Mockingbird Toolbox

The Mockingbird Toolbox is a set of general-purpose utility code for use in iOS applications.

The Toolbox is the lowest-level module in the Mockingbird Library open-source project from Gilt Groupe.

Master branch status:

Highlights

The Mockingbird Toolbox includes:

Battery & Power Monitoring

The MBBatteryMonitor class reports the device’s power status and battery level, and also posts events through the NSNotificationCenter when these values change.

Network Monitoring

The MBNetworkMonitor class provides details about the current status of the device’s wifi and carrier network, and can also be configured to post NSNotificationCenter events as network status changes occur.

Caching

Mockingbird Toolbox provides a simple but extensible caching architecture.

The MBThreadsafeCache class implements a basic memory cache that can be safely shared across threads.

A subclass, MBFilesystemCache, adds a filesystem backing store to the memory cache.

Concurrency & Threading

The MBConcurrentReadWriteCoordinator class uses Grand Central Dispatch to provide an efficient mechanism for enforcing orderly read/write access to a shared resource.

MBThreadLocalStorage provides an interface for safely sharing thread-local storage among unrelated units of code. The class can also be used as a lock-free cache: Objects that are expensive to create, such as NSDateFormatter instances, can be cached in thread-local storage without incurring the locking overhead required by a shared object cache like MBThreadsafeCache.

Regular Expressions

The Mockingbird Toolbox provides NSString and NSMutableString class extensions to help create, manipulate, and execute regular expressions.

These extensions make use of the MBRegexCache for reusing regular expressions, which can be expensive to create.

Message Digests

The MBMessageDigest class provides a high-level API for generating MD5 and SHA-1 secure one-way hashes from strings, NSData instances, byte arrays, and files.

Class extensions for NSString and NSData are also provided to simplify creating message digests from existing objects.

Network Activity Indicator

The MBNetworkIndicator class provides a mechanism to coordinate the display of the status bar network activity indicator.

Colors

Mockingbird Toolbox includes various utilities for creating, examining, and manipulating colors.

Images

The Toolbox contains a UIImage class extension that adds methods for scaling images, as well as a UIView class extension for capturing the contents of a view as a UIImage, CIImage or CGImageRef.

Bitmaps

The MBBitmapPixelPlane class represents a plane of pixels that can be accessed individually, regardless of the underlying pixel format. This allows direct extraction and manipulation of pixel data within a bitmap.

...and more

That’s just a quick summary.

For further details, start with the Mockingbird Toolbox API documentation.

Integrating with Mockingbird Toolbox

Although you can directly add some or all of the source files in Mockingbird Toolbox to an existing project, we recommend using CocoaPods for integration.

CocoaPods will let you include only those portions of Mockingbird Toolbox that you actually wish to use, and it also gives you a simple way to keep up-to-date with any critical changes while providing versioning capabilities if you need to remain locked to a specific release or range of releases.

Using CocoaPods

If you aren't already using CocoaPods, you'll find documentation on the CocoaPods website to help you get started.

Once you've got CocoaPods up and running, you can add all of the code in Mockingbird Toolbox to your project just by adding a line to your Podfile:

	pod 'MBToolbox'

The line above specifies that all the code in Mockingbird Toolbox should be added to your project. We've also provided a variety of subspecs in the MBToolbox.podspec to give you fine-grained control over what ends up in your final binary. You can use just what you need, and you won't incur any overhead for unused features.

After you've added Mockingbird Toolbox to your Podfile, you can then install the CocoaPod from the command line.

From within your project directory, issue the command:

	pod install

Important: Take note of the output of the pod install command. If you were not previously using an Xcode workspace for your project, CocoaPods will create one for you that includes your project and any installed CocoaPods. Going forward, you will need to use that workspace for development instead of your old project file.

Once you've run the pod install command, you will be able to use the code you've included from within your project.

Importing Headers

When you integrate Mockingbird Toolbox using CocoaPods, you should reference header files using the “library header” import notation, eg.:

	#import <MBToolbox/MBDebug.h>

In the future, we may issue binary releases of Mockingbird Toolbox as iOS frameworks; using the notation above will allow you to seamlessly transition to using a framework.

