It's certainly possible to develop on a Windows machine, in fact, my first application was exclusively developed on the old Dell Precision I had at the time :)
There are three routes;
- Install OSx86 (aka iATKOS / Kalyway) on a second partition/disk and dual boot.
- Run Mac OS X Server under VMWare (Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, read the update below).
- Use Delphi XE4 and the macincloud service. This is a commercial toolset, but the component and lib support is growing.
The first route requires modifying (or using a pre-modified) image of Leopard that can be installed on a regular PC. This is not as hard as you would think, although your success/effort ratio will depend upon how closely the hardware in your PC matches that in Mac hardware - e.g. if you're running a Core 2 Duo on an Intel Motherboard, with an NVidia graphics card you are laughing. If you're running an AMD machine or something without SSE3 it gets a little more involved.
If you purchase (or already own) a version of Leopard then this is a gray area since the Leopard EULA states you may only run it on an "Apple Labeled" machine. As many point out if you stick an Apple sticker on your PC you're probably covered.
The second option is more costly. The EULA for the workstation version of Leopard prevents it from being run under emulation and as a result, there's no support in VMWare for this. Leopard server, however, CAN be run under emulation and can be used for desktop purposes. Leopard server and VMWare are expensive, however.
If you're interested in option 1) I would suggest starting at Insanelymac and reading the OSx86 sections.
I do think you should consider whether the time you will invest is going to be worth the money you will save though. It was for me because I enjoy tinkering with this type of stuff and I started during the early iPhone betas, months before their App Store became available.
Alternatively, you could pick up a low-spec Mac Mini from eBay. You don't need much horsepower to run the SDK and you can always sell it on later if you decide to stop development or buy a better Mac.
Update: You cannot create a Mac OS X Client virtual machine for OS X 10.6 and earlier. Apple does not allow these Client OSes to be virtualized. With Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) onwards, Apple has changed its licensing agreement in regards to virtualization. Source: VMWare KnowledgeBase
Edited on 2016-02-02
Starting from iOS 6 SKStoreProductViewController class was introduced. You can link an app without leaving your app. Code snippet in Swift 3.x/2.x and Objective-C is here.
A SKStoreProductViewController object presents a store that allows the
user to purchase other media from the App Store. For example, your app
might display the store to allow the user to purchase another app.
From News and Announcement For Apple Developers.
Drive Customers Directly to Your App
on the App Store with iTunes Links
With iTunes links you can provide your
customers with an easy way to access
your apps on the App Store directly
from your website or marketing
campaigns. Creating an iTunes link is
simple and can be made to direct
customers to either a single app, all
your apps, or to a specific app with
your company name specified.
To send customers to a specific
application:
http://itunes.com/apps/appname
To send
customers to a list of apps you have
on the App Store:
http://itunes.com/apps/developername
To send customers to a specific app
with your company name included in the
URL:
http://itunes.com/apps/developername/appname
Additional notes:
You can replace http://
with itms://
or itms-apps://
to avoid redirects.
Please note that itms://
will send the user to the iTunes store and itms-apps://
with send them to the App Store!
For info on naming, see Apple QA1633:
https://developer.apple.com/library/content/qa/qa1633/_index.html.
Edit (as of January 2015):
itunes.com/apps links should be updated to appstore.com/apps. See QA1633 above, which has been updated. A new QA1629 suggests these steps and code for launching the store from an app:
- Launch iTunes on your computer.
- Search for the item you want to link to.
- Right-click or control-click on the item's name in iTunes, then choose "Copy iTunes Store URL" from the pop-up menu.
- In your application, create an
NSURL
object with the copied iTunes URL, then pass this object to UIApplication
' s openURL
: method to open your item in the App Store.
Sample code:
NSString *iTunesLink = @"itms://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id375380948?mt=8";
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:iTunesLink]];
iOS10+:
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:[NSURL URLWithString:iTunesLink] options:@{} completionHandler:nil];
Swift 4.2
let urlStr = "itms-apps://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id375380948?mt=8"
if #available(iOS 10.0, *) {
UIApplication.shared.open(URL(string: urlStr)!, options: [:], completionHandler: nil)
} else {
UIApplication.shared.openURL(URL(string: urlStr)!)
}
Best Answer
You might find this tutorial, called Intro to SOAP Web Services useful. He shows how to package a request, send it to a web service, and read the response.
If you need some help with XML parsing, there is the TouchXML library which will give you a nice xml "document" to work with. Just be cautious of memory usage.
If you have to parse large XML message this tutorial about libxml and xmlreader in Cocoa will show you how to parse XML with the lower-level event-style parsers.