Review book: Building Applications With iBeacon

In the previous post, I basically give you a quick look at iBeacon - A Bluetooth protocol built on top of BLE by Apple, and made a simple demo of how iBeacon can wake up an application after being terminated by the user. However, I did not mention other foundation concepts in Beacon, it also did not give you a deep look at the advantages and disadvantages of this powerful technology.
Today, I would like to introduce you to a good book giving a solid knowledge in Beacon field, especially iBeacon: Building Applications With iBeacon published by O’Reilly.
After reading this book, I ensure that you will get a good knowledge in iBeacon field and your mind will be more open to the next coming up ideas.
Let’s drive-in!

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Best practice: iBeacon


Welcome to the next part of the series of “How to deal with BLE in the background“.
In the previous part, I guided you how to keep your app alive as long as possible when your app enters to background mode by using State Preservation and Restoration technique supported by Apple. However, there are some usecases this technique can not handle, as described below (refer to Apple document: Conditions Under Which Bluetooth State Restoration Will Relaunch An App)

As you can see, there is a common case when users force quit the app from the multiple task view (Whether accidentally or intentionally), the Restoration technique can not awake your app. Let’s imagine that your app has a feature allows users to press a button on your BLE-connected devices to find where their phone is, but if your app is not running or is not able to wake up to handle the BLE signal sent from your devices, this feature would be useless.
In this post, I will show you a technique using iBeacon to deal with this case, which makes your app another chance to wake up despite it is terminated by users. Let’s drive-in!

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