The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook is one of the first books released now that the iPhone SDK Non-Disclosure Agreement has been dropped. While it isn’t perfect, it is a useful guide for getting into iPhone Application Development. Erica takes a unique approach to iPhone development, organizing her book, as the title says, like a cookbook. The book goes through a series of small projects, which are called recipes, that build on each other and expand the reader’s knowledge.
The book seems to assume a bit of knowledge of the Apple Developer Tools, not explaining Interface Builder (Apple’s tool for designing and linking up interfaces) as skillfully as some other books do, but if you have experience with the tools, then you should be able to benefit from this book a bit better. The book doesn’t do much to help a brand new programmer, but it is well detailed. Furthermore, the code snippets show both the header .h and .m files in one file, which is a bit easier to read but new programmers can be confused that they aren’t separated. The comments in the code show where the break should be, but new programmers should be warned to move them separately. I personally like having them all together in the book to make it easier to view.
Despite all this, I feel the book has merit. The book progresses well from beginner to advanced topics, has a very clear layout, and plenty of pictures to demonstrate what things should look like to the reader. The author also includes useful notes that the rest of the text to highlight extra information. I like the recipe style, as it is easy to go to a specific “recipe” to learn about whatever you wish. After going through the book, it is also easy to go back to a specific “recipe” as a manual. This book would do well next to a computer for checking a specific technique. The recipes are all titles well for anyone looking to complete a specific task, and the table of contents is easily navigated to assist a coder in something they need to complete. Some interesting recipes include creating your own custom cells, taking pictures with the iPhone camera, reading from the address book, and many more.
While some people fault the book for it’s occasional use of undocumented API’s, in that they are not allowed on the AppStore, recently Apple has been changing it’s tune. The google app uses the proximity sensor, and there was an app released recently that uses Coverflow to display contacts. Speaking of Coverflow, Erica included a nice short chapter on using Coverflow in your applications, that while it is not very in depth, is a good primer for getting started. This nice attention to details developers can appreciate, and really adds to this book’s use.
While perhaps this book is not the best beginner guide, it is a great beginner reference book. I feel it can be successfully used as a beginner’s guide with the help of perhaps another programmer, or with some previous experience with the Apple Development Tools. However, it can also be used as a reference book for anyone who needs a quick review on how to do a specific task, due to its detailed index and many quick “recipes” that can easily remind a developer of the correct code required.
Chapter List:
- Introducing the iPhone SDK
- Views
- View Controllers
- Alerting Users
- Basic Tables
- Advanced Tables
- Media
- Controls
- People, Places, and Things
- Connecting to Services
- One More Thing: Programming Cover Flow
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