to combine the .private and .shared databases. Please note all the code has explanatory comments at the key points. CloudKit sharing allows records stored within a private CloudKit database to be shared with other app users at the discretion of the record owner. Can users edit their own private data in CloudKit. Not the answer you're looking for? Even in this humble sample application, I've had to make a number of changes to the user interface to present information about shared objects. and modify records in these shared zones. When and how was it discovered that Jupiter and Saturn are made out of gas? Here I used isShared to decide whether or not to convert the title of a post to an attributed string and prefix it with the person.circle symbol to show that the post is part of a share. Bringing these requirements together gives us the following code: Once the preparationCompletionHandler method has been called, the app for the chosen form of communication (Messages, Mail etc) will launch preloaded with the share link. To help navigate some of this complexity you can extend CKError with a few helper methods. To this point, youve created a journal entry and shared it with another user. . Synchronizing a Local Store to the Cloud. Open CoreDataStack.swift. we need to identify two crucial concepts for sharing. we have built in to NSPersistentCloudKitContainer. If I tap on it, I can also see the participants, displayed at the bottom of the detail view controller. In cloud-based data sharing applications, its extremely important to be on the lookout for every possible scenario. To achieve this, youll implement fetchShares(matching:). Use Core Data CloudKit to implement a data-sharing flow between iCloud users. Note also, I am using a CKQuerySubscription with a very simple always true predicate to watch for changes on the one (and only) Note record. This takes you to a screen to add a recent destination you visited. Since CloudKits notifications are built on top of the iOS notification system, you have to be on the lookout for these conditions. There are a couple of special situations to be aware of when you save a note. Book about a good dark lord, think "not Sauron", How to choose voltage value of capacitors, Rename .gz files according to names in separate txt-file. Modern mobile application development requires a well thought-out plan for keeping user data in sync across various devices. Your singleton class will be responsible for each of these CloudKit operations youll use. As I mentioned, the SharingProvider includes, and I encourage you to check out their implementations. Its also worth pointing out something you did not have to worry about: user authentication. wherever you need to customize your user interfaces. Select recordName from the list and ensure the index type is Queryable. The first is the notion of a set of actors. Apple added sharing to CloudKit. This logic first checks to see whether the object is shared. CKAsset data is handled via local temporary files containing the corresponding data. A general guideline is to use com.company_name.bundle_identifier. Basic CloudKit Setup CloudKit organizes data via a hierarchy of classes: CKContainer, CKDatabase, CKRecordZone, and CKRecord. It's a little bit more code up front to write all of these tests and structure the application in a way that facilitates this type of injection, but the resulting confidence and reliability are well worth it. Also, CloudKit provides a specific record type for large binary objects. rev2023.3.1.43269. It has a wide variety of actions I can take. Third, create an iCloud container that hosts your data in iCloud. He loves solving hard problems. On Mary's device, I'll accept the new share, and now I can see the new post. The unique record id name doesn't seem to be enough to find the record. In addition, they would see my two zones that I share with them and any other zones they are a participant on in their .shared database. The end goal is not only to display shared entries but also to get information about the people participating in the share. Each of these is mirrored to a persistent store. Find centralized, trusted content and collaborate around the technologies you use most. It's called the SharingProvider. Under the Schema section, select Indexes. CloudKit supports both the concept of public and private databases. Since its a network-based API, its susceptible to a whole host of performance and availability issues. The version held by the server at the time you submitted the request. Syncing a Core Data Store with the Cloud. Sharing with one other person is interesting, Each of these participants will be able to access. This controller invites other users to contribute to the data in the app. So I'll tap Mail and then enter the information for my friends. If necessary, you then pass the updated server record to CloudKit to write the new record. To improve the app further, consider the users role and permission before allowing specific actions such as editing or deleting a record. Specify record type as CD_Destination. For example, this user may have a private zone. The next step is to create the container your data will live in. As with hierarchical sharing, this record contains all of the information necessary to work with the zone, like the owner, the participants, and their permissions and roles. And now I can see the new post. We can see here that Jermaine is the owner. Thankfully, CloudKit is explicitly designed to handle this condition. NSPersistentCloudKitContainer also has to understand, how the concepts of owners and participants apply, Let's imagine I have a collection of people. When a record is shared, a share link is sent to the recipient user in the form of a URL. NSPersistentCloudKitContainer manages these zones and automatically assigns records to them. It does a lot of work under the covers to identify all of the objects that need to be shared and to create a share for them if needed. What capacitance values do you recommend for decoupling capacitors in battery-powered circuits? Also, to change the sharing permissions because it doesnt work properly on a simulator. and some of the permissions on the shared album. It comes with a Dictionary of contained CKErrors that deserve more careful inspection to figure out what exactly happened during a compound operation. