Using Titanium iOS Specific Configurations

Starting with the release of Titanium Mobile 2.1 iOS specific configurations have been moved under an ios node in the tiapp.xml similar to Android. This is quickly becoming one of my favorite features.

Using the new iOS Section

The new iOS configuration section allows you to include native plist settings into your tiapp.xml file. At compile time, Titanium will use these settings when generating your project’s Info.plist. This reduces the need to use a custom Info.plist in your project, and makes it much easier to compare your Titanium settings with those in your xcode project.

For example here is a tiapp.xml with a few modifications.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<ti:app xmlns:ti="http://ti.appcelerator.org">
    <deployment-targets>
        <target device="mobileweb">false</target>
        <target device="iphone">true</target>
        <target device="ipad">false</target>
        <target device="android">true</target>
        <target device="blackberry">false</target>
    </deployment-targets>
    <sdk-version>2.2.0.v20120710</sdk-version>
    <id>com.appworkbench.modtest</id>
    <name>ModeTest</name>
    <version>1.0</version>
    <publisher>benCoding</publisher>
    <url>http://test.com</url>
    <description>not specified</description>
    <copyright>2012 by benCoding</copyright>
    <icon>appicon.png</icon>
    <analytics>false</analytics>
    <guid>b8962c32-58ec-458f-8c93-bf6b7dbad5d2</guid>
<ios>
<plist>
<dict>
<key>UIPrerenderedIcon</key><true/>
<key>UIStatusBarStyle</key><string>UIStatusBarStyleBlackTranslucent</string>	
<key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations</key>
<array>
   	<string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait</string>
   	<string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown</string>
</array>
<key>UIBackgroundModes</key>
<array>
   	<string>location</string>
 	</array>
</dict>	
</plist>
</ios>    
    <android xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android"/>
    <modules>
    </modules>
</ti:app>

You can easily see how each of the components map to the generated Info.plist.

Adding Other iOS Configuration Elements

You can also add other iOS configuration elements quickly. In the example below we show adding an entry for UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend to close the app when placed into the background and requiring the device has a flash by using UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities.

<ios>
	<plist>
		<dict>
			<key>UIPrerenderedIcon</key><true/>
			<key>UIStatusBarStyle</key><string>UIStatusBarStyleBlackTranslucent</string>	
			<key>UIApplicationExitsOnSuspend</key><true/>
			<key>UIRequiredDeviceCapabilities</key>
				<array>
				   <string>camera-flash</string>
				</array>	 	
		</dict>	
	</plist>
</ios>

Titanium generates the correct Info.plist entries as shown below.

Adding Custom Fonts

The new iOS section removes the need to use a predefined plist for Custom Font support. You now can define your fonts directly in your tiapp.xml and Titanium will handle the rest.

For example, we’ve added the below reference to our custom font “blah.otf”.

<ios>
	<plist>
		<dict>
			<key>UIPrerenderedIcon</key><true/>
			<key>UIStatusBarStyle</key><string>UIStatusBarStyleBlackTranslucent</string>	
			<key>UISupportedInterfaceOrientations</key>
				<array>
				   	<string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortrait</string>
				   	<string>UIInterfaceOrientationPortraitUpsideDown</string>
				</array>
			<key>UIAppFonts</key>
				<array>
				   	<string>blah.otf</string>
				</array>	 	
		</dict>	
	</plist>
</ios>

Titanium generates the correct Info.plist entries as shown below.