#iPhoneDev

After spending way too much time trying to implement my own solution that would rotate ads from different networks in my free applications I decided to go with pre-made solution called DTBannerManager. It was created by Oliver Drobnik (@Cocoanetics) and is available for purchase in his Parts Store. Now what this does is exactly what I wanted and more It will check for iAds, then AdMob and Mobfox if you want. It also does it with style as the new ads slide in smoothly. It works on both 3.x & 4.x versions of iOS and is even compatible with tab bar controllers. Just to put the cherry on top you can also offer your users the option to remove the ads completely through IAP.

Implementation in a native iOS app couldn’t be simpler . . .

	[[DTBannerManager sharedManager] addAdsToViewController:tabBarController];

I have an app that is built using the PhoneGap Platform. It’s not a complicated app.  It’s all .html, .css and javascript so PhoneGap was the obvious choice to use. I wanted to implement DTBannerManager into this project so I popped into the AppDelegate.h and poked around for a while. I dropped my code to instantiate the DTBannerManager into the application didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method and to my disappointment the ads were being received but were not being displayed.

After further review and a little help from a friend we discovered the issue. The PhoneGap AppDelegate seems to create the webview then the view controller, then pushes the webview into the view controller which in turn calls webViewDidFinishLoad. This seems to be the key. We cannot access the viewController object until webViewDidFinishLoad has been called. Hence we instantiate DTBannerManager like so . . .

/**
 Called when the webview finishes loading.  This stops the activity view and closes the imageview
 */
- (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)theWebView
{

    [DTBannerManager sharedManager].delegate = (id)self;
    [[DTBannerManager sharedManager] addAdsToViewController:self.viewController];

	// only valid if YourAppsName.plist specifies a protocol to handle
	if(self.invokeString)
	{
		// this is passed before the deviceready event is fired, so you can access it in js when you receive deviceready
		NSString* jsString = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"var invokeString = \"%@\";", self.invokeString];
		[theWebView stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptFromString:jsString];
	}
	return [ super webViewDidFinishLoad:theWebView ];
}

Now you think I’d be super stoked at this point right? Wrong. I discovered that upon clicking a Mobfox Ad the app would immediately crash. Turns out I left out the Other Linker Flags -ObjC & -all_load which are required for the Mobfox.framework. No problem, just add them right? Wrong. As soon as I did my builds were failing with a Duplicate symbol error on the file NSData+Base64.h. Apparently both the  phonegap.framework & the Mobfox.framework both depend on NSData+Base64.

Turns out that only the Mobfox.framework actually depends on it. My simple phonegap app had no use for it. I posted to the PhoneGap Google Group  and was re-leaved to find a simple solution. PhoneGap provides you everything necessary to compile your own custom version of the phonegap.framework. You can find the specifics in the FAQ #10. I just compiled a new copy of the framework minus the header file and any refrences to NSData+Base64.h. I deleted the pre-existing phonegap.framework from my project and imported my new custom framework and immediately the Duplicate symbol errors were gone and DTBannerManager was operating correctly – Mobfox ads and all.

This article is based off of PhoneGap for iOS version 1.0.0. You can download my custom phonegap.framework if you would also like to use DTBannerManager or Mobfox Ads in your phonegap project. I highly recommend DTBannerManager – it couldn’t be easier and besides it will increase your ad revenue! Get it and other great components from the Cocoanetics Parts-Store.