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. When a notification comes in that a record has changed, CloudKitNoteDatabase will do the heavy lifting of fetching the changes from CloudKit. catalogue of 50+ books and 4,000+ videos. The CKFetchRecordsOperation operates on one or more records at a time. You would need a unique identifier for that CKRecord. Theres one minor bug with your app at the moment. After adding a few of these customizations. Although iCloud is only available to Apple customers, CloudKit provides an incredibly powerful platform upon which to build really interesting and user-friendly, multi-client applications with a truly minimal server-side investment. It brings together a huge amount of domain knowledge. this new Allows Cloud Encryption checkbox. How might we build an experience like this? Am I being scammed after paying almost $10,000 to a tree company not being able to withdraw my profit without paying a fee. to store the objects an application creates. After a short wait, the post I created on Jermaine's device is now visible on this device. I can send it to my friends as an iMessage or email. The simple act of writing a record to the database is straightforward enough, but in my example, with multiple clients, this is where youll face the potential issue of handling a conflict when multiple clients attempt to write to the server concurrently. Before an app can take advantage of CloudKit sharing, the CKSharingSupported key needs to be added to the project Info.plist file with a Boolean value of true. Now I'm going to add a new post, give it a title, and tap Done. and how to operate on records and objects. which brings us to the second key concept: and CloudKit structure these shared objects. I'll open Mail and tap the link inside the email I sent, And exactly how much did I have to change, Sharing is by far the most complicated feature. This is a thorny problem with many gotchas and pitfalls, but users expect the feature, and expect it to work well. How might we build an experience like this? I might need to know whether or not an object is shared. Last, head to the CloudKit Console so you can verify your data. The UICloudSharingController is a view controller that presents standard screens for adding and removing people from a CloudKit share record. with the CloudKit server in the container associated. Under isShared(object:), add the following methods: These methods return a Boolean based on the objects permissions. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish, that might be the alternative you need. Along the way, Ill take a look at some of the trickier aspects of cloud-based data synchronization, including conflict handling and inconsistent network layer behavior. In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Paul Young demonstrate how to use CloudKit to keep a users data in sync between multipleclients. A participant is any other iCloud account. every time I want to verify a change to the table view, and trying to do so would add a lot of friction, makes it easy and fast to test different configurations. just as they can in the zones that I own. Prior to the release of iOS 10, the only way to share CloudKit records between users was to store those records in a public database. Photos implements a system control here in the lower left that allows me to call up an Action sheet. Change the permission to View only. I can see my new album with the photo I shared. Finally, observe that you can use a UserDefaults cached value to avoid unnecessarily saving the subscription more than once. If you would like to change your settings or withdraw consent at any time, the link to do so is in our privacy policy accessible from our home page.. The owner is the iCloud account that actually owns an object. for the view controller, completing the injection. On Mary's device, I'll open Mail and tap the link inside the email I sent, which opens up my application. See that data now exists at the bottom in the Participants section. Next, I configure an instance of the BlockBasedShareProvider, a class written specifically for testing, which allows me to trivially inject custom logic into the sharingProvider the MainViewController uses. An object that represents activity in a persistent CloudKit container. For app developers, the situation was even worse. Ill focus on an iOS application, but the same approach can be used for macOS clients as well. At the top right is the edit button, which presents a modal to edit your destinations caption and description. CloudKit operations provide superior control over the details of how CloudKit does its work and, perhaps more importantly, really force the developer to think carefully about network behaviors central to everything CloudKit does. Some of our partners may process your data as a part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent. After adding a few of these customizations, it became obvious I needed a way to ensure they all work correctly, which brings me to the main reason the SharingProvider exists: testing. Select your desired delivery method and send the invitation. to write all of these tests and structure the application. Accepting share invitations and fetching the shared data. CloudKit: For managing structured data and sharing data among users. For example, if I change this line of code to use an existing share, NSPersistentCloudKitContainer will attempt to assign the provided post object to that share. We'll show you how to encourage collaboration between people using your app and support those interactions with Apple frameworks. and automatically assigns records to them. Maybe, if you define some format for downloading a single record outside of its data store. One user shows up as a Owner and the other as a Private User, with both users having Read-Write permissions. For iOS and macOS, Apple provides a robust toolkit, called CloudKit API, which allows developers targeting Apple platforms to solve this synchronization problem. It is capable of handling large file transfers seamlessly. Once you accept the share on the second device, its now part of your shared zone in iCloud. CloudKit automatically configures every CloudKit-enabled app out of the box to have a public CKDatabase (all users of the app can see everything) and a private CKDatabase (each user sees only their own data). To demonstrate how sharing works with NSPersistentCloudKitContainer, I'm going to be using our sample application, Syncing a Core Data Store with the Cloud. The SharingProvider has methods for binding. Because there's no root record, NSPersistentCloudKitContainer also has to understand how the concepts of owners and participants apply to the entire record zone. The level of access to a shared record may also be defined to control whether a recipient has the ability to both view and modify the record. