This tutorial expects you already built your application, you have a bricked/unlocked iPhone with Cydia installed and you don’t have an Apple iPhone Developer license.

If you are a registered iPhone developer getting the application on your iPhone is as simple as compiling it directly to the device and you’re all set. If you’re not, you’ll need to go over a long process starts with obtaining a Code Signing identity, compiling the application to device profile, packaging it as a Debian package and finally hosting it on a Cydia online repository.

Code Signing and building for device

In order to install an iPhone application on your phone you have to first compile it for the device. you can do that from Xcode by setting the Active SDK to Device instead of Simulator. Go to Project > Set Active SDK > Device – iPhone OS 2.2 (Project Setting).

If you try to compile now you’ll get the following error “CodeSign error: Code Signing Identity ‘iPhone Developer’ does not match any code-signing certificate in your keychain. Once added to the keychain, touch a file or clean the project to continue.” and that’s because Xcode expects a code signing certificate to be installed on your system.

But that’s not a big issue, you can create an untrusted code signing certificate yourself following the steps mentioned on Apple website.

• Open Applications > Utilities > Keychain Access.
• From the Keychain Access menu, choose Certificate Assistant > Create a Certificate.
• Use the name iPhone Developer as the name of your certificate.
• Choose Self Signed Root from the Type popup menu.
• Check the Let me override defaults checkbox. Click Continue.
• Select a serial number for the certificate, normally if this is your first Code Signing certificate you should be fine with the default Serial Number of 1.
• Choose Code Signing from the Certificate Type. Click Continue.
• Fill in the information for the certificate. Click Continue.
• Accept the defaults for the rest of the dialogs.

Trying to compile again now (you may need to restart Xcode), you’ll receive another error message “CodeSign error: a valid provisioning profile is required for product type ‘Application’ in SDK’ Device – iPhone OS 2.2′” asking for provisioned (trusted) certificate.

To bypass that you’ll need to edit your Xcode configuration file in /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Info.plist by adding the bold lines below inline (via iPhone Software Development):

<key>NATIVE_ARCH</key>
<string>armv6</string>
<key>PLIST_FILE_OUTPUT_FORMAT</key>
<string>binary</string>
<key>PROVISIONING_PROFILE_ALLOWED</key>
<string>NO</string>
<key>PROVISIONING_PROFILE_REQUIRED</key>
<string>NO</string>
<key>SDKROOT</key>
<string>iphoneos2.2</string>

For 2.2.1 SDK update the same file but with the following instead (again only the bold lines):

<key>OverrideProperties</key>
<dict>
  <key>CODE_SIGN_CONTEXT_CLASS</key>
  <string>XCiPhoneOSCodeSignContext</string>
  <key>DEBUG_INFORMATION_FORMAT</key>
  <string>dwarf-with-dsym</string>
  <key>EMBEDDED_PROFILE_NAME</key>
  <string>embedded.mobileprovision</string>
  <key>SDKROOT</key>
  <string>iphoneos2.2.1</string>
  <key>PROVISIONING_PROFILE_ALLOWED</key>
  <string>NO</string>
</dict>

Restart Xcode and try again, you will be able to compile and build your application for the phone now. The next step is to package it and make it ready for Cydia to install it on the iPhone.

Preparing The Package

Cydia basically is a graphical interface for debian package installer on the iPhone, so first you’ll need to have a unlocked/jailbroken phone, with Cydia installed on it. If you don’t have an unlocked/jailbroken phone you can do that using QuickPwn.

Now with Cydia installed we need to prepare your application as a Debian package, and create a source repository for Cydia to download your application from.

To create a Debian package on Mac OS X we’ll need some Debian tools like dpkg-deb and dpkg-scanpackages which don’t come in Mac OS X. To get those tools we have to Fink.

After installing Fink on your computer, create the following folder structure for your application:

The MyProgram.app file is the compiled for device build available in MyProgram/build/Debug-iphones/ or MyProgram/build/Release-iphones, the control file is a configuration file for your application, it contains the package information, here’s an example control file:

Package: com.yourdomain.myprogram
Name: MyProgram
Version: 1.0.4-1
Architecture: iphoneos-arm
Description: A small description
Homepage: http://www.yourdomain.com/more_info_about_package_for_cydia
Depiction: http://www.yourdomain.com/even_more_info
Maintainer: Your Name 
Author: Developer/Your Name (nickname) 
Sponsor: Company Name 
Section: Application Section

Here is a little explanation for some of the sections above (from Jay Freeman (saurik) website, full explanation can be there):

