In my last post I showed you [how to set up Vim for Corona SDK development]. The environment I described in it has a lot of room for improvement. One of these is code snippets.

This post will show you how to add Corona SDK and Lua code snippets to the Vim editor.

How to Set up Snippets Support for Corona

To support code snippets in Vim you need the snipMate plugin.

1. [Download the snipMate plugin] bundle snipMate.zip.
2. Open Terminal and change the directory to where you saved the snipMate.zip file.
3. Unzip the file with the command unzip -d snipMate.zip ~/.vim
4. To enable the help file for the plugin run the following command from within Vim:
   
   :helptags ~/.vim/doc

The Snippets File

Now download the lua.snippets file for Corona SDK and place it in the folder ~/.vim/snippets/.

The snippets file is heavily based on the TextMate editor bundle for Corona. Many thanks to Darren Osadchuk from Ludicrous Software. If you are using TextMate for the development of Corona SDK apps, check out his site and the TextMate bundle.

How to Use the Snippets

You can use the snippets by entering the snippets trigger and pressing the tab key while in insert mode. For example enter the word forp (the snippets trigger) while in insert mode and then press the tab key. This will result in the following code:

for key, value in pairs( table_name ) do
    print( key, value )
end

You can now use the tab key to cycle through key, value, and table_name. Use shift-tab to jump backwards.

To see a list of the supported snippet triggers open the snippets file ~/.vim/lua.snippets.

You can also use auto-completion for the snippets. Try this: while in insert mode enter the word native and then press the key combination <CTRL>-r followed by the tab key. This should open a box where you can select a code snippet using the arrow keys.

The snippets are working if you edit a file with the file extension .lua. If you want to use the snippets in other files you need to set the file type in Vim with the command:

:set filetype=lua

Improvements

This is the first version of the snippets file. If you want to help to improve the file, please let me know and I will upload the file to GitHub.

Conclusion

With snippets support we have added one more piece to make Vim the missing Corona SDK IDE.

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Welcome back to the last part of the Corona SDK tutorial series. You might want to consider reading part one, part two, and part three first.

In this part of the programming tutorial we will add the game logic, a menu, and the sound.

The Code and Assets

Before we go through the code, download the complete Fat Freddy Corona SDK Tutorial Project. This bundle includes the following assets:

• Sound files pickup.wav, powerup.wav, failed.wav
• Source files build.settings, config.lua and main.lua
• Adobe Fireworks file FatFreddyLogoFireworks.png[1]
• Icon files in various sizes. 512×512, 57×57, and 114×114.

Unpack the zip file somewhere on your hard disk. To start the game, just open the main.lua file in your Corona SDK Simulator.

A word of caution. In a real project you would do a lot of things differently from what I have done in this tutorial. For example, for simplicity we only have one code file. In a bigger project this will bring trouble. It is much better to have different source files for various parts of the project. Have a look at the Director Class for the Corona SDK by Ricardo Rauber, to get a good start on structuring your next Corona SDK project.

You can do whatever you like with the project and the included files. Tweak it and learn. Let me know your achievements.

In the code you will find strange comments surrounding the function bodies: ---{{{ and ---}}}. These comments are there to support code folding for the Vim editor. If you use a different editor you can ignore these tags.

The Game Logic

The objective of the game is to collect the black squares and avoid touching the blue squares. The rotating square is our player – fat freddy. Freddy needs to collect the black squares and at the same time he needs to avoid touching the blue squares. This gets increasingly difficult as freddy will get bigger while eating the black squares. For each square freddy eats, he will get one point.

To add more fun to the game we will add rewards and penalties. Rewards will be triggered when fat freddy eats one of the black circles. These are the possible rewards:

• All You Can Eat As long as the timer runs you can also eat blue squares.
• Traffic Jam This will slow down the game. It is much easier to avoid the blue squares.
• Weight Loss This will minify the player. Which is good as it will be easier to avoid the blue squares.

The penalties will be triggered when fat freddy eats a blue circle. The following penalties are supported:

• Rush Hour This will speed up the game for a limited time. It is hard to avoid the blue squares.
• Food Contaminated You are not allowed to eat any square. Try to avoid black and blue squares as long as the timer runs.
• Weight Gain This will increase the size of fat freddy and hence makes it harder to avoid the blue squares.

Watch the video and you will get a good impression of a typical game session.

Code Annotations

After reading the first three parts of the Corona SDK tutorial you should be able to easily understand the code. There is only one minor code construct I have not explained in one of the previous tutorials: closures

Closures are very useful. You can learn about closures in the book Programming in Lua. Closures are blocks of code which can refer to its declaration context. Normally the code blocks are functions, which do not have a name[2]. You can spot these in the project where they are assigned to a variable called closure. In fat freddy these functions are used to reset variables after a transition has been completed.

For those of you who are familiar with closures you will notice that I discard the best part of closures by referencing the variables which would be in scope anyways and not the declaration context. This is another thing you would want to do differently in a real project.

