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Hipmunk for the iPhone - here's how we built it

blog.hipmunk.com

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Re: Hipmunk for the iPhone - here's how we built it

#21

Post by danilocampos »

nuggien wrote: post #15

From a UX perspective, I’m really pleased with how the pinchable, stretchable, draggable time bars came out in the application. They feel really good to use. But from a development perspective, this is some of the stupidest, craziest code I’ve ever written in my life. Don’t ask me how I did it because it did it entirely the wrong way. Maybe I'll share once I figure out the non-stupid approach. But this is perhaps the…

I'm insecure enough sharing code I know works. Code I know is stupid is untenable for me. It comes from starting off as a newb and being led down the wrong path by people who'd blog without really knowing they were wrong. So I'd waste my time, or worse, internalize a bad design pattern because I didn't know any better.

Hard to be that guy.

Re: Hipmunk for the iPhone - here's how we built it

#27

Post by danilocampos »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #26

Why do you tie my flight searches with my UDID and submit it to third parties like flurry?

> Why do you tie my flight searches with my UDID and submit it to third parties like flurry?

We collect the following data points via a single third party tool, namely Flurry. There aren't any others, aside from the obvious booking partners who book your flight at the end of the process.

- How long is the import process

- What tasks throw exceptions or otherwise crash the application

- Which cities are most chosen

- How far into the future do users most often search

- Do people bother with flights displayed lower on the screen

- Do people bother with the alternate booking mechanisms we made

This is useful to both confirm initial hunches on how the app's UX should work and helps direct modifications and enhancements in future versions. Flurry collects UDIDs for a promotional program they do for app discovery but Hipmunk doesn't participate in that.

Re: Hipmunk for the iPhone - here's how we built it

#29

Post by danilocampos »

bengl3rt wrote: post #25

Binary plists over the wire? That's a hardcore innovation that I will file away in the back of my head for next time I'm building a backend for a mobile app.

All credit to Apple's WWDC 2010 session on building server driven applications. Great stuff in there, grab the video off of iTunes U if you've joined the developer program. Among other things, they break down the performance of various payload formats.

https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2010/

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