Putting Together iPhone Projects

iPhone Xcode projects contain varied standard and custom components. Figure 1-2 shows a minimal project. Project elements include source code, linked frameworks, and media such as image and audio files. Xcode compiles your source, links it to the frameworks, and builds an application bundle suitable for iPhone installation. It adds your media to this application bundle, enabling your program to access that media as the application runs on the iPhone.

Figure 1-2. Xcode projects bring source code, frameworks, and media together to form the basis for iPhone applications.

iPhone code is normally written in Objective-C. This is an object-oriented superset of ANSI C, which was developed from a mix of C and Smalltalk. Chapter 2 introduces the language on a practical level. If you’re looking for more information about the language, Apple provides several excellent online tutorials at its iPhone developer site. Among these are an introduction to object-oriented programming with Objective-C and an Objective-C reference (http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/ObjectiveC/).