• Version: A package’s version indicates two separate values: the version of the software in the package, and the version of the package itself. These version numbers are separated by a hyphen.
• Homepage: Often, there is more information that a packager wants to provide about a package than can be listed in the description of the package. Cydia supports a “More Info” field on the details screen that shunts users off to a website of the packager’s choice.
• Depiction: Pretty much the entire interface of Cydia is a webpage, which makes adding features or new functionality remotely very easy. One thing you might want is to be able to display custom links or screenshots with special formatting… just plain something special (even an advertisement) on your package page. This is done with a “depiction”, which is a URL that is loaded into an iframe, replacing the Description: and Homepage: links that are normally presnt. For a good example see WinterBoard’s package details page in Cydia. For many packagers this has simply become their More Information page, which is only used for backwards compatibility. It does not need to be the same, however. You also may consider not having a Homepage: field at all if you include Depiction:.
• Maintainer: The person who built the package is called the “maintainer”. This is the person who will be contacted with issues relating to the package itself. This should be of the form “their name “.
• Author: In contrast, the person who wrote the original software is called the “author”. This name will be shown underneath the name of the package on the details screen. The field is in the same format as “Maintainer”.
• Sponsor: Finally, there might be someone who is simply providing the influence or the cash to make the package happen. This person should be listed here in the form of “Maintainer” except using a resource URI instead of an e-mail address.
• Section: Under the “Install” tab in Cydia, packages are listed by “Section”. If you would like to encode a space into your section name, use an underscore (Cydia will automatically convert these.

Packaging and Indexing

Now that we have the folder structure ready let’s package it, fun the following from the Terminal from your the directory you’re holding the above folder structure in:

username@computername:~/projects/MyProgram/Cydia$ ls -l
total 0
drwxrwxrwx 5 rbarazi rbarazi 170 Feb 13 23:46 MyProgram

username@computername:~/projects/MyProgram/Cydia$ dpkg-deb -d MyProgram
warning, 'MyProgram/DEBIAN/control' contains user-defined field 'Name'
warning, 'MyProgram/DEBIAN/control' contains user-defined field 'Homepage'
warning, 'MyProgram/DEBIAN/control' contains user-defined field 'Depiction'
warning, 'MyProgram/DEBIAN/control' contains user-defined field 'Author'
warning, 'MyProgram/DEBIAN/control' contains user-defined field 'Sponsor'
dpkg-deb: building package 'com.yourdomain.myprogram' in 'MyProgram.deb'.
dpkg-deb: ignoring 5 warnings about the control file(s)

username@computername:~/projects/MyProgram/Cydia$ ls -l
total 24
drwxrwxrwx 5 rbarazi rbarazi  170 Feb 13 23:46 MyProgram
-rw-r--r-- 1 rbarazi rbarazi 9190 Feb 14 00:20 MyProgram.deb

This will generate a Debian package called MyProgram.deb, now we need to make it available for Cydia to download and install on the phone. To do that we need a web folder, the package we created and a packages index file.

To generate the packages index file we’ll use another tool called dpkg-scanpackages (also from the Terminal):

username@computername:~/projects/MyProgram/Cydia$ dpkg-scanpackages . /dev/null > Packages
  ** Packages in archive but missing from override file: **
   com.yourdomain.myprogram
  Wrote 1 entries to output Packages file.

username@computername:~/projects/MyProgram/Cydia$ bzip2 Packages
username@computername:~/projects/MyProgram/Cydia$ ls -l
total 32
drwxrwxrwx 5 rbarazi rbarazi  170 Feb 13 23:46 MyProgram
-rw-r--r-- 1 rbarazi rbarazi 9190 Feb 14 00:20 MyProgram.deb
-rw-r--r-- 1 rbarazi rbarazi  371 Feb 14 00:23 Packages.bz2

Now you’ve got the Packages.bz2 index file and the Debian package MyProgram.deb, upload both to your web server, for example I uploaded mine to http://ridaalbarazi.com/iphone

Installing the application

From Cydia go to Manage > Sources > Edit > Add and add the URL of your online repository there. Cydia will automatically show your package, install it and enjoy having your application on your iPhone.

