In my app, i want to send a file to another iOS device via bluetooth.
I don't want to install any app from app store which using bluetooth functionality.
I want to implement bluetooth functionality in my app and once it connected means it would list out available iOS devices ( bluetooth enabled devices ) and send a file to selected device via bluetooth.
Is that possible? I don't know where to start..
Please help in this regards..if any sample code for it means its very helpful to me..
Thanks!!!
You can use the iOS CoreBluetooth Framework for this, where you can send any kind of data by converting it to NSData.
You can find Apple's demo project over here -> Demo Project
PS: If you are not dealing with much complexities in your project, then you can also check this powerful library called LGBluetooth by l0gg3r on Github . Its pretty simple!
Cheers!
GameKit is probably a good starting point as that supports peer-to-peer connectivity
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/NetworkingInternet/Conceptual/GameKit_Guide/Introduction/Introduction.html
Not sure if the GameKit api's support sending files, and the documentation had this to say: Note: The largest message size allowed is 87 kilobytes. If you need to send more than that, you must split your data into multiple messages.
Here are some related questions as well:
iPhone: Sending large data with Game Kit
Send and receive NSData via GameKit
Using GameKit to transfer CoreData data between iPhones
You have to implement OBEX protocol FTP (File Transport Profile) to pushing / pulling .... files from other device :) It is not easy to do !!
Related
I am trying to prototype a solution to a problem and am currently exploring multiple routes I could try. Is it possible for one iOS device, running a certain app, to communicate directly with another iOS device, running the same application - without the need to be on the same LAN?
Solutions I am currently investigating are using Bluetooth and ad-hoc wireless connections.
Ideally, the application when installed would ask the user for the required permissions, and then would accept and/or send data to/from another client after a handshake had happened.
My concern with Bluetooth is that 'pairing' would need to happen with every device, rather than happen in the background once the user has installed the app. I have a feeling what I am talking about isn't possible from what I've been reading elsewhere on Stackoverflow.
Take a look at Bluetooth Low Energy.
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#samplecode/BTLE_Transfer/Introduction/Intro.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40012927
Here is another example,
https://github.com/KhaosT/CBPeripheralManager-Demo
You might also want to look into GameKit and peer-to-peer connectivity there.
I can't tell you anything about it, but you might try looking at iOS 7. If that's an option, I'd take a look. Can't talk about what it is because of NDA though.
Depending on what you need to communicate, you could try checking out this project, which lets you share arrays of strings between iOS devices over Bluetooth LE.
You don't need to "pair" the devices and it can still communicate while the app is in the background. SimpleShare
Hope it helps!
From the documentation of MultipeerGroupChat:
MultipeerGroupChat sample application utilizes the Multipeer Connectivity framework to enable nearby users to discover, connected, and send data between each other. This sample simulates a simple chat interface where up to 8 devices can connect with each other and send text messages or images to each other. Here you will learn how to bring up framework UI for discovery and connections and also how to monitor session state, listen for incoming data and resources, and send data and resources.
This is an excellent example at developer.apple.com here is the link
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/samplecode/MultipeerGroupChat/Introduction/Intro.html
Also this tutorial from Ralf Ebert demonstrates how to use Multipeer Connectivity framework for peer communication should help you.
https://www.ralfebert.de/tutorials/ios-swift-multipeer-connectivity/
I am looking for a way to have one iPhone app send a message to another app on a different phone (sort of like a Sender-Receiver set up). I am looking for the best possible way to do this. Does anyone have any ideas and/or tutorials?
Thanks for the help.
You should use GameKit. It is super easy to send messages between two iOS devices using it. Here's a great tutorial: Game Kit. You can also get more information about it here from the docs: About Game Kit.
You communicate by creating an ad-hoc bluetooth or local wireless network.
lmirak provided insightful info about device communication(especially about GameKit). I would like to add one more solution. You can use WiFi network to do your device communication.
See the link or download the sample application from developer.apple
The sample application named as WiTap. It demonstrates how to achieve network communication between applications. Using Bonjour, the application both advertises itself on the local network and displays a list of other instances of this application on the network.
