Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Post #32 Login on Mobile Screen

As covered in my last post, I was to work on the mobile interface. And I did. Eversince, iOS7 came up, it broke my app. And ruined my phone's performance(I have cribbed earlier too. Never miss a chance).
How did it break my app? Well, till iOS6, I could log onto my app from regular safari session and then save the expense recording url at a shortcut on the screen. The shortcut had access to session / rememberMe cookie and whenever I accessed my site from the shortcut, I got a valid session and I could use it just fine. Since iOS7, however, the shortcuts do not share anything with the safari browser. Though its still safari, they work in their own silos. I think its good from security pov.

Even this was fine, but then there is additional restrictions. Suppose I tried to save the secure(logged in) URL as shortcut, the browser will try to access it first. As this browser instance now working in its own silo, it would redirect me to the log in page. As log in is an HTTP 302 redirect, the top URL changes to log in page URL and it becomes the shortcut URL. Whatever I did I could not get the expense recorder saved as a shortcut.

So I had to do it. Create a small log in screen for the mobile. It took about 2 days. I spent a good time setting up my dev env on the VIAO. Once it was done, I could get productive. I need to learn to use WebStorm better. Its good in the sense it points out if Sencha javascript is broken, but I'm not using even 5% of its power. Learnt a lot about cross site browsing. Finally, the shortcut is working and now the thing looks more professional...

That's it for 2013. My first Amazon bill is likely to be Rs. 4000. An expensive hobby it is. 

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