Additional Resources

• Code Signing Guide: Obtaining a Signing Identity
• Bypassing iPhone Code Signatures
• Using XCode with Pwned iPhone
• How to skip provisioning profile for iPhone SDK 2.2
• How to skip provisioning profile for iPhone SDK 2.2.1
• How to Host Cydia Repository
• Running your own iPhone applications without paying the developer fee
• How To Add A Source In Cydia

Specifically for ActiveRecord extensions you need a database and models definition to test your plugin, to do that you have to:

• Require ActiveRecord gem:

  require 'activerecord'
  

• Establish an ActiveRecord connection to a memory based sqlite3 database:

  ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(:adapter => "sqlite3", :dbfile => ":memory:")
  

• Define both setup_db and teardown_db:

  def setup_db
    ActiveRecord::Schema.define(:version => 1) do
      create_table :posts do |t|
        t.column :title, :string
        t.column :body, :text
        t.column :category_id, :integer
      end
      create_table :categories do |t|
        t.column :id, :integer
        t.column :name, :string
      end
    end
  end
  
  def teardown_db
    ActiveRecord::Base.connection.tables.each do |table|
      ActiveRecord::Base.connection.drop_table(table)
    end
  end
  

• Define your models:

  class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to :category
  end
  class Category < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :posts
  end
  

• Finally define both setup and teardown methods in your test class (Note that all the above should be placed before your test class definition):

    def setup
      setup_db
    end
  
    def teardown
      teardown_db
    end
  

That's it, now you can write your tests as if you're writing them in your Rails application unit tests. Check the following for more example tests:

• SimplySearchable test
• acts_as_tree test
• acts_as_versioned test

Almost a year ago I released SimplySearchable plugin to help me implement the filtering options of restate.ae and during this year I’ve been updating it regularly until it become something completely different so I did a quick rewrite, moved all the logic to the model, moved the repository to github and here it is.

SimplySearchable

The main goal of SimplySearchable is to make it easy to do queries on your model by auto-magically creating some named_scope methods for common conditions.

This plugin adds a method to the model named list that will find and filter records smartly.

Please submit your bugs, requests and feedback at the project’s page on Lighthouse. RDocs are available at http://ridaalbarazi.com/code/simply_searchable/.

Installation

  ./script/plugin install git://github.com/rbarazi/simply_searchable.git

And in your model:

  class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
    simply_searchable
  end

Then in your controller you can say:

  class PostsController < ApplicationController
    def index
    @posts = Post.list(params)
  end

Example:

If you have the following attributes in you posts table:

  Post
    id:integer
    title:string
    body:text
    category_id:integer
    created_at:datetime
    updated_at:datetime

And in your Model:

  class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many   :comments
    belongs_to :category
    simply_searchable
  end

This will create the following named scopes:

  named_scope where_id,         lambda {|value| { :conditions => ["id = ?", value] }}
  named_scope where_title,      lambda {|value| { :conditions => ["title like ?", "%#{value}%"] }}
  named_scope where_body,       lambda {|value| { :conditions => ["body like ?", "%#{value}%"] }}
  named_scope where_created_at, lambda {|value| { :conditions => ["created_at = ?", [*value]] }}
  named_scope where_updated_at, lambda {|value| { :conditions => ["updated_at = ?", [*value]] }}
  named_scope where_categories, lambda {|value| { :conditions => ["category_id in (?)", [*value]] }}
  named_scope where_comments,   lambda {|value| { :conditions => ["comments.ids in (?)", [*value]] }}

It will also create the method 'list' which you can use like:

  Post.list(:title => 'abc', :created_at => Date.today)

Which will return the posts that contain 'abc' in their title and created today.

By default SimplySearchable list will_paginate, you can still disable it:

  class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
    simply_searchable :will_paginate => false
  end

Or customize its settings:

  class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
    simply_searchable :per_page => 20
  end

In the new implementation there is no support for associations' filtering yet, it will come very soon though so stay tuned. Association support has been implemented.

The third DemoCamp in Dubai, United Arab Emirates will take place at the Radisson SAS in Dubai Media City on October 28th at 7:30PM. We took a break after the second DemoCamp in Dubai for the slower summer months and for Ramandan; therefore, we are happy to announce that we were able to reserve the same room as the last event and will keep the format the same. If you want to attend the event, feel free to come over and invite people you think might be interested in joining DemoCamp.

Here’s the list of the 4 demos for Dubai DemoCamp 3:

• Jawaker – is a multi-player online gaming site that is dedicated to card games from the Arab world. Jawaker, which means the plural of “joker” in Arabic, is built using Merb.
• Twffaha – is an endeavor to promote recruiting women in the region. It is a job portal for women only.
• Untiny.me – is a new service that given shortened URL, expands it to retrieve the original web address behind it.
• industrials Directory – is an industrial search engine and locator that provides one source for finding the exact product, service, or supplier and locate them.

The format will be the same as the first two events, the presenters will give a 10 minutes – with 5 minutes for Q&A – presentation about their work, and will be available to answer any questions, receive feedback and share some thoughts after the event.

DemoCamp Dubai 3 is again organized by Argaam and SpinBits.

I’ve been also following the updates in rails-I18n and did some work on the Arabic locale file, you can find it here. You can simply use it if you are on Rails 2.2 or Rails Edge, or if you are not then use ArabicHelper.

