# How long to write an iPhone app?



## Xanadu (Jun 3, 2011)

How long would you think it takes to write an iPhone app?  Just talking about a simple multiple-choice quiz, which uploads results to a server, and can work offline.

Any iPhone devs able to quote a price?


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## joustmaster (Jun 4, 2011)

I think if you know the language, and are used to the SDK and testing suite then it should be a couple of days.


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## Shippou-Sensei (Jun 4, 2011)

that does seem like very simple stuff.  the kind of  do it in web tech and stick it in a wrapper stuff.


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## Xanadu (Jun 4, 2011)

It's started moving away from being a simple app now!

Got someone quoting £1200 at mates rates (he's done a bit of simple iPad dev, and wants some more practice).  I was thinking it's around 10-20 mandays for the app functionality, then another 10 mandays to get it polished enough for publishing.  I think there's enough intricacies around the serving of questions, store/display of results, a web service required to store the results server-side and present statistics, and possibly in-app purchasing.

I'm not one of the parties involved, though have a strong interest in this and have been asked for advice.  I could guess how long it'd take in VB, C# or Java, but I've not seen any Obj-C, so I have no idea on that side.


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## Shippou-Sensei (Jun 4, 2011)

objective-c  is a bit of a bitch from what i hear.  n fact i went as far as getting a book on it.  then decided  to go back to my java routes and wait the android revolution


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## Xanadu (Jun 4, 2011)

Shippou-Sensei said:


> that does seem like very simple stuff.  the kind of  do it in web tech and stick it in a wrapper stuff.


 
But, if it needs to operate offline, would that still work?


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## Shippou-Sensei (Jun 4, 2011)

this is where my ignorence shines through.  presumably there is a way for it  to  store  data  to send at a later time  but that would  be under advanced shit  i have no idea about  because i only skimed a book on it


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## editor (Jun 4, 2011)

Of course, you may still have to wait for an unspecified time after the app has been created for Lord Jobs to deign permission for the app to be allowed into His App Store.


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## Xanadu (Jun 4, 2011)

Shippou-Sensei said:


> this is where my ignorence shines through.  presumably there is a way for it  to  store  data  to send at a later time  but that would  be under advanced shit  i have no idea about  because i only skimed a book on it


 
Hmmm, doing it in HTML5 would allow offline cached storage.  Then I guess you could use some clever code to do the upload.  This would all be much much easier in Java...

http://sixrevisions.com/web-development/html5-iphone-app/


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## Shippou-Sensei (Jun 4, 2011)

presumable  a memory cache  and   when  you connect to  the server it uploads the saved data 

presumably there is  a buffer of somesort to store data while waiting for a connection.


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## Xanadu (Jun 4, 2011)

Shippou-Sensei said:


> presumable  a memory cache  and   when  you connect to  the server it uploads the saved data
> 
> presumably there is  a buffer of somesort to store data while waiting for a connection.


 
A key-value store, and an SQLite DB.


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