If your app is only going to run on iOS, then you should use the fantastic MultipeerConnectivity library. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/multipeerconnectivity
If you need a solution that will work cross-platform, then one way to accomplish this is using sockets and connecting over a local network. On iOS you can use CocoaAsyncPods for sockets and NetService for discovery.
Here is a basic example app that does this: https://github.com/brendaninnis/LocalNetworkingApp
, which I explain in great detail here: http://brendaninnis.ca/connect-nearby-devices-part-1.html
Can a file be transferred from an iPhone to another iPhone/iPod/iPad and to my Mac/PC using Bluetooth using a iPhone App?
I posted a question yesterday with same content. This was migrated to superuser.com.
iPhone SDK 3.0: where is the Bluetooth?
in short: no.
I have not ever tried it, but GameKit exists on the iPhone, and the Mac - as part of that you can establish a network connection between two systems locally over bluetooth. You should be able to use that connection to transfer any data you like.
What you cannot do is write an iPhone application that makes use of the standard Bluetooth file transfer protocol - that is not supported. If you are open to a custom Mac/PC client though, it will work (PC client might be a lot trickier).
I have developed an iPhone app which stores photos in the /Documents directory of my app.
I would like to add a feature which gives to the user the opportunity to transfer those pictures to his/her PC or Mac.
I don't really know how to do that.
What is the best way, using Bonjour, bluetooth, or directly USB (if it is possible) ?
I really need some advices on that point ...
Any ideas ?
PS: Forgive my English, I am French :-)
Try NSNetService to register the service in Bonjour, and NSFileHandle to send data over a socket connection associated with the service.
If you do not want to write a Mac or PC part for your app then you can also consider to build in a little http server that people can use to access the data in your app. There are some nice open source http servers available for Cocoa which you can find with Google.
Using Bonjour you can advertise your http server so that people can easily find it with a Bonjour enabled browser like Safari. (Your iPhone app's web server will appear automatically under the dynamic bonjour bookmarks items)
You've edited the question to say that it's about transferring photos. Could you store the photos on the iPhone's photo roll with UIImageWriteToSavedPhotosAlbum(), and let Apple handle getting them onto the computer?
Bonjour!
I mean that both as a greeting and an answer. You have to setup a bonjour connection over wifi to transfer files directly to and from an app. That's actually pretty simple to do on both the iPhone and Mac side. The PC is a little tougher.
You can do bluetooth but bluetooth capability is still fairly rare on desktops.
Without knowing more about your specific application, I agree with Graham Lee--either directly saving to the Camera Roll or giving the user an option to save one or more photos to the Camera Roll is much simpler than http/bonjour.
Is it possible to transfer files of a bluetooth device, lets say a digital pen (e.g. Nokia or Logitech io2) to the iPhone? I am interested if I could do a native application that could somehow get that binary file sent by the digital pen and do something with it.
I am used to rfcomm and obex but I can only find inconclusive results when I search for that and the support in the iPhone SDK... Any ideas?
No, on a normal iPhone you are totally unable to do this.
However, it is totally capable and the functions most likely exist, but Apple doesn't want people using them so you aren't going to find anything in their documentation. An extremely large number of these functions exist. If you wrote an app containing one of these functions, Apple wouldn't let it into the app store.
They're extremely and reasonably concerned about safety. Bluetooth isn't exactly known for being secure in any form.
Look at the EAAccessory reference.
It seems like it should be possible to write a custom app that talks to any bluetooth device - you'd have to implement the file transfer protocol yourself, but now that apps are free to talk to bluetooth devices I don't think the API will prevent you from doing what you stated you want to do.
To my knowledge, no – the iPhone OS does currently not support filetransfers via Bluetooth. I think you will have to jailbreak the software to get enough access to the Bluetooth stack to pull it off.
It is very telling that even if you have Bluetooth turned on in your iPhone, it does not show up on other devices when searching for units to transfer files to. I suppose it's saying something in its Bluetooth signature that tells other devices that it doesn't receive files.