AuthNet iOS Integration Part 2

There are quite a few gaps in the sample code provided by AuthNet, we will discuss the logs indicating the problem and what chunk of code needs to be added/removed to get to a complete sample that works. This blog entry assumes that you've cleared the challenges of adding AuthNet binaries to your Xcode project. If not then have a peek at AuthNet iOS Integration Part 1 before continuing.

1. Create a header & an implementation class containing the sample code
2. If you happen to be using PayPal as well as AuthNet in your code then you may run into some syntactical problems. To resolve any such issues, please have a look at this post on stackoverflow.
3. When substituting values in the code, if you provide the "API Login ID" and "Transaction Key" as the name / password values in your call to AuthNet then you will run into the following error as seen in the logs:
4. This fails as password and transactionKey are distinctly different variables in the header files.
5. So make sure to substitute the sample code with the username and password used with https://developer.authorize.net/ or https://test.authorize.net/
6. If you run the code at this point and end up calling loginToGateway, you will run into the following error logs:
7. This is not the same as being at the point where you simply need to login to the sandbox (https://test.authorize.net/) and enable the new device. No, this is very different and you need to get past this to get to the next point. So you need to add some additional code which is talked about on the forums as well:
8. Now you should be at a point where running the code results in the following error logs:
9. This is more like it! So head over to https://test.authorize.net/ and enable your new device. Here are some screenshots: screenshot_1 and screenshot_2
10. Sadly we aren't done yet, we see a message about the mobile device being ready for use but we also notice that the sessionToken has come back as null and therefore the next call's response displays an error ... claiming that the request content was incomplete:
11. Even I don't have a solution past this point, feel free to follow this forum thread for any progress on the matter.

AuthNet iOS Integration Part 1

1. You can start with the official instructions to get an account with Authorize.Net and download their iOS SDK. Afterwards the instructions are bit out of date, so you can follow along below.
2. After you download and unzip the SDK, you can move the files around to have them structured in this manner:
3. The structure above has the following pros:
   • Clarity around which version has been downloaded and in use at any point of time: anet_ios_sdk-X.X.X
   • If you work long enough to have multiple versions, then having them in your repository (assumption - GIT repo) helps figure out any migration issues
     • $(SRCROOT)/anet_ios_sdk-1.0.0/ANMobilePaymentLib/
     • $(SRCROOT)/anet_ios_sdk-1.0.1/ANMobilePaymentLib/
     • $(SRCROOT)/anet_ios_sdk-1.0.2/ANMobilePaymentLib/
     • ...
     • $(SRCROOT)/anet_ios_sdk-X.X.X/ANMobilePaymentLib/
4. Goto MyProject > Targets > Build Settings in Xcode and set:
   1. Header Search Paths
      1. "${SDK_DIR}"/usr/include/libxml2
         • Mark the Recursive checkbox as checked
      2. "$(SRCROOT)/anet_ios_sdk-1.0.0/ANMobilePaymentLib"
   2. Library Search Paths
      1. "$(SRCROOT)/anet_ios_sdk-1.0.0/ANMobilePaymentLib"
   3. Other Linker Flags
      1. -lxml2
5. Drag & Drop the ANMobilePaymentLib.xcodeproj file from a Finder window into Xcode under MyProject.
   • If you don't follow this step then you will face compilation issues like:
6. Goto MyProject > Targets > Build Phases in Xcode and set:
   1. Link Binary With Libraries
      1. libANMobilePaymentLib.a
7. For a discussion on the fixes to the sample code, head over to AuthNet iOS Integration Part 2

Integrating with ZBar SDK 1.1

It took only 35 minutes to get a barebones scanning app up & running on the iPhone with ZBar SDK. As far as I'm concerned ZBar is a pretty good rival to RedLaser. If you haven't done already, head over to this section in the ZBar SDK docs and try out the example which will have you singing its praises in no time.

I followed it word for word other than the fact that I used UILabel instead of UITextView.

Integrating with RedLaser SDK 3.0.0

If you've had the chance to try out the RedLaser app on your iPhone, then you know its usability is excellent and it is simply the best technology out there when it comes to scanning bar codes. As such, you may be rightfully tempted to download their SDK and try it out for yourself.

