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I'm creating an interactive book for learning languages. It has reading, quiz and some simple game. The content of each chapter is an HTML file. The book allows the user to learn about 300 words that exist in the text. Earch word was enclosed in a link like this: < a href="word">word< /a> when the user touch the link, a modal view appears with the translation and information about that word.

This is the code I'm using to get the link:

    // currentWord is the word in the link
    self.currentWord = [[request URL] lastPathComponent];

    // okToCatchLinks is a BOOL that I use to avoid showing the modalview when the page
    // is loaded for the first time.
    if (okToCatchLinks){
        NSLog(@"Ok to catch links!");
        WordViewController *viewController = [[WordViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"WordViewController" bundle:nil]

        // I did my homework creating the delegate protocol to dismiss the modal view.    
        viewController.delegate = self;

        // This is a label in the modalview showing the word in the HTML link.
        viewController.labelTitle = self.currentWord;

        // Create a Navigation controller to add the "DONE" dismiss button
        UINavigationController *navController = [[UINavigationController alloc]
        navController.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationFormSheet;
        navController.modalTransitionStyle = UIModalTransitionStyleFlipHorizontal;

        // show the navigation controller modally
        [self presentModalViewController:navController animated:YES];

        // Clean up resources
        [navController release];
        [viewController release];
    okToCatchLinks = YES;
    return YES;

With this code I will get the selected word in a string variable. Then I search that word in the DB using CoreData. The HTML is UTF-8 encoded. I have to be able to search for that word in different languages. So if the user click on the word (日本語) or (résumé) I have to be able to find it in the DB. For the data store I converted an CSV file to a .sqlite file.

I wonder if there is a better way to do this. Personally I don't like to use < a href=""> to get the link, but I couldn't find any other way to get the current word in a link. Also performing the search of that word in the DB is not clean, because I'm not using any UID for each row. I just compare the string holding the word with the words in the corresponding column of the DB.

Is there a more efficient way to do this?

To resume: Having a list of words, mark those words in the HTML so the user can touch and retrieve information about that word from a DB.

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1 Answer 1

up vote 0 down vote accepted

Some observations:

UIDs: As long as your words are unique, you can use that column as the primary key without using a separate UID. Actually, Core Data will create one for you anyway, so you can use objectWithID to retrieve your word.

HTML Links: Your solution with UIWebView, HTML files and links seems feasible to me. However, you could of course also use a UITextView and handle the selections programmatically, working with NSRange. That would perhaps be more complicated, but also more "native".

Delegate: You only need a delegate if you want to pass information back to the view that first presented the model view controller (too much homework! ;-)). Just dismiss it from within with

[self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
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Thanks! About the delegate, you are right. I tried to follow apple recommendations, but in fact it looks more convenient to dismiss the view from within the same modalview :) –  Pietro Zuco Sep 26 '11 at 13:56
Consider accepting the answer... ;-) –  Mundi Sep 26 '11 at 18:00

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