Sound

Playing sound with Corona SDK is simple. Just preload a sound like this:

powerUpSound = audio.loadSound("powerup.wav")

Then play the sound with the following code:

audio.play ( powerUpSound  )

The game sounds have been created with the free audio effects tool cfxr. This is a Mac port of the Windows tool sfxr. It is really fun to use. Give it a try.

Conclusion

This completes the game tutorial series. It has become much longer than I planned. So forgive me for not being concise.

Please spread the word about the tutorial and leave your feedback in the comments.

I would be glad to have you as a reader of my RSS feed or as a follower on Twitter. You can also find me on Google+.

Happy coding.

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The link to your posts on Google+ looks as if you have linked to one of your Swiss bank accounts. It is hard to remember the link because of the long ID in it. This also makes it hard to share with your friends.

For example, the link to my stream of posts on Google+ looks like this: https://plus.google.com/112413951393093983540/posts

Wouldn’t it be nice to have a vanity URL like http://yourdomain/+, which points to your posts stream on Google+?

There is a simple way to do this if you have your own server: Add a permanent redirect (301) to your .htaccess file. This can be done by editing the file through the cPanel or by directly editing the file on your server.

If you can do this through a web panel I would recommend using the panel, unless you know what you are doing.

Add a Vanity URL through cPanel

The following screenshot shows how to set this up through cPanel.

In cPanel go to Domains > Redirects. Then add your Google+ information as shown in the screenshot above.

Do not forget to replace the string YOUR_ID_HERE with the correct id.

Add a Vanity URL to .htaccess

If it is not possible for you to use a web panel, you can set up your Google+ Vanity URL by adding the following line to your server’s .htaccess file.

Redirect 301 /+ https://plus.google.com/YOUR_ID_HERE/

This will add a permanent redirect from http://yourdomain.com/+ to https://plus.google.com/YOUR_ID_HERE/.

Do not forget to replace the string YOUR_ID_HERE with the correct id.

Creating a Vanity URL when You do Not Own a Server

There are various services which help in creating a vanity URL, that you can point to your Google+ account. For example, http://gplus.to/. I haven’t tested it myself, but there are lots of people on Google+ already using the service.

Conclusion

It is easy to create your own vanity URLs for Google+. If you want to see my posts on Google+ you can use my vanity URL: http://cutemachine/+

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Do you have a backup strategy for your iPhone? You know you will need a backup someday in the future. Just syncing your iPhone or iPod touch with iTunes is not enough. Syncing your data between the iPhone and your computer is not the same as making backups. Synchronizations and backups deal with different data. Here is a quick rundown of what data gets synchronized and what data gets backed up.

Syncing will safeguard the following data:

• Music
• Videos
• Photos
• Contacts
• Calendar
• Bookmarks
• Settings (mail account settings, device settings, etc.)

Backups, on the Other Hand, will safeguard the following data:

• Text messages
• Notes from the notes application
• Locations from the maps application
• Call history
• Contact favorites
• Cookies
• Settings (sound, widget, network)
• Photos (Yes, they get backed up and synced)
• And most importantly it will store the data of third party apps!

You see, there is a big difference as regards which data gets transferred between your mobile device and your stationary computer. You should always do both backups and synchronizations.

When you want to protect your data from being lost, there are only a few important things you need adhere to:

1. Learn how to backup your iPhone or iPod touch
2. Learn how to restore your valuable data
3. Backup your data regularly

How to backup your iPhone or iPod touch

Backing up your data is easy. Just connect your iPhone to your desktop computer. Depending on your settings, the synchronization will start automatically or you need to start the synchronizationmanually by pressing the sync button on the Summary tab in iTunes. If you are using a laptop computer, remember to connect your laptop to the power supply as backups may take several minutes to complete with the iPhone software version 2.2. If you are using an older software version it can take considerably longer. You should configure iTunes to sync automatically when you connect your device. iTunes will backup your device only when you connect it to your computer regardless of how often you press the sync button in iTunes. If you want to enforce a new backup you must disconnect and reconnect your device. This will trigger a new backup.

Never disconnect your iPhone or iPod touch while it is backing up your device. If you do, you will have a corrupt backup.

You can see the created backups in iTunes > Preferences > Devices > Device backups. This is where you can delete older backups. The backup files have a file extension of .mdbackup. You can find these files in your home directory by following Library > Application Support > MobileSync > Backup. In Backup you will find different sub folders. For each of your devices there will be one. Beneath this directory you will see the actual backup files which have been created by iTunes. You can analyse these files by using the iPhone backup extractor as described below.

How to restore your data

In order to restore a backup you created earlier just connect your iPhone or iPod touch to your computer and press the restore button on the Summary tab in iTunes.

Though I have never tried it myself, it should also be possible to restore your iPhone backups to a different device. Naturally all data gets overwritten when you restore a backup. Therefore be extremely careful. 

The backup extractor

There is a supercrazyawesome tool available with which you can have a peek into the backup files iTunes creates. The backup extractor has just two buttons. The Read Backups button will look for backup files on your computer and lists all backup files it finds. When you select one backup file from the list in the main window and press the second button labeled Extract the extractor will ask for a directory where you want to save the extracted data.

