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Year 2099
1,058 PointsPeople Nearby-App
Hello, I want to build an app that displays people nearby (who are using the app) with their profile (photo etc). There are various examples on the market of this kind of apps. However, i just want to build one by myself to see how everything works. I know that for location purposes i should use CoreLocation Framework.But what is next? How is this app going to actually detect the people nearby? If anyone can give me any direction where to start and what steps to follow i would be really grateful. Thank you!
1 Answer
Michael Hulet
47,912 PointsIt depends on what you define as "Nearby". If by that you mean "within a couple miles", I'd have the user's device get its location and report it to a backend server of yours (if you're not familiar with how to code those, I'd use something like Parse or Firebase), and each user's device would then ask the database periodically what other devices are nearby and display the results
If by "Nearby" you mean "within a few feet (300 or so, approximately)", one of the cool parts of the CoreLocation Framework is that I believe you can leverage it to turn each user's device into an iBeacon. With iBeacons, of course, you can see how far away other iBeacons are, as well as any nearby iOS devices. This gives you a great way of getting all the nearby users without the need for a reliable internet connection.
I would implement one or the other, or if you want to go the extra mile, some combination of the 2
Year 2099
1,058 PointsYear 2099
1,058 PointsHi Michael,
Thank you for your answer... By nearby i mean people who are in the range of few meters away and maximum 500 meters away
Michael Hulet
47,912 PointsMichael Hulet
47,912 PointsIn that case, I think the iBeacon method would be the way I'd go
Year 2099
1,058 PointsYear 2099
1,058 Pointsisnt ibeacon limited to 50 meteres?
Michael Hulet
47,912 PointsMichael Hulet
47,912 PointsI'm not sure of the exact limitation. I haven't tried implementing it before. If you'd like to go longer than what it allows, I'd use the first method I suggested, and use the second one for close-range interaction