Migrate Three20's TTMessageController

[jverkoey]

Three20's message controller is fairly useful, even in the presence of the native mail interface because it allows you to customize every aspect of the controller.

Some points of note in transitioning this controller:

• We are no longer going to have any base view controller bullshit going on like Three20 has. TTMessageController should inherit from UIViewController, plain and simple.
• The controller is already fairly well documented, but the docs need to be updated with the new doxygen style in order for the docs to be consistent with the rest of Nimbus. This means adding a brief sentence describing each method and property, grouping similar methods, and writing concise, explanatory documentation about when to use the controller and how it should be used.
• I'm not entirely convinced that all of the controller's public methods need to be public, so some auditing here would be helpful.
• The TTMessageField objects are scantily documented. I'm not even entirely sure how these objects work together myself. It would be great to document how each of these fields are used together and how to build custom fields. That being said, it's possible that there is a simpler solution for this as well.

How difficult will this be?

This should be a fairly straightforward port from Three20. Most of the work will be in cleaning up the documentation and providing examples and sample applications.

[bartvandendriessche]

I'll try to have a go at this if that's ok.

Spent some time setting up a simple skeleton + example app, ready to start porting functionality now.

[jverkoey]

Sweet, I've touched up the outline above a bit to clarify some thoughts.

[NukemHill]

@bartvandendriessche - have you made much progress here? I actually rewrote TTMessageController for my own limited needs. It as a pain, and some of the original code was rather non-intuitive to me. Partly due to the inheritance structure that @jverkoey dismisses above. Part of what I did was to integrate it with CoreDataLibrary (I actually integrated a lot of CDL with Three20; don't know if anyone else has an interest in what I've done). It all got to be rather messy, but I might have some perspective to lend.

If you want another pair of eyeballs on this, let me know.

[bartvandendriessche]

@NukemHill - Unfortunately no.

A straight port may be possible, but feels kinda dirty after reading through and grokking some of the code. The major annoyances to me are:

• the TTMessageField inheritance structure feels wrong. There is a lot of type checking code which to me feels like a code smell, but I haven't really come up with a better alternative yet.
• We probably need to port TTTextPickerField first to have a nice solution for picking recipients.

It may be a good idea to have a Nimbus implementation of TTTextPickerField first, and then start with a fairly static version of MessageController.

This MessageController would just have a to: a subject: and a message field.

After that it may become a bit clearer on how to cleanly go forward with making the MessageController a bit more flexible.

Your ideas and comments are very much welcome.

[bartvandendriessche]

I'm going to take a step back from this issue.

I can't really spend enough time to implement a good version of this at the moment.

[rogchap]

No worries @bartvandendriessche; if you have any code at all that might help someone taking this on please link to it here :)

[NukemHill]

I've been neck-deep in wrestling with Xcode 4.2 (I don't know if it's me or Xcode, but I've managed to bring it to its knees several times since the GM came out), so I've not had a chance to dig into this at all. I'm hoping I'll have some time later this week or over the weekend to play with nimbus and come up with some approaches.

I will let you know when I have had a chance to explore.

-g

On Oct 18, 2011, at 4:30 PM, Bart Vandendriessche wrote:

I'm going to take a step back from this issue.

I can't really spend enough time to implement a good version of this at the moment.

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub:
#12 (comment)

[jverkoey]

Awesome @NukemHill :) Looking forward to seeing you around!

[joshholat]

Has anybody made any progress on this?

[NukemHill]

No. Sorry about that. I've been completely bogged down with prototypes for multiple projects. I'm hoping to get back to Nimbus stuff in a week or so.

-g

On Jan 19, 2012, at 10:28 AM, Josh Holat wrote:

Has anybody made any progress on this?

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#12 (comment)

[taknology]

I am going to give this a go. I have created my own version of this for another project using Nimbus. I am getting ready to again modify that version for another project and will be attempting to make it more generic so I don't have to rewrite it again :). Is there a preference as to where this should live? I'm just wondering if it should be on it's own, like webcontroller, or be part of the core?

[jverkoey]

It should be a new feature called messagecontroller/NimbusMessageController.

[taknology]

FYI. This is coming along nicely. I am building a sample app as I go. Makes it easier to migrate that way.

Is there going to be an app showcase like three20 has? I have an app in the app store that I used Nimbus to create.

[taknology]

I have pushed a branch to my fork here.

https://github.com/taknology/nimbus/tree/messagecontroller

This includes the work I have completed to date on the message controller. It still needs work on the documentation and a bunch of testing, but it is complete and includes an NIPickerTextField in the mix. I have done a fair share of unit testing and it seems to be working well. I would like it if others could have a look and let me know what you think, give suggestions for areas of improvement and let me know what level of documentation is expected (that's the part I really hate doing).

[taknology]

Is anyone still watching this task?

[jverkoey]

Yup! Been busy; will hopefully catch up on my Nimbus backlog in the next few days.

