iOS App Life Cycle

2.  Mobile app developers have the option to build a wide variety of mobile apps for iOS platform.  But no developer can make the iOS app popular and profitable without understanding its overall behaviour.  Each time a user runs an iOS app, the application goes through a number of states – active, inactive, not running, suspended, and backgrounds.  These states of iOS app life cycle impact the overall behaviour of the mobile app.  iOS further calls specific app life cycle methods according to the current state of app life cycle. Also, a developer can deliver a variety of events in the iOS app.  Hence, it becomes essential for each developer to understand the iOS app life cycle states and events.

3. Important Execution States of iOS App Life Cycle  An iOS app keep transiting from one execution state to another based on certain events or user actions.  For instance, if a user receives a phone call while accessing an app iOS automatically changes the execution state.  Likewise, iOS also changes the execution state automatically, when a user clicks on the home button while accessing the mobile app.  iOS further responds to the change in execution state by calling the most appropriate methods of the app delegate object.  However, an iOS app can remain one of the five execution states.

4. Not Running:  An app remains in not running state till the user launches the app. Also, it enters into not running state each time the underlying system terminates the app. Inactive:  An app enters into inactive mode temporarily when each time the execution state changes. When it is in inactive mode, the app runs in the foreground. But it does not receive or respond to any event. Active:  This is the normal execution mode for each foreground and running iOS app. An app remains in active state when the users access it, running in the foreground, and receiving events.

5. Common Events in iOS App Life Cycle  During the use, an iOS app can transit from one execution mode to another.  Also, the developers can deliver a variety of events in the same app.  However, they can deliver the events in a number of ways.  Some of the events can be delivered directly through the app’s main run loop.  At the same time, certain events delivery happens through a delegate object or passed to a block.  Each event further targets a specific responder object and can be handled by the responder objects of the iOS app.

6. Touch:  The most common event is delivered to the view objects. As responder objects, views do not handle touch events.  But the touch events are forwarded through views for further processing. Remote Controller:  The remote controller events initially target responder object.  These events normally occur when a user controls media playback.  The developers must remember that iOS app life cycle keeps changing from time to time.

7. Content Designed By: Mindfire Solutions