The Multipeer Connectivity Framework by Apple is popularly known for the discovery of nearby devices. Once this Swift framework is developed, it enables a connection that supports the communication of these services through messages, streaming, and other resources.
The two devices can connect to each other via Bluetooth or Wi-Fi. Developers can use this Swift framework to build simple games and chat applications.
When building solutions for iOS, the multipeer connectivity framework uses Wi-Fi networks, peer-to-peer Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth for connectivity. But in macOS and tvOS, the framework uses Wi-Fi, Peer-to-Peer Wi-Fi, and Ethernet. So, depending on the type of connection, the mobile app development company’s approach can change.
Working with the MC Framework
The first step in the implementation of this framework is importing the same, with the import function. You will begin with;
import MultipeerConnectivity
This function allows the developer to work with Multipeer Connectivity classes and use its functions in the file.
For an application to work with the MC framework, it must interact with a specific architecture, including;
Peer IDs:
MCPeerID is the unique identifier of the application running on the device visible to nearby peers.
As this ID uniquely identifies a peer in the session, the users can also allocate a displayName to the ID that will be visible to the other peers on the network.
In this, the developers can set a new name for the PeerID every time they create a session. Or they can also use the same name for every session by archiving the ID at the time of its creation. They also need to unarchive the ID name the next time a session is created.
Session Objects:
MCSession enables the communication between connected peer devices. The application will create a connection and add peers after the peers have accepted the connection request upon receiving an invitation. The purpose of the Session Objects is to maintain a set of peer ID objects associated with the peers connected to the network.
MCSession is designated with a manager class that handles and manages all the multipeer connectivity. In a session, the peers can communicate and send data with one of the following methods;
send(_:toPeers:with:)
session(_:didReceive:fromPeer:)
sendResource(at:withName:toPeer:withCompletionHandler:)
Furthermore, we can also manually manage the peers, which includes establishing a connection and exchanging data.
The MCSession also has a delegate (MCSessionDelegate), which takes care of all the events related to a session.
We can use the following ways to manage all the different session states;
The MCSessionDelegate is a protocol that defines the method used by a delegate of the main session. This delegate session handles the implementation of session-related events. The delegate method handles actions like a loop or operation queue that are required to complete a session.
Advertiser Objects:
MCNearbyServiceAdvertiser allows a nearby peer device that the application is trying to establish a connection of a type. This object uses a single local peer connection or object to provide the required information for the identification of the device. Moreover, the Advertiser object also helps recognize other nearby devices.
Read more: Multipeer Connectivity Framework on Swift