Building apps that play nicely with other apps

Given at the NYC CocoaPods meetup ("Cocoa Kucha") on November 20, 2013.

Transcript

1. Building apps that play
   nicely with other apps
   Bryan Irace
   

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2. Intents
   Contracts
   

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3. …URLs?
   

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4. URLs have shortcomings
   Like manually, explicitly defining all
   interactions between apps
   

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5. We can fix some of these
   shortcomings
   • Documentation
   !
   • Discovery
   

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6. We can fix some of these
   shortcomings
   • Time spent writing client code
   !
   • Bugs
   

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7. CocoaPods
   

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8. It’s OK to be selfish
   Provide code that helps
   others integrate with you
   

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9. Tumblr iOS SDK
   github.com/tumblr/
   TMTumblrSDK
   

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10. x-callback-url.com
    [scheme]://x-callback-url/
    [action]?[x-callback
    parameters]&[action
    parameters]
    Used in Byword, Drafts, Instapaper, Google Maps, Google Chrome,
    TextExpander, and many more
    

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11. Please actually
    implement the
    “callback” part
    

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12. URLs
    tumblr://x-callback-url/blog?
    blogName=bryan&postID=43724939726
    !
    tumblr://x-callback-url/text?
    title=Title&body=Body&tags=gif&tags=lol
    Hope others both find and properly
    implement them
    

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13. + (void)viewBlog:(NSString *)blogName;
    !
    + (void)createTextPost:(NSString *)title
    body:(NSString *)body
    tags:(NSArray *)tags
    success:(NSURL *)successURL
    cancel:(NSURL *)cancelURL;
    pod install TMTumblrSDK
    

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14. UIActivityViewController
    

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15. @implementation TMTumblrActivity
    !
    - (NSString *)activityTitle {
    return @"Tumblr";
    }
    !
    - (UIImage *)activityImage {
    return [UIImage imageNamed:@"UIActivityTumblr"];
    }
    !
    - (void)performActivity {
    // Open Tumblr app or hit API directly
    }
    pod install TMTumblrSDK
    

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16. UIDocumentInteractionController
    

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17. + (UIDocumentInteractionController *)presentInteractionControllerWithURL:(NSURL *)URL
    caption:(NSString *)caption
    tags:(NSArray *)tags
    fromBarButtonItem:(UIBarButtonItem *)item {
    UIDocumentInteractionController *controller =
    [UIDocumentInteractionController interactionControllerWithURL:URL];
    controller.UTI = @"com.tumblr.photo";
    controller.annotation = @{
    @"TumblrCaption" : caption,
    @"TumblrTags" : tags
    };
    !
    [controller presentOpenInMenuFromBarButtonItem:item animated:YES];
    return controller;
    }
    pod install TMTumblrSDK
    

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18. Publish an official API client
    Every app is different. Make it easy
    for developers to hit your API
    directly if they’d prefer.
    

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19. Subspecs
    • TMTumblrSDK/URLSchemes
    !
    • TMTumblrSDK/Activity
    !
    • TMTumblrSDK/DocumentInteraction
    !
    • TMTumblrSDK/APIClient
    • TMTumblrSDK/APIClient/Authentication
    Don’t make developers include more
    code than they want to
    

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20. Summary
    You should make it easy for developers
    to integrate with your app
    !
    Providing code via CocoaPods is
    obviously the best way to do so
    com/jobs
    

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