A Framework for iOS Application Development

Youcong Ni

State Key Lab of Software Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, China

Faculty of Software Fujian Normal University, Fujian, China

Email: youcongni@foxmail.com

Bei Chen

Faculty of Software Fujian Normal University, Fujian, China Email: cbfjnu@gmail.com

Peng Ye

College of Mathematics and Computer, Wuhan Textile University, Hubei, China Email: whuyp@126.com

Chunyan Wang

Faculty of Software Fujian Normal University, Fujian, China

Email: wcychunyanwcy@gmail.com

Abstract—In order to improve efficiency and quality of mobile application development on the iOS platform, this paper proposes a framework named AF4iOS, which is designed based on class libraries and existing software frameworks on iOS platform. The AF4iOS framework is divided into three independent layers: user interface (UI) layer, domain layer and resource layer. The AF4iOS framework encompasses a variety of components, which encapsulate the usage, and accessing of various resources, such as UI, data, web service and communication. These extensible and reusable components can accelerate the progress of development and enhance the quality of product. Finally, the availability and effectiveness of the AF4iOS framework is demonstrated through a case study.

Index Terms—Application Framework, iOS Application

Development

I. INTRODUCTION

At the 2011 World Wide Developerrsquo;s Conference, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had sold over 200 million iOS devices, with over 225 million registered customers. These customers have downloaded over 14 billion apps so far, resulting in over $2.5 billion paid to iOS developers over the last three years [1]. In 2013, there are 7.1 billion people in the world and number of mobile subscriptions is almost 6.8 million [2]. At present, the number of iOS apps in the Applersquo;s App Store has already been more than 700,000 and is still growing. In such competitive environment, iOS apps should be quickly developed and deployed in order to obtain and maintain competitive advantage. Meanwhile, these apps must meet the increasingly strict quality requirements of App Store. As a result, iOS apps must be developed efficiently and keep high quality.

Software framework plays important role in improving efficiency and quality of apps development [3]. Many

copy; 2014 ACADEMY PUBLISHER

doi:10.4304/jsw.9.2.398-403

frameworks or middlewares [4, 5] for specific mobile computation domains has been proposed. Based on class libraries of iOS, there are a few of open source software frameworks [6], which encapsulate the usage and accessing of specific resources in order to ease the iOS apps development difficulty level. For example, MagicalRecord framework can provide capability to simply access database resource through encapsulating CoreData [7] class library. Web resources can be conveniently accessed by means of AFNetworking framework worked on CFNetwork [8] class library. However, how to integrate existing software frameworks to form unified iOS apps development framework have not been well solved.

Aim at this problem, the framework, named AF4iOS, is proposed in this paper. The AF4iOS framework, designed on the basis of iOS class libraries [9] and related open source software frameworks [10], is divided into three independent layers: user interface (UI) layer, domain layer and resource layer. In the AF4iOS framework, a variety of components that encapsulate the usage and accessing of various resources [11], such as UI, data, web service, and communication are encompassed. And these extensible and reusable components can accelerate the progress of development and enhance the quality of product [12].

The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. In the next section, the AF4iOS framework is illustrated in detail; Section 3 demonstrates applicability of AF4iOS through a case study; Finally, Section 4 concludes the paper and future works.

II. AF4IOS FRAMEWORK

The AF4iOS framework, shown in Fig. 1, is split into three layers by the layered architecture pattern [13]: user interface (UI) layer, domain layer and resource layer. UI layer is used to implement the GUI and provide the capability of interaction between users and iOS apps. Business logics and business entities are encapsulated by domain layer that provide UI layer with the interfaces of business functions. Resource layer encapsulates the usage and access of various resources including data, web service and communication, providing the operation interfaces of resources to domain layer. The functions of iOS apps can implemented by means of interaction and cooperation among the three layers. AF4iOS will be illustrated in detail as follows.

A. Resource Layer

As shown in Fig. 2, Resource layer includes data component, web service component and communication component that encapsulate the access and use of data, web services and communication resources, respectively. These components provide a few of operation functions for corresponding resources.

DBData and FileData in the data component can operate database and files respectively. And SoapWS and RestWS can access soap and restful style web service resources in the web service component separately. In communication component, BLE can provide the capability of operating Bluetooth low energy (BLE) while SMS can be used to send and receive the short messages. Due to the limitation of paper length, one type of resource operation is demonstrated in data component, web service component and communication component.

 DBData Component

As shown in Fig. 3, <strong

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