Day 51 - Solutions Architect
Today began with a 2 part lecture. Part one covered authenticating users with restkit and a custom backend. Part two showed us how to use restkit’s object mapping, which is a pretty nifty feature where you can set up some rules for converting json or XML to objective c objects.
After the lecture we all went back to our individual projects. I made good headway on my secret Santa app but didn't finish it as I had ambitiously hoped I might. Two things stood in my way. First, my head felt like it was on fire for most of the day which made it a hard to focus. Second, I spent 3 hours learning a single third party social sharing framework that I may or may not even use. It's called Socialize. What it does is add in an easy way of allowing your app's users to share on facebook and twitter. Actually it does more than that, which is primarily what took so long. It also allows uses to like and or comment on "entities" within your app. It even comes with it's own concept of users, which I found to be more of a burden then a benefit being that I already have users setup through parse.
Despite the hiccups, I did get a lot done and am fairly confident (read: 50-50) I can finish the app tomorrow. That'll leave me 7 days to finish the location personality app, and/or to build something else entirely.
Unfortunately, we didn't pitch ideas today which had initially been the plan. It seemed the idea was forgotten. Perhaps I'll bring it up tomorrow. I think working in a small group for the last week could be a really worthwhile experience.