Finally, an object may not always be mutable and individual participants can have different permissions on the same object. When a user decides to share CloudKit data, a share link in the form of a URL is sent to the person with whom the data is to be shared. Under the Schema section, select Indexes. Tap the entry you want to update the permissions for. You would need a unique identifier for that CKRecord. we need to identify two crucial concepts for sharing. When the app comes up, youll notice the shared journal entry doesnt show up. I'm going to be using our sample application. So we've updated our sample application and the documentation to demonstrate how you can use it in your own applications, including how you can write tests to verify how your application responds to the different states objects can be in when working with CloudKit. Launch a simulator. See that data now exists at the bottom in the Participants section. The answer is, "Not much." Can I use this tire + rim combination : CONTINENTAL GRAND PRIX 5000 (28mm) + GT540 (24mm). Amazing! It might make more sense for CKAsset, but for now Apple hasn't added the capability. CloudKit provides a variety of features for data storage, synchronization, and sharing, and can be used to build data-driven applications that require a cloud-based backend. That means we can't change our mind later and choose to encrypt fields that aren't already encrypted today in production. 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. 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. Customizations like this necessarily require more complicated code than if I chose not to support sharing. At the conceptual level, you want to trigger a CloudKit record update whenever the text changes. 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. Go to the first device you created the share from, because you need to be the Owner to access the Share Options. To improve this, go back to HomeView.swift. In this simple Note application, with a single user switching between devices, youre not likely to see too many conflicts in a live concurrency sense. Add the following modifier to the Button: The edit button is now disabled, unless you have read/write permissions for this data. Have a question? Synchronizing a Local Store to the Cloud. Open CoreDataStack.swift. An example of data being processed may be a unique identifier stored in a cookie. Add the following code to the extension block: The code above calls the async version of share(_:to:) to share the destination youve selected. into the sharingProvider the MainViewController uses. but the resulting confidence and reliability are well worth it. I can send it to my friends as an iMessage or email. It's free to sign up and bid on jobs. Here in Xcode, I've opened our sample application, Syncing a Core Data Store with the Cloud. To change the permissions and access to this data, Apple has done all the heavy lifting for you. How might we build an experience like this? So, an offline mode must be carefully considered. Careful error handling is absolutely essential for a CloudKit client. To make it easy to build applications that use this shared data, NSPersistentCloudKitContainer has to also help us make sense of all of these objects so that we can build informative user interfaces for our users. Is something like this (or even better) available with the new CloudKit? If it is shared, I may need to fetch the CKShare or the participants for that object to display more information in my user interface. Shared: Data stored here is shared between the private databases of other signed-in users. In Core Data, we think of our objects in terms of NSManagedObject. Checks whether the object is shared. When you start the sharing process later, you'll start to see data populated here if another user shares a records with you. uses Record Zone Sharing to share managed objects. we can share the data our applications create. Download iOS 13.0+ iPadOS 13.0+ Xcode 13.0+ Mac Catalyst 13.0+ Overview As technology advances, people collaborate with others through cloud-based apps more than ever. At this point, if you shared the invitation via text message, open Messages and tap the invitation. We call them the owner and the participants. I'm Nick Gillett, an engineer here at Apple on the Core Data team. But this isn't how NSPersistentCloudKitContainer works. To understand these challenges a bit more clearly. Over time, however, Apple has addressed these issues. To begin the sharing process, add the following code to your persistentContainer below the // TODO: 1 comment: This code configures the shared database to store records shared with you. I've already saved Heather and Mary in my address book. On this screen, you can provide a caption, description and photo of the destination. 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. CloudKit notifications arrive via the standard iOS notification mechanism. In this article, Toptal Software Engineer Paul Young demonstrate how to use CloudKit to keep a users data in sync between multipleclients. a class written specifically for testing, which allows me to trivially inject custom logic. After adding a few of these customizations. All the user needs to do at this point is enter the contact details for the intended share recipient and send the message. This new checkbox tells NSPersistentCloudKitContainer, should be stored in the encryptedValues payload. Look at the share options. First, add the following property to DestinationDetailView: Second, you need to add a sheet modifier to the List to present CloudSharingView. Log in to your iCloud account on a real device. Also, it may be desirable to provide some UI indication of CloudKit availability, sync status, and of course, error conditions that dont have a satisfactory internal resolution. Continue with Recommended Cookies. Discover how to create informative experiences around shared data and learn about the CloudKit technologies that support these features in Core Data. If I'm allowed to, I can add records that I own to any of those zones just as they can in the zones that I own. When a record is shared, a share link is sent to the recipient user in the form of a URL. If necessary, you then pass the updated server record to CloudKit to write the new record. 