What is the best practices when developing iphone and ipad app together?

Question

I'm gonna create an app that supports both iPhone & iPad. Before proceeding, I just want to know the best practices about both app development.

Here is some points that I know:

• Consider that I have a tableview that shows N number of records and say it as PAGE-1. When the user tapping on the cell, it will load the PAGE-2 to show details about the tapped record. This is more common scenario that used in every app.
• For iPad, this is not the case. I can show PAGE-1 along with PAGE-2 in the same page.(Consider landscape mode)
• So, iPhone's PAGE-1 will be displayed in the left panel of the iPad & iPhone's PAGE-2 will be displayed in the right side panel of the iPad.

Conclusion:

• So, I can make a common class for both iPhone & iPad. That will handle the PAGE-1's common functionality to both iPhone & iPad.
• The device specific functionality may separated into separate classes for both iPhone and iPad.
• Other than that, network related methods, parsers, utility methods, categories, custom controllers can be written commonly for both iPhone & iPad.
• The only addon to the iPad is, it should have a controller that will hold and handle PAGE-1 and PAGE-2. This make sures that the PAGE-1 does not hold PAGE-2 and they both are independent like iPhone's PAGE-1 & PAGE-2.

Refer the below attached image that will demonstrate clearly.

Questions:

• Is this approach correct?
• I really don't know about iPad's "Container" controller. Should I need it? Or is there any other better proposal to group the things effectively?

This may be a basic question, but I need a clarification for better code pratice.

Thanks

Answer 1

It doesn't sound like you need specific page 1 & 2 subclasses, though that depends on exactly what the differences are between the pages on each device. It may be that a collection view suits your needs better so you can simply set the item width and the layout will organise your content into columns where appropriate.

It sounds more like all you need is 2 different container classes for the top level which decides how to display page(s), or more specifically, how many pages to display and where they are on screen. For iPhone that's really simple, for iPad slightly more complex (mainly due to rotation handling).

Note also that if you create a new master-detail project in Xcode and ask it to support iPhone and iPad you will see that a split view controller is used, optionally, for exactly this situation. This bypasses the need for 2 container classes by having the app delegate decide whether to use a 'special' container or not (for iPad).