An app a month: May (RSSTV — Apple TV, NSXML Parser, Unsplash API)
I originally started working on this project for my April app of the month, but the WWDC scholarship app took its place. With a bit more time, I finished this app. When I started, I knew I wanted to make something for the Apple TV because I hadn’t ever used it. I also wanted to make an RSS feed sometime this year. I combined these two to reach “RSSTV.”
I knew I wanted it to be something to leave on the TV while one, say, had guests over with a relatively clean, slideshow style interface. My slideshow is powered by a fullscreen collection view. I have three sources set up and eventually the user will be able to switch between them. The source shown in these images is the New York Times’ main RSS feed. My original plan was to use an image from the articles, but I realized those images might not scale right or there might not be an image to display. I ended up using a random image from Unsplash, a very developer friendly site that has high quality user submitted images. I later plan to change the images from all categories to images relating to the RSS source (eg. images of technology for TechCrunch).
The app scrolls through a new RSS entry every 5 seconds and the images are somewhat in sync. When the user reaches the end of the downloaded feed, it loops back to the beginning. I hope to eventually release this app as I think it could be quite useful, or at least semi-useful.
Things I will add later:
- User RSS source selection DONE
- Change image category for RSS source