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. But ideally, we would have a single place directly in the Photos app where my friends and I can share our photos with each other. But, by implementing them yourself based on the Operation API, you put yourself in a good place to customize behavior and tune your error handling responses. Ill focus on an iOS application, but the same approach can be used for macOS clients as well. NSPersistentCloudKitContainer typically manages a private zone. An error occurred when submitting your query. to show that the post is part of a share. Photos also allows me to view the participants on the album. This class is initialized with the root CKRecord instance that is to be shared with other users together with the permission setting. before deploying your schema to production. Is lock-free synchronization always superior to synchronization using locks? This new checkbox tells NSPersistentCloudKitContainer that the value for this attribute should be stored in the encryptedValues payload of the resulting CKRecord. At its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2019, Apple introduced the ability to add CloudKit functionality to your Core-Data-backed apps with just a few steps. Returning to the sample application, I can see the data from the first demo is now displayed with some new user interface decorations to indicate that the post is shared. With this code in place, build and run on your second device. In addition to this, you set databaseScope to .shared. Click Query Records to see a listing of the record(s) you created in the app earlier! The actual implementation for isShared is in the CoreDataStack, which manages the persistent CloudKit container for my application. Second, enable the iCloud capability in your app. The SharingProvider protocol makes it easy to test these decision points by injection. persistentContainer calls this method. This is new iOS 15 and allows NSPersistentCloudKitContainer to be configured to mirror persistent stores to the .shared CloudKit database. You need to extract information about the participants of this share. 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. Our users need all of that information so that they can make good decisions about the objects they choose to share. The first step is to create a method that prepares your shared data. I might need to know whether or not an object is shared. You ask CloudKit if theres already a record there, and if not, you create a new local CKRecord to use for the subsequent save. CloudKit prefixes your entities with CD to distinguish them from traditional CloudKit records. Youll need to ensure that you have set a unique bundle identifier at this point. Find centralized, trusted content and collaborate around the technologies you use most. Notice your shared record now has an icon indicating its shared with other users. Each of these participants will be able to access and operate on the objects I share with them. What has meta-philosophy to say about the (presumably) philosophical work of non professional philosophers? CloudKit supports both the concept of public and private databases. to instantiate an instance of UICloudSharingController. Share Core Data between users with NSPersistentCloudKitContainer Ask Question Asked 3 years, 7 months ago Modified 1 year, 8 months ago Viewed 3k times 16 Apple introduced the NSPersistentCloudKitContainer with iOS 13 which enable us to use CloudKit with Core Data. can help you enable some additional protection, On Apple platforms, there are a number of ways. If you attempt to select record type as CD_Destination and query records from here, you receive an error stating Field recordName isnt marked queryable. to communicate these states and privileges. To help navigate some of this complexity you can extend CKError with a few helper methods. So let's take a look at exactly how NSPersistentCloudKitContainer shares objects. share NSPersistentCloudKitContainer between app and extension, Core Data sharing with CloudKit: Unable to Accept Share. The first step is to implement the UIKit scene delegate method windowScene(_:userDidAcceptCloudKitShareWith:). The owner is the iCloud account that actually owns an object. This is a cute trick in Swift that allows me to simply check. Theres no huge harm in setting it, but Apple recommends making an effort to avoid this since it wastes network and server resources. Finally, I'll tap Send to send the email. Learn SwiftUI and take your iOS Development to the Next LevelSwiftUI Essentials iOS 16 Edition book is now available in Print ($39.99) and eBook ($29.99) editions. Two separate iCloud accounts To initiate the sharing process. I want to send each person an invite to work on this post with me via email. In fact, in a sense, youre recreating the convenience APIs. Update the selected zone from defaultZone to the automatically generated com.apple.coredata.cloudkit.zone. These can be normal push notifications familiar to iOS users (such as sound, banner, or badge), or in CloudKit, they can be a special class of notification called silent pushes. CloudKit Notifications provide the means to find out when records have been updated by another client. Click Add Basic Index. More importantly, you have a foundation for adding more advanced CloudKit functionality. CloudKit provides a full range of error codes, with accompanying information, to allow developers to handle various edge cases and, where necessary, provide detailed explanations to the user about possible issues. NSPersistentCloudKitContainer automatically syncs. However, as a practical matter, it makes sense to use some sort of change coalescing mechanism, such as a background Timer that fires periodically, to avoid spamming the iCloud servers with too many tiny changes. Page - Sharing data between User