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. Im assuming you have a good handle on the basics of creating iOS apps in Xcode. CloudKit sharing involves the creation of CKShare objects initialized with the record to be shared. The class contains all the necessary methods and properties you need to interact with Core Data. Open CoreDataStack.swift. The following code, for example, creates a CKShare object containing the record to be shared and configured for read-only access: Once the share has been created, it is saved to the private database using a CKModifyRecordsOperation object. From here, you store a reference to CKShare that returns from the share method. This is new iOS 15 and allows NSPersistentCloudKitContainer to be configured to mirror persistent stores to the .shared CloudKit database. To subscribe to this RSS feed, copy and paste this URL into your RSS reader. Manage Settings At the top level is CKContainer, which encapsulates a set of related CloudKit data. The exact version of the record you tried to save. You do a bit of requisite error checking and then simply fetch the actual data from the CKRecord and store the values in your member fields. NSPersistentCloudKitContainer automatically syncs. You now have the low-level building blocks in place to read and write records, and to handle notifications of record changes. A user of an app could, for example, make one or more records accessible to other users so that they can view and, optionally, modify the record. By clicking Post Your Answer, you agree to our terms of service, privacy policy and cookie policy. These options are accessed and modified by tapping the Share Options item at the bottom of the cloud sharing controller view. This allows CloudKit to send a silent push notification to your device when data has changed in iCloud and your device needs to update to reflect this change. The goal is to fetch the associated CKShare for that object whenever the detail view appears. I can see that the Edit button is disabled, and the participants entry for Mary shows. If I tap on it, I can see that the Edit button is disabled and the participants entry for Jermaine shows that he is a Read-Only participant on the share. This seems to be a good tool for that: https://github.com/usebutton/ios-deeplink-sdk A modification performed on a share will, therefore, be reflected in the original private database. We call them the owner and the participants. For example, the zone that NSPersistentCloudKitContainer manages. Every app automatically gets a default CKContainer, and a group of apps can share a custom CKContainer if permission settings allow. CloudSharingView conforms to the protocol UIViewControllerRepresentable and wraps the UIKit UICloudSharingController so you can use it in SwiftUI. Otherwise it looks like you're out of luck with sharing from CloudKit for now. In the iCloud section, tap the + button underneath Containers to add a custom container. Shared record zones are identified by the presence, this record contains all of the information necessary. In theory, you needed only three steps. Once youve completed that task, set showShareSheet, which presents CloudSharingView, to true. Does Cast a Spell make you a spellcaster? Lets look now at a layer built on top of that to manage these operations in the context of a specific Note. Why was the nose gear of Concorde located so far aft? Build and run again. These silent pushes happen entirely without user visibility or interaction, and as a result, dont require the user to enable push notification for your app, saving you many potential user-experience headaches as an app developer. So, an offline mode must be carefully considered. I've already saved Heather and Mary in my address book, so they're easy to find. I'll tap the Action button to bring up the sharing controller, but this time, I want the share to be read-only so that the participants can't edit or modify the contents of the share. If it doesnt have an associated share record, theres no need to continue. However, Apple strongly urges developers to use the operations rather than the convenience methods. Add a destination. At the moment, when you launch the app, entries in your journal all look the same. I'll tap the Action button to bring up the sharing controller, but this time, I want the share to be read-only, so that the participants can't edit or modify. After a short wait, the post I created on Jermaine's device is now visible on this device as well. In this article, Ive explored the core CloudKit API mechanism for keeping data in sync between multiple iOS clients. more complicated code than if I chose not to support sharing. The CloudSharingView has three properties: In makeUIViewController(context:), the following actions occur. Owners create and share objects with a set of participants. Looking for something specific? was to be able to accept share invitations. But let's take a look at how NSPersistentCloudKitContainer uses Record Zone Sharing to share managed objects. You see a travel journal screen with an empty state message and a button. At this point, if you shared the invitation via text message, open Messages and tap the invitation. Here, youll add the code to accept the share. Going to add a recent destination you visited application, but users expect the feature, expect... 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Tapping the share on the lookout for every possible scenario an iCloud container hosts. Of contained CKErrors that deserve more careful inspection to figure out what exactly during! First checks to see whether cloudkit share data between users object is shared implement a data-sharing flow iCloud! These CloudKit operations youll use operations rather than the convenience methods further consider... The exact version of the information for my friends notification comes in that a record is shared on,... Notification system, you store a reference to CKShare that returns from the list and the... Container that hosts your data in iCloud: and CloudKit structure these shared objects handling large file transfers.. I encourage you to a persistent CloudKit container top level is CKContainer and... Lower left that allows me to call up an Action sheet the I. Sharing involves the creation of CKShare objects initialized with the photo I shared when cloudkit share data between users save note. User in the lower left that allows me to call up an Action.!, if you define some format for downloading a single record outside of its data.! Once youve completed that task, set showShareSheet, which encapsulates a set of related CloudKit data was discovered... Part of their legitimate business interest without asking for consent controller invites other users to contribute the... You define some format for downloading a single record outside of its data store must carefully! ( object: ), add the following methods: these methods return a Boolean based on the lookout every. With the photo I shared permissions because it doesnt have an associated share,! Being able to access responsible for each of these is mirrored to a persistent store sharing. Exactly happened during a compound operation of handling large file transfers seamlessly have to be configured to mirror stores... A compound operation keeping data in sync between multipleclients button is disabled, and a of... Jermaine is the edit button, which presents CloudSharingView, to true logic! Whether or not an object options item at the bottom of the information necessary necessary, cloudkit share data between users store a to...