In the listing of your backup files you will see one backup which is especially interesting. It is labeled Other Files. If you extract this one you will come across lots of familiar data. For example you will see a sqlite3 data base file, which contains your address book data. As far as I know it is not possible to alter any data and play it back onto your device. The author of the iPhone backup extractor is considering adding this functionality in the future. The backup extractor tool is donation ware. So, if you use it on a regular basis please support the author by making a donation.

Do backups regularly

With the new iPhone Software version 2.2, backups get created fairly quickly. Therefore, I advise you to configure iTunes to sync your device automatically each time you connect it to your computer.

This should be everything you need to know about securing your iPhone against data loss. Go ahead, start your backup now.

Should you still feel a desire for more information on making backups, please head over to the official Apple site and check out what Apple has to say about iPhone backups.

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Article on PCWorld by Ric Broida.

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The iPhone is not only a phone, but also a computer. And some people use it like a computer. But, strangely enough, when it comes to security, they are not taking the necessary steps to secure their data like they would on a normal desktop computer or laptop. They store contact information, documents, passwords and other confidential data. And yet they leave it all unprotected. Follow these security tips to make it harder for any villain to get hold of your valuable data.

1. Protect your iPhone against unwanted access. Activate the Pin Pad under Settings > General > Passcode Lock. Also set the Auto-Lock to at least 5 minutes. This will lock the iPhone automatically after 5 minutes. You can also configure your iPhone in a way that will erase all data after 10 failed passcode attempts. I am not using this feature, because I am afraid that my 2 year old daughter will try to guess the code and will not achieve it under 10 attempts.
2. Ensure that you reveal your location only to those services you trust. Therefore deactivate location services by default. You can do this in Settings > General > Location Services. Yes, I am paranoid.
3. Configure your iPhone to ask for permission before connecting to wireless networks. Set Settings > Wi-Fi > Ask to Join Networks to on.
4. Whenever possible, use an SSL connection when you surf with mobile Safari. You can see that a connection is secure when mobile Safari is displaying a little lock in the address bar.
5. Whenever possible, use an SSL connection to retrieve your mail. Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Your Account > Advanced > Use SSL is the right place to do it.
6. Under Settings > Safari you can control various security settings for mobile Safari. You can deactivate JavaScript, block pop-ups and reject or delete cookies.
7. Use a secure data store application to store confidential documents. There are several offers in the App Store.
8. Use a secure password store application to store passwords. There are several programs which will do the job. Look for applications which do use encryption.
9. Do backup your iPhone regularly through iTunes. Apple has written a short article on their support pages about backing up your data and applications.

This list is not complete. For example, you can configure a virtual private network to use with your iPhone. The headline says easy to follow steps; therefore, I will leave the VPN to another post. You can also set restrictions on various iPhone applications. I do not consider these to be essential, but encourage you to play around with these (Settings > General > Restrictions). Certainly there are even more tips and tricks regarding iPhone security. Let us know your best tips and tricks.

I hope you are already determined to take security seriously. If not, read this funny story. Funny, because the story came to a good end. Imagine this happening to you. A nightmare!

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With software update 2.2 it is now possible to turn auto-correction on or off. I think this has been the second most often requested feature right behind cut and paste, which was by far the most often requested one. You can find the auto-correction switch in the settings application under General > Keyboard > Auto-Correction.

Another feature which might be useful to you is the “.” shortcut. If switched on, you can tap the space bar twice to enter a period followed by a space character. The switch can be found in Settings > General > Keyboard > “.” Shortcut.

Have you noticed the little globe key to the left of the space bar in the keyboard screen shots? You can choose from different international keyboards in the settings application under General > Keyboard > International Keyboards. For example, when you need to write emails in different languages this is a convenient method to switch between different keyboards and languages. Just press the globe to switch to the next configured language. This will not only change the keyboard layout, but also the auto-correction dictionary. When you have pressed the globe, the language you have switched to is displayed on the space bar for about one second. For me, switching between different keyboards comes in handy when I want to write emails to my Spanish speaking friends.

One feature I wasn’t aware of before I read about it this week is the capability to hit the shift key twice to switch to caps-lock mode. You also need to enable this feature in the settings application under General > Keyboard > Enable Caps Lock. You might want to use this feature if you need to yell at your COLLEAGUES, when writing them an email.

If you need to enter special letters like German umlaute (ü, ö, ä) or the Spanish letter eñe (ñ) just tap the underlying key and hold it for a short period. You will notice that a contextual menu appears where you can choose the special letter from. This also works when entering email addresses or URLs, as depicted in the screen shot.

Last but not least, here is one of my favourite keyboard tricks. You can enter characters by swiping on the keyboard. This is helpful when you need to enter passwords which are often a combination of letters, digits and special characters. For example, you can enter a digit by tapping on the 123 key and then swiping to the number key you want to enter. When you have entered the number just release the key and you will notice that the keyboard switches back to the mode for entering characters again.

Now, try these tricks with a device which has a real physical keyboard.

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