In my Mac app, I first call [Parse setApplicationId:myAppID clientKey:myClientKey]; to set things up.
Then I do [PFAnalytics trackAppOpenedWithLaunchOptions:nil]; and then things like [PFAnalytics trackEvent:#"myCustomEventName"]; all over my app.
Finally, I log into my Parse.com account, go into Explorer -> Make a table, choose Custom Events and click Run Query. Now I get a table of all of my events.
One of the columns is "Installation ID". What exactly is this? Is it tied to the machine's unique identifier, i.e., the serial number of the Mac?
Note that I'm only using analytics (for free) and the above API is the only API I use.
It's a parse generated identifier which is unique to a particular device. Each device has its own installation instance in the database, which you can see in the web interface if you create a custom subclass of Installation (in the same way you would for a user).
The installation id may or may not be tied to a 'real' device value, but you shouldn't make any assumptions about it.
Related
I'm planning to develop a tool (running on the Windows PC) which allows comparing and merging calendar events between different calendars. My mobile device and my Lightning calendar should be supported.
The idea is to write an App for my mobile device connecting to the tool via TCP or UDP so the tool is able to modify the mobile device's calendar by sending commands to the App.
Unfortunately I'm not aware on how I can access the Thunderbird Lightning calendar with my tool.
Question 1: (Possibility 1)
Is it possible to access the Thunderbird (Lightning) calendar read/write from another application (e.g. by directly accessing the SQLite archive) in a safe way?
"In a safe way" means: No risk that the calendar format changes in the next Lightning release and writing events will destroy it!
Question 2: (Possibility 2)
Is there a possibility to access the Lightning calendar data from another Thunderbird plug-in?
(I was searching about this in Google for 2 hours and found nothing!)
Is it possible to create a "permanent" TCP connection from a Thunderbird plug-in (running some operations in the background)?
I would advise against option 1, but if you must then you can check the version table to see if the storage version has changed. This doesn't happen very often. As for accessing calendar data, you can reach the calendar manager and events as follows:
Components.utils.import("resource://calendar/modules/calUtils.jsm");
let calmgr = cal.getCalendarManager();
let calendars = calmgr.getCalendars({});
let mycal = calendars[0]; // pick one
The calendar in mycal will follow the calICalendar interface, which you can read about here. The most important methods are addItem, modifyItem, deleteItem, getItem and getItems.
As for creating a permanent connection from within Thunderbird, it is probably best to use web sockets, which you should be able to use from any DOM window. It might make sense to create your own e.g. with an iframe.
I sell Macs and i'm looking for a way for our security and to combat purchase fraud to have the machines phone home the first time they are booted up to show that machine has been in use at the clients IP address.
Now I know the client might set the computer up at a location other than their home and could spoof their IP (although the potential scammer wouldn't realise this system was in place so wouldn't be expecting to do this) but any system is better than no system.
In terms of privacy we'd put it in our privacy policy but of course we're not looking to collect any information from the user apart from their IP address and the script should delete once its connected to the internet for the first time.
How would users recommend the best way to do it? I have full access to the computers before hand and we already launch a script on first boot of user account to show a welcome and help guide - so we could add simple scripting there, but maybe a helper program which attempts until internet connection is first established, makes contact and deletes itself is best.
And of course we'd need a two pronged approach, a URL or API of some sort on our server that the computer connects to. Ideally the information to send would be the serial number and the IP address of the user, the MAC address could be useful too - as often if fraud has been committed the police will also check to see if the original MAC address of the system has connected via the ISP server logs.
I suppose the final piece of the puzzle would be that our logged data would somehow need to prove it was sent from that computer and not just generated ourselves in a database (eg we haven't just pretended its connected from their IP we've picked up from an e-mail address or something) i'm not sure if there would be any secure legal way to do this?
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Edit: Thinking of ways to make it legally binding in terms of presenting the information to the police or the courts I think the receiving server would need to be hosted and maintained by an independent third party whom you had a contract with and didn't allow you any write access to the information what so ever, all you could do is visit a website and pull up the data to pretend the evidence to the police.
(I seem to have been voted down because someone likes committing fraud?)
I have looked into similar solutions for macbooks in the past with little luck. One thing I have found however, if you have a web server, is to create a php page in an obscure hidden directory that will capture the ip address and send an email on access. From here you can create a page specific to each computer with MAC and serial number and set this as safari's homepage in a different tab. So every time someone attempts to access the internet you will be notified.
(This php page can be a simple blank page that just looks like a new tab, or can even display warnings such as "You are being tracked")
You could also create a python script on startup to send the information you are looking for such as ip, mac and serial number back, but again you would need another server setup as a listener.
And lastly, if possible, create a business account in icloud and use Find My Iphone/mac. This is probably the easiest if you can get away with it but unfortunately will not provide you with instant notifications.
-M
I am trying to recruit some beta testers for an app of mine using Test Flight. None of the testers will be in house employees or anything like that- just some folks I know who would like to help test my app (I'm a hobbyist and don't have any employees anyways).
When I went to add somme users in ITC for test flight it made me assign them a role. The only role that made sense to me was "Technical". However, I am worried that assigning somebody I don't know well the technical role will allow them to make changes to my app descriptions, reject or submit binaries, and things like that.
Is that something I need to worry about? Is there a way to assign a user the role of JUST tester without giving them access to my apps via ITC?
Apple's documentation does not seem to explicitly state what users with various roles can do.
No, this isn't really safe, and it's not a good idea to give the 'Technical' role in iTunesConnect to someone you don't fully trust.
