Common, reusable iPhone-App configuration screen

Question

I'm writing code that will allow my iphone-app to have a "configuration page".

A grouped, scrolling, UITableView... with cells that contain the needed textFields, switches, sliders, etc.

It is an ENOURMOUS amount of code. Is there an easier way?

Is there a way I could create a simple text-file, contain all my desired design choices and have my (reusable) code build the TableView for me?

Or... can I just do the whole thing quicker/easier in Interface Builder instead of code?

Answer 1

Basically there are two approaches here :

• you rely on what Apple gives you and implement a Bundle Settings (basically a dictionary that describes how the settings screen should look like), and then , your settings will be in the "Settings" application of the iPhone.

  The drawback here is that what apple provides is quite limited and you won't be able to implement some of the most complicated settings you can see in "standard" (pre-installed) apple application settings.

  That's why many developers are switching to "inapp" settings thanks to open source FWK or they reimplement everythingh from scratch but it can be a lot of code as you said.

• You reimplement your own UIViewController for settings or you rely on some framework that will provide you the UIViewController to extend from and ease your implementation. There are 2 good frameworks for that (Jesse cited one of them, but there's another one )
  
• InAppSettings ( http://inscopeapps.com/blog/inappsettings-10/ )
• InAppSettingsKit ( http://inappsettingskit.com/ )

A comparison of the two framework can be found here : http://inscopeapps.com/blog/inappsettings-vs-inappsettingskit/ (ok that's from one of the two authors but at least this gives an idea ;)