Now even though you'll find their out-of-box documentation in the 6MB-ish download to be enlightening, you may find yourself struggling and without any instructions when it comes to getting any project of you own up & running other than their RLSample project. I must say that the ZBar folks do a much better job of documenting similar integration items for their barcode scanning SDK. I just hope that the newly released RedLaser SDK 3.1.1 build1 will offer better docs than the Redlaser SDK 3.0.0 build21 that was used at the time of writing this blog entry.

Also you may feel dubious about purchasing the extremely expensive license without first figuring out if you have the skills to take your idea all the way. And you can't get into their forums without getting a license. So, I've put together some highlights to help you grapple with the SDK and get to a point where you can perform trial & error on your own to see if you have the right stuff :)

1. Add files to "<your project>"...
2. Navigate to wherever you downloaded and extracted the RedLaserDevSDK-3.0.0build21
   
   • The naming is not set in stone, it is spelled out here only to give you a feel for what you may be looking for on your mac.
3. Drill-down into the RedLaserDevSDK-3.0.0build21/Sample/ folder and select the RedLaserSDK directory
• Make sure to select the checkbox to Copy items into destination group's folder(if needed)
• Also select the bullet option which will Create groups for any added folders
4. Just to see if you can get anything simple to work on your own, you may try to run the build after pasting the barebones code from the Using the 3.0 RedLaser SDK.pdf file included with the SDK download.
   • Here's the code to throw into a method of your choosing:
     

     BarcodePickerController *picker = [[BarcodePickerController alloc] init];
     // Let's keep things simple by using the default built-in overlay
     //[picker setOverlay:customOverlay];
     [picker setDelegate:self];
     picker.orientation = UIImageOrientationUp;
     [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:YES];
     [self presentModalViewController:picker animated:TRUE];
     [picker release];

   • Ofcourse you'll need to add #import "RedLaserSDK.h" at the top where you've pasted this code.
   • But the build still won't go through because some frameworks need to be added for the build to succeed.
5. Goto <Your Project> > TARGETS > Build Phases > Link Binary With Libraries > +
   • libRedLaserSDK.a - XCode would have probably automatically placed this in the list when you imported the ./RedLaserDevSDK-3.0.0build21/Sample/RedLaserSDK directory.
   • CoreVideo.framework - makes sense since we need to the camera is used to perform the scans. If you started with something like 24 errors, adding this will bring them down to 18.
   • Security.framework - If you started with something like 18 errors, adding this will bring them down to 3.
   • libiconv.dylib - If you started with something like 3 errors, adding this will bring them down to 0.
6. In addition you should add an empty implementation for what happens when a barcode is successfully read.
   • Here's the code:
     

     - (void) barcodePickerController:(BarcodePickerController*)picker
                        returnResults:(NSSet *)results
     {
         [[UIApplication sharedApplication] setStatusBarHidden:NO];
         [self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:TRUE];
     }

7. With this you can at least do a test build and run in the simulator mode which will not do much other than throw up the mock scanner screen from RedLaser.
   • 
8. If you actually try to plug in your iPhone and directly test your app on the device you will run into a whole new slew of build errors! I received a total of 22 errors. Once again, goto <Your Project> > TARGETS > Build Phases > Link Binary With Libraries > +
   • libRedLaserSDK.a - XCode would have probably automatically placed this in the list when you imported the ./RedLaserDevSDK-3.0.0build21/Sample/RedLaserSDK directory.
   • AVFoundation.framework - If you started with something like 22 errors, adding this will bring them down to 6.
   • CoreMedia.framework - If you started with something like 6 errors, adding this will bring them down to 0.
9. Now with a lot of luck and a little bit of elbow grease, when you connect your iPhone then build & run you app, you should see it launch and have the default RedLaser full-screen camera-view-like overlay being shown. All you will see is what you camera sees, no fancy buttons ... no nothing. But given that you never actually invoked any camera/media related functionality yourself, have faith in the fact that you've cleared the first phase in your experiments to integrate with RedLaser.
10. Before beginning the 2nd phase, I had hoped to perform a simple experiment that would turn out as described below ... but that didn't happen so until I figure that out, this is it :(
    
    • Remembering that there are an extremely limited # of scans allowed w/ RedLaser SDK ... take the iPhone over to a barcode and try to scan it ... given the barebones code that we've talked through thus far, all that should happen is that the camera overlay screen will just disappear after a successful scan and you'll be left looking at an empty plane white view that had loaded this stuff to begin with.