[taknology]

Ok, just checking. It's been eerily quiet! :)

[NukemHill]

I'll take a look at it. I've been wrestling with #107, and am having trouble with Xcode handling branches properly. So this might be a good time to change directions and look at something new.

[NukemHill]

@taknology - I've been digging around your fork, and can't find NimbusMessageController. I'm seeing references to it, but no actual code. Has it been committed?

[taknology]

@NukemHill - Sorry about that. You're right the source files had not been added to my previous commits. It's all there now.

[NukemHill]

@taknology - I'm having trouble pulling down the changes you've made. Everything I try ends up pulling down the original fork from @jverkoey. None of your changes are included. Short of copying each individual file, there doesn't seem to be a way to grab your stuff.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong?

Yes, Github continues to baffle and befuddle me. I feel like a noob idiot sometimes....

[taknology]

@NukemHill - What are you using to try to get the repository?

[NukemHill]

I change the branch to messagecontroller, and then have tried to Clone in Mac and download the zip file. Either way, I only get the original fork from @jverkoey. None of your changes show up.

[taknology]

@NukemHill - I'm not sure what to say. I just now tried the web page for my fork and clicked the Zip button while switched to the message controller branch and it came down to me in a new zip file.

try this in terminal

git clone https://taknology@github.com/taknology/nimbus.git
git checkout messagecontroller

[NukemHill]

@taknology - Weird. Now it's working for me.

I also ran the commands in terminal and it worked.

I was able to run the example. I'll try to dig into it over the weekend.

Thanks for the help. Not really sure what I was doing wrong before.

[NukemHill]

@taknology - Just tried "Clone" again and it still doesn't pull down your stuff. But the zip/command line options are good enough.

I'm running into another interesting problem with Git, which I've documented over at #107. If you have a second, think you might be able to take a look at see if you have any ideas what's going wrong? Don't want to suck up your time, but I'm kinda baffled with this issue.

Just read the last comment in the thread. Don't worry about the rest of it.

I'm not really strong with the command-line fu with Git, but I'm thinking I may have to buckle down and manage things that way....

[taknology]

I have updated my fork to include a conversion of NIPostController as well. I still need to go back through and do the documentation and include an example usage of NIPostController in the sample project.

@NukemHill have you had a chance to work with the fork at all?

[taknology]

@jverkoey - Do you still work for Facebook?

[jverkoey]

I don't; at Google now.

[NukemHill]

I've taken a brief look at it (enough to prove to myself that I pulled it down right and that it works). I want to dig in deeper, though. I think it might be sufficient enough to replace the monstrosity I've been using from Three20. I seriously modified the Three20 code to handle CoreData, and in retrospect, it was a horrible kludge. Using your migration as a fresh start, I think I might be able to build a much cleaner extension to it.

It'll probably be a few weeks before I get to it, though. I'm trying to close a couple of contracts. When I do, this will most likely end up being a part of the systems I build. So the work I do then will (at least partly) be incorporated into my fork of your code. I'll be sure to keep you in the loop.

-greg

On Apr 9, 2012, at 7:14 PM, Taknology wrote:

I have updated my fork to include a conversion of NIPostController as well. I still need to go back through and do the documentation and include an example usage of NIPostController in the sample project.

@NukemHill have you had a chance to work with the fork at all?

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#12 (comment)

[vgrichina]

@taknology great thanks for a port! I've rebased it on latest master (for cleaner history) and fixed compilation errors: https://github.com/vgrichina/nimbus/commits/messagecontroller/

I'm also curious, why have you updated NIWebController? Looks like you only reformatted it, correct?

[jverkoey]

How's development on this going?

[vgrichina]

@jverkoey I am using code by @taknology right now in production. So I think to merge it only some work on documentation is needed.

[jverkoey]

Awesome! I'll look into this then :)

[taknology]

I pulled down the latest nimbus version from github with arc support and it caused a few minor issues with this port. I will try to look at those today and push back up to my repository.

[jverkoey]

Cool, thanks much!

[taknology]

I have just pushed up changes that migrate the example project and the messagecontroller branch to support ARC. This did require a few core changes so you will want to review closely.

[jverkoey]

Sweet, thanks @taknology. Can you open a pull request and reference #12?

[jverkoey]

I'll start going through the change and pointing out high level things that we'll need to fix before we can merge it into Nimbus. From a quick glance it looks like there are some bad practices from Three20 that made their way over and I want to make sure we keep Nimbus' code healthy :)

[taknology]

Agreed. My goal was to get a working port and then address any outstanding issues. I'm going to try to submit a pull request right now.

[taknology]

Ok. Please review my pull request and make sure I have done that properly. I know I have not done it right in the past when contributing to the Three20 project.

[jverkoey]

Looks good! Gonna close this guy while we review that pull request.

[jverkoey]

Link to #216.