ArabicHelper

A plugin to help you localize your Rails app to Arabic, this include few useful helpers and ActiveRecord localization

Arabic Helper consists of two parts, model extension and views helper methods. Model extension is to help you have Arabic error messages and attributes names in your model. Helper methods are made to support, pluralizing, country names and time distance in Arabic.

Example

Model extension:

  class Post
    has_arabic_attributes :body    => 'النص',
                          :user_id => 'الكاتب'
  end

View/Controller

  @post = Post.first
  @post.arabic_full_messages

Available helpers:

  arabic_country_options_for_select
  arabic_time_ago_in_words(from_time, include_seconds = false)
  arabic_distance_of_time_in_words(from_time, to_time = 0, include_seconds = false)
  arabic_pluralize(number, singular, double, plural, gender_class='male')

Install the plugin:

./script/plugin install git://github.com/rbarazi/arabic_helper.git

• I released a Rails plugin named SimplySearchable, never got the chance to blog about it yet and still hoping to get the time to release a new version.
• I had the chance this year to present at RuPy, I did a 2 hours live hacking session demonstrating Rails agility in “Is Rails as agile as advertised?”.
• In the same trip to RuPy I visited Berlin for one day and took 4 days vacation in Prague after the conference. I had great times and took lots of photos there.
• Our startup SpinBits grew to be 6 people now, the team is becoming more complete with the join of great talented people.
• A couple of weeks ago we started a web related podcast named SpinShow, you can listen to the first episode here. The second episode will hopefully be up in the next couple of days.
• In March we (in SpinBits) organized the first DemoCamp Dubai, one of the great 4 demos presented was an online video platform we built called SliceJar. The event was successful so we’re organizing DemoCamp Dubai 2 now which will be on next Tuesday 29th of May, you are welcome to join us.
• The same SliceJar presented in DemoCamp Dubai 1 is now beta launched. Sign up now for beta account if interested.
• Currently I’m reading more on Git and RSpec to use them in the projects I’m working on.

That’s all for now and I hope the next post won’t be after another 3 months :)

Thanks to Abdullah Al Muheiri (aka serdal), I will have the chance to give a talk case studying restate.ae today at the Emirates Internet Group.

I know it’s a bit late to announce the talk, but my fault was in not announcing it unless restate.ae new design is up; well, the new design implementation took longer than anticipated and here I am announcing the talk on the same day. I should have avoided false dependencies, announced the talk a week ago and posted again announcing restate.ae new design today.

The talk will be in Arabic and it will take place in Knowledge Village in Dubai around 07:30PM, Conference Room 2. Abdulla will start with his talk 5 ideas from Web2.0 where he will share some of his ideas on how to get the most out of Web2.0 great web apps.

More about the event can be found on EIG website, see you around..

Of course if you are using Textmate, you will immediatly ask for a syntax highlighting bundle. Here’s how we get it installed (Installing Textmate bundles is explained in more details in Textmate manual.

• Let’s create the textmate bundle directory in case it’s not already there:

  mkdir -p /Library/Application\ Support/TextMate/Bundles

  Or you can create it in your own Library folder:

  mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/TextMate/Bundles

• Now cd to the previously created directoy

  cd /Library/Application Support/TextMate/Bundles

• Checkout the code from the repository:

  svn co http://macromates.com/svn/Bundles/trunk/Bundles/Ruby%20Haml.tmbundle/

• In case you have Textmate open, run the following the command to reload bundles:

  osascript -e 'tell app "TextMate" to reload bundles'

Here are all the commands together:

mkdir -p /Library/Application\\ Support/TextMate/Bundles
cd /Library/Application\\ Support/TextMate/Bundles
svn co http://macromates.com/svn/Bundles/trunk/Bundles/Ruby%20Haml.tmbundle/
osascript -e 'tell app "TextMate" to reload bundles'

The bundle does not include any Snippet Syntax, Macros or Commands shortcuts, I think syntax highlighting is good enough for now :)

For more:

• Haml Syntax Highlighting page in the Haml google group.
• Bob Aman has also created another Textmate bundle, you can find it on his blog.

If you follow Ruby and Rails blogs you may have heard about the little buzz around the book and David Heinemeier Hansson “politly resisting” permission to use the logo on the book. You can find more about this on RubyInside and Rethink.

I’m waiting to receive my copy next week, I’m sure it’s going to be a good read specially seeing all the time and effort Cloves invested in authoring it. Don’t forget to get yours.

Next Tuesday, June 26th 2007 we’ll meet at Dubai Marina Towers Walk, in Hakawati cafe starting at 8:00PM, so if you are a Rubyist, a Railer or just interested in Ruby or Rails, stop by and join us, the more we are, the more fun it’s going to be.