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This tutorial series will walk you through the creation of a complete, ready to publish iPhone application. I have chosen to continue the Advanced RSS Reader application but I will be taking a step back and extending on some of the methods explained in those tutorials.

When this series is completed you will have learnt (hopefully!) how to setup a new iPhone application, use UITableViews & UINavigationControllers, interact with SQLite databases, read RSS/XML feeds by using TouchXML, test your project on actual iPhone hardware, prepare your application for submission to the App Store and much more.

1. Tools you are going to need

iPhone SDK -Apple has created a superb set of tools that are going to become your best friends while you work your way through this tutorial series and iPhone development in general.
TouchXML Libraries – As many of you may know the NSXMLDocument implementation was removed from the iPhone SDK due to its hefty processing requirements, so thats why we use TouchXML to provide the basic XML parsing options that we need.
SQLite Manager Plugin for FireFox – As we are going to be working with SQLite databases we need to be able to create our database structure and to browse through it easily. You can use the command line or any application that supports SQLite databases, although I have grown very fond of the SQLite Manager Plugin for Firefox (available at http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5817)

2. Downloading & Installing the iPhone SDK

You can grab the iPhone SDK from the iPhone Dev Centre (http://developer.apple.com/iphone/), you will need to create an account to get access to the download, but don’t worry…it’s FREE!

Once the download has finished (its a heavy 1Gb+ download so now’s the best time to take a nap) you can simply run the package and go through the standard install process. By default it will install the developer tools into /Developer/ and there will no icons in your applications folder or your dock.

Under the /Developer/Applications folder you will see a bunch of applications and folder, the two we are going to be concentrating on are “Xcode” and “Interface Builder”.

I suggest that you drag these to your dock for easy access as we are going to be using them alot! I will come back to these applications in the next tutorial as we need to install some more tools first.

3. Downloading and Setting up the TouchXML Libraries

You will need to check the latest code out from the TouchXML SVN Repository, if you don’t know how to use SVN I have included the required commands below.

1. Launch a new Terminal window
2. Create a new folder called “ExtraLibraries” where you would like to keep your iPhone development libraries (I save mine in /Developer/ExtraLibraries/ to keep evenything clean and reusable)

mkdir /Developer/ExtraLibraries

3. Change into the new folder

cd /Developer/ExtraLibraries

4. Run the SVN checkout code

svn checkout http://touchcode.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ touchcode-read-only

You will see the filenames scrolling up the screen and depending on your connection it should only take around 60 seconds to grab all the required files. If you have a look in the newly created folder you will see the TouchXML folder along with some other libraries (TouchSQL, TouchJSON, TouchHTTPD, etc). We wont be using these other libraries but feel free to have a play around with them and see what you can do.

5. Now you have the TouchXML libraries on your local machine ready to start creating your first iPhone app.

4. Installing the SQLite Manager Plugin for FireFox

I like to use the visual editor in FireFox but by no means is it the only option, I will provide a database download for those that have trouble getting their own one built.

To install the FireFox plugin simply open up FireFox and visit http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/5817 and click “Add to FireFox”, you will need to go through the usual process of installing an add-on and after that it will be available at Tools > SQLite Manager, if you launch the manager the following window should appear:

5. Are you ready?

Well that’s all the essential tools installed and ready to go! Go and have a play and a look at the applications and get ready for the next installment for the series.

I hear you asking “What is the next installment going to outline and when will it be out?”…The next installment is going to go through setting up a new project, organising our development windows and getting the TouchXML and SQLite libraries set up for our project. I am hoping to have the next installment out in a few hours and then it will be time to get into the “meat” of the project!

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