College Map App

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Hello Guys i'm starting with Xcode, i'm doing the tutorials of Standford 2011 provided in iTunes

I want to develop my campus map app, mostly for new students, with something like this:

- Map: with points of interest, departments, services, and with a possible current location.
-Directory: with categories like departments, admissions, financial , athletics, and professors schedule, so students know when they're on their office or department.
-College News.

Will it be too hard?
How can i start?
 
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Sounds like an interesting first project, but as a beginner you probably want to keep it
simple.

Perhaps you should consider getting a plan of your campus from the collage head staff, and then scanning it on to a computer as an image file, and then loading the image file into a UIScrollView class in your app.

The UIScrollView can handle large background images, that are bigger than the screen dimensions, but that would allow you to scroll around the large image, and it also has methods for zooming in and out of it's view.

Good luck with it.

Regards Mark
 

vansmith

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I was going to suggest that making a web app would be a better way of doing this but it appears that Apple has a framework for working with maps in applications. It's called MapKit and you can read up on it here. You can annotate the maps and add overlays programmatically which might be a nice elegant way to do this.
 
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Yes the MapKit Framework is awsome, but hard to get your head around as a beginner.

The main class for displaying maps is the MKMapView class, and it's MKMapViewDelegate methods, most
of the other parts of the framework are for detailing the map view with user location and points of interest ect.

Not sure this framework will be much help with the internal layout of the campus buildings, as the map view
is more like a Google type map, but worth some investigation.

Regards Mark
 

vansmith

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Absolutely - if you're looking to make detailed indoors maps, you're going to need a custom solution. However, custom solutions will likely necessitate the use of "static" files which may or may not work depending on how often things change on campus.

It might be best, especially if you're starting out, to limit the benefit of this application to one department. Managing locations and schedules of all faculty members would be difficult since they change frequently.
 
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Thanks so much for answers and yes i will keep it simple for now =)

I'll try both methods and see which one can work better or i can understand.

I was thinkin of a interface like this

-open then app and you get a menu with 3 options map, directory, news

You open map option and it will display a submenu like:

¿What are you lookin for?

Finance
GYM
Informatic
CDE
AULAS 1 (then another submenu that display only with text 201, 202, 203 etc)
LAB
High School Professors
Engineering Professors


with UIScrollView i can make each option to go to a certain image?

Like i can edit the campus image to just point the text area i'll select in the menu and submenu?

So when i click on the menu on the place i'm lookin for, it will display the custom image i selected with UIScrollView, and that custom image only have pointed out the place user selected, so have many images for every option in the menu.

Will it work?

Any ideas for directory so it can be easy to do it for now?
 
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There are dozens of ways to tackle this project, including the way you describe, but when
starting a project like this, it's important to think of the future, and that you may want to add
more features, so the downside of the one screen scroll view is that it will start to get
cluttered.

So try and keep it modular, have one view controller for each of the menu options, and you
can expand the app with more view's and controllers later if you find you need them, I
suspect you may want more options as the project develops.

Think about using a tab view, or toolbar for the different options and views.

Good luck with it.

Regards Mark
 

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