If you are not using CocoaPods and are instead copying the Mockingbird Toolbox source into your project directly, you will need to reference those headers with “user header” notation:

	#import "MBDebug.h"

CocoaPod Subspecs

If you only want to use some of what's available in the Toolbox, we've provided a number of CocoaPod subspecs that allow you to pick and choose exactly what you want to use from Mockingbird Toolbox.

Subspecs are added to your Podfile as follows:

	pod 'MBToolbox/BatteryMonitor'
	pod 'MBToolbox/BitmapPixelPlane'

The lines above would add just the BatteryMonitor and BitmapPixelPlane portions of the Mockingbird Toolbox to your project.

Among the subspecs provided are:

Battery & Power Monitoring

• BatteryMonitor - includes the MBBatteryMonitor class and related items

Caching

• ThreadsafeCache - includes the MBThreadsafeCache class and related items
• FilesystemCache - includes the MBFilesystemCache class and related items

Concurrency & Threading

• ConcurrentReadWriteCoordinator - specifies the MBConcurrentReadWriteCoordinator class
• ThreadLocalStorage - specifies the MBThreadLocalStorage class

Field Formatting

• FieldListFormatter - specifies the MBFieldListFormatter class
• FormattedDescriptionObject - specifies the MBFieldListFormatter and MBFormattedDescriptionObject classes

Graphics

• BitmapPixelPlane - includes the MBBitmapPixelPlane class and related items
• ColorTools - specifies the declarations within the MBColorTools.h file
• RoundedRectTools - specifies the MBRoundedRectTools class
• MBToolbox-UIColor - a UIColor class extension that adds several methods for getting information about and modifying colors
• ImageScaling-UIImage - a UIImage class extension that adds methods for scaling images
• SnapshotImage-UIView - a UIView class extension that adds methods for acquiring image snapshots of a view's contents

Message Digests

• MessageDigest - specifies the MBMessageDigest class
• MessageDigest-NSString - includes the MBMessageDigest class and an NSString class extension providing related convenience methods
• MessageDigest-NSData - includes the MBMessageDigest class and an NSData class extension providing related convenience methods
• MessageDigest-Extensions - includes the MBMessageDigest class and all related class extensions

Network

• NetworkIndicator - specifies the MBNetworkIndicator class
• NetworkMonitor - specifies the MBNetworkMonitor service, a high-level replacement for Reachability that provides additional functionality

NSOperations

• OperationQueue - specifies the MBOperationQueue class
• FilesystemOperations - includes the MBOperationQueue class and various filesystem operations

Regular Expressions

• RegexCache - specifies the MBRegexCache singleton
• Regex-NSString - class extensions for NSString and NSMutableString that provide convenience methods for handling regular expressions using the MBRegexCache for improved performance

Runtime Services

• ServiceManager - specifies the MBServiceManager singleton and the MBService protocol

Singletons

• Singleton - declares the MBSingleton and MBInstanceVendor protocols, and the preprocessor macro MBImplementSingleton() which provides a default singleton implementation based on dispatch_once()

String Manipulation

• StringFunctions - declares the MBForceString() and MBTrimString() inline functions, and the MBStringify() preprocessor macro
• StringConversions-NSData - an NSData class extension that adds methods for converting between hexadecimal strings and NSData instances, and also provides methods for interpreting NSData instances as byte data for NSStrings of various encodings
• Indentation-NSString - an NSString class extension that adds methods for indenting the individual lines in a string using tabs and arbitrary prefixes
• StringSizing-UIFont - a UIFont class extension that adds methods for performing common text measurement tasks

...and more

Additional subspecs are declared and documented in the podspec.

About Mockingbird Library

The Mockingbird Toolbox represents the foundation of the Mockingbird Library.

Over the years, Gilt Groupe has used and refined Mockingbird Library as the base platform for its various iOS projects.

Mockingbird began life as AppFramework, created by Jesse Boyes.

AppFramework found a home at Gilt Groupe and eventually became Mockingbird Library.

In recent years, Mockingbird Library has been developed and maintained by Evan Coyne Maloney, Gilt Groupe’s principal iOS engineer.

Copyright & License

Mockingbird Library and Mockingbird Toolbox © Copyright 2009-2015, Gilt Groupe.

Licensed under the MIT license.