Controls without access to the Page class - Accessing data between user controls WPF - Passing data between user controls in wpf - Pass data between parent child user controls . Owners create and share objects with a set of participants. was to be able to accept share invitations. and the participants entry for Jermaine shows. Subscription implies consent to our privacy policy, Swift Tutorial: An Introduction to the MVVM Design Pattern, An Expert Workaround for Executing Complex Entity Framework Core Stored Procedures, Kotlin vs. Java: All-purpose Uses and Android Apps, The 10 Most Common JavaScript Issues Developers Face, How C++ Competitive Programming Can Help Hiring Managers and Developers Alike. CloudKit sharing involves the creation of CKShare objects initialized with the record to be shared. First off, you need to make sure youre starting from a valid CKRecord. It's called the SharingProvider. I set the BlockBasedProvider as the provider. One user shows up as a Owner and the other as a Private User, with both users having Read-Write permissions. But in my application, I took a slightly different approach. shared CKRecords are contained inside a shared CKRecordZone. was to tell NSPersistentCloudKitContainer. Sharing is by far the most complicated feature we have built in to NSPersistentCloudKitContainer. The convenience API is much more accessible, while the operation approach can be a bit intimidating. What is the easiest way to share files between users with CloudKit? You can use these methods in your applications wherever you need to customize your user interfaces. To understand these challenges a bit more clearly, we need to identify two crucial concepts for sharing. I've already saved Heather and Mary in my address book, so they're easy to find. However, network conditions and performance constraints can cause individual notifications to be dropped, or multiple notifications to intentionally coalesce into a single client notification. To view the purposes they believe they have legitimate interest for, or to object to this data processing use the vendor list link below. In many cases, it can infer where records belong based on the relationship they have to other objects. CloudKit provides you ready to use data sharing API that allows you to implement collaborative features of your app without much effort. Tap the shared object to go to the detail screen. I regularly work with when I'm building sharing features. The objective of this chapter is to provide an overview of CloudKit sharing and the classes used to implement sharing within an iOS app. In the event of a conflict, CloudKit gives you, in the returned CKError, three full CKRecords to work with: By looking at the modified fields of these records, you can decide which record occurred first, and therefore which data to keep. Theres also a share action that does nothing now. The class contains all the necessary methods and properties you need to interact with Core Data. Its fair to say iCloud got off to a bit of a rocky start. Since CloudKit is deeply tied to Apples operating systems and devices, its not suitable for applications that require a broader range of device support, such as Android or Windows clients. Clash between mismath's \C and babel with russian. Tapping that brings up the set of participants. If you've worked with sharing before, you're probably familiar with hierarchical sharing, where these records are associated with a root record called the share. So be sure to use NSPersistentCloudKitContainer's initializeSchema method to ensure that all your fields are present and correctly typed before deploying your schema to production. Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience. Get the most out of CloudKit Sharing Discover how apps can use CloudKit to share records with others. When you app is opened with such a link, then you can download the CKRecord and you will have the file in a CKAsset. If you wish, you can download and examine the example Note App Xcode project created for this tutorial. here, the shared store for my application. This doesn't seem to work. share(_ managedObjects: to share: completion:) is meant to be invoked in the create-share phase of UICloudSharingController's workflow. CloudKit sharing is made possible primarily by the CKShare class. Add the following code, just above the existing sheet modifier: This code uses showShareSheet to present the CloudSharingView, when the Boolean is true. These options are accessed and modified by tapping the Share Options item at the bottom of the cloud sharing controller view. Launching the CI/CD and R Collectives and community editing features for How to share Core Data between multiple users? CloudKit: For managing structured data and sharing data among users. Note that the same code will work for macOS clients as well, with slight adjustments for differences in how notifications work on that platform. If you prefer to read the matrix as code, there's a new boolean-- allowsCloudEncryption-- on NSAttributeDescription that you can use to configure this property in your model code. Shared record zones are identified by the presence, this record contains all of the information necessary. introduced in the "What's New in CloudKit" session. to combine the .private and .shared databases. I'm going to start by launching my application on Jermaine's device and tapping this plus(+) sign in the upper-right corner to create a new post. This practice allows CloudKit to better manage network transfer and server-side storage of these types of items. Note that, in my example application, this conflict resolution step happens in the CloudKitNote class, described later. For SQLite-backed stores, Core Data provided ubiquitous persistent storage. Fetching a record by name is very straightforward. Syncing a Core Data Store with the Cloud. Figure 48 2 shows an example share options settings screen: Once a method of communication has been selected by the user from the cloud sharing controller, the completion handler assigned to the controller will be called. And exactly