The iOS 8 TestFlight system has a way to setup external testers, see the "External testers" section on https://developer.apple.com/app-store/Testflight/
The downside is that your app has to go through the review team each time you make any major changes before it goes to external testers (hence if the tester is really a close part of your team it is still advantageous to add them as an internal tester by giving them the technical role). The reviews don't take as long as a normal App Store review.
Alternatives (that don't involve a review) are Crashlytics Beta Distribution (owned by Twitter) or HockeyApp (owned by Microsoft). There are other services too, or you can host IPAs on your own website (using the mechanism designed for enterprise apps) but generally doing this means you miss out on other features you get when using the more integrated solutions.
Short answer: no. It is not safe to add testers with technical role.
Long answer:
According to iTunes Connect, the user must have Admin or Tech.
After reading the comments, I will complete my answer with this.
There are Internal Testers and External Testers.
External Testers are not available as of yet (see https://developer.apple.com/app-store/Testflight/).
Only Internal Testers are allowed by now (which means, your testers WILL be able to change your apps).
Since you need the user to have minimum rights, you should add the user as Technical (the less risky, but still dangerous).
I see that there is a checkbox in iTC that lets you enable the Internal Tester role:
What permissions will the users have? Theoretically, they will only have access to the beta versions (but that is a guess, since I have not tried it yet). You could create an account for a fake internal tester and check that you can't modify apps with that role.
A technical users will have access to the 'My Apps' section of iTunes Connect. This means that they can change the description of an app in the app store, update prices and even remove an app from sale.
There is no way to have a user with just an 'internal tester' role. That's what external testers are for.
It is possible to grant someone access to test as an internal tester, but not have them be able to log into iTunes Connect.
Create an iTunes Connect User with the "Technical" role with an email address that they can receive. Then have them accept it with a different Apple ID.
As long as they cannot log into iTunes Connect with the email address you added as the "Technical" user, they cannot misbehave.
I have a quick question...may sound a little straightforward but still want to throw it out there.
I am aware that typically a session is limited to a single browser and client instance.
With that said though say a user signs up on your mobile device and starts to do some shopping...maybe adds something to their cart and then decides that they want to complete the purchase on their desktop.
I have some people that want to call this a single session while technically its a new session.
Does this make any sense?
In theory this should work with Universal Analytics, at least for logged in users ( I assume that your users are logged in if they want to buy).
You can pass a client id as a parameter when you create the tracker. The client id is supposed to be formatted as UUID, so you'd have to store that along with your real client id in you backend system and pass it in to the tracker as a part of the confuguration json object (optional third parameter in ga create). Apparently this get retroactively applied to the running session (no written source for that but I recently attented a conference where a google employee said as much, so I assume this is legit).
So as far as it concerns data collection UA is ready for multidevice. I frankly do not know to what extent this already works in the Analytics Interface.
I recently had a glimpse at a Analytics Premium Account which already had some new multdevice reports. I don't know if the fact that those reports are, at least for the moment, absent from the free version means that multidevice tracking does not work yet on the free version (those reports are along the line of Venn diagramms for "How many users used more than one device" and the like).
Just wondered if it was possible to send a toast from one WP7 phone to another.
Example of use:
User A presses a button on their phone to alert other users driving nearby with status "empty" that they are needed at the GPS location of User A
If anyone can provide some insight on if this is possible, and how it can be done, it would be great.
Thanks,
Can you?
No.
If I understand your question correctly, no it is not possible.
I understand your question to be "can I do this without having to implement something on a server somewhere?" And the answer to that is unfortunately "no".
What you will need to do as #softarn and #MrMDavidson alude to, you will need to implement something on the server.
But why not?
The reason for this is pretty simple. IF it was possible to do this, then it would open the door for abuse. Imagine if, without having to go through a Microsoft server, I could write a bit of code that would send push notifications constantly to all my users (who had downloaded my app of course). What happens if my users are on data plans that charge per bit? Well I've just screwed over a whole bunch of my users, and not only are they upset with me, they're upset with their stupid phone. Alternatively, what if Microsoft wants to give all windows phone users the option to get push notifications only every 15 minutes instead of immediately? Well, without operating as a go-between, Microsoft would be entirely unable to provide such functionality.
Here's how to fake it
So, in order to interact with toast notifications, it's a requirement that Microsoft gets to play middle man, so if needed, they can pull the plug on / monitor / regulate toast notifications on behalf of the user.
If you wanted to implement a bit of server code that emulated this behavior, that is certainly possible. As #MrMDavidson says, you'd basically need to take the following steps in the architecture of your app:
User's GPS location changes
WP7 app contacts a server that you own, notifying it that the user has moved
Your server code makes note of this, storing the data in a SQL database
After storing your new location, the server scans the SQL database for all other users of your app who are "nearby" and have their status set as "empty"
For each of the users in the database that match the criteria of being (a) nearby, and (b) having an empty status, the server code calls the user's "channel uri", sending the desired message
To your users, it's all the same
This would effectively accomplish your goal, and from the perspective of users, the experience would be seemless, and for all intents and purposes it will appear as if they got a notification directly from another user's phone.
Hope that clarifies things, I did assume you're familiar with the general workflow of sending Toast Notifications.
Happy coding!
Provided that User A's phone knows the push notification URI for User B's phone then, yes, you can send notifications from one phone to the other. However the question becomes; How do you distribute User B's notification URI to User A's phone? You'll either need an "offline" mechanism (email, for instance) or a server to act as a central repository. You're probably better off having a service layer over the top of the push notifications though to manage user-to-user relationships. Then User A's phone can say "Tell my friends that they're needed!". This can be an async-fire-and-forget call to your server. Your server can then implement retries and parallel execution to notify all User A's friends that they're needed at the location.
Yes of course it is possible. Read on to how push notifications work, though I don't think it will be as easy as you think. You'll need (I think) a server that the phones communicate through.