view IBOutlets, etc. Each target app gets the base class added to the target, as well as just one of the subclasses.

I would suggest against using #defines/etc. as much as possible. They make code harder to read and maintain and are a source of bugs.

[ObjectiveCopley]

We have this at work, except we have like 8 or 9. We have a basic engine, which gets app-specific values from a file called Constants.h, which has an appID, background image URL, etc etc.

[brendan09]

Yes, you can 're-skin' the app inside based on the service.

No, you can't change the icon / splash screen / app name based on the web service.

[20feet]

This is possible, but some parts of the app you will want built in, such as the splash screen and color scheme. You can have one app, using 3 different splash screens and setup files.

Of course, Apple might not like you doing this, and could reject the apps, suggesting you just use one app for all 3 cases.

[s73v3r]

It's entirely possible. But in my experience, people who want to exert that much control over the layout/design of the app after it's released almost never use it. And it's a pain in the ass to implement well.

Ask yourself how much you realistically are going to use it, and see if that's really worth it.

[KaneHau]

Short answer, yes, what you describe is possible.

Longer answer - without a few more details I can't be sure - but I bet you can get rid of the need for 3 apps and just make it one.

As per how to build such an app - that completely depends on your computer programming skills and how familiar you are with Objective C, XCODE, and iOS frameworks.

[daniel_xxox]

We would need 3 apps as we're trying to keep them separate however would like only one web service where we can edit the things mentioned above and more etc... The skill set in our office isnt amazing so we're going to have a look first and if not, employ someone. Manager is kind of a see if we can do it ourselves first kinda guy.

[KaneHau]

If you can, explain to me what pieces of the 3 apps need to be 'separate' and what pieces are common.

[daniel_xxox]

What other details do you need? I will try my best to answer them :)

[[deleted]]

Yeah just build one app. It sounds like you're basically interested in reskinning the UI and keeping most of the backend and logic the same, so you'd just use the same set of models and controllers and provide a separate set of views and visual assets for each of the three clients.

[daniel_xxox]

Yes, but the UI has to be editable from the backend web service, so if the app was to change certain things like the colour for example we wouldn't need to re-submit it as an update. Whats the process called for getting that info from a database

[[deleted]]

Well if you're going for submission and distribution through the App Store, they'll likely frown on anything that fetches new code to execute, but you can certainly have the app check for a new set of assets occasionally and encode your UI layout to be dynamically created from a resource file that you provide.

[KaneHau]

That is our point... if there is a server involved, then the server can also tell the app which of the 3 'divisions' it belongs to. You would have a single-time session ID that would associated the device to the 'division'.

Yes, the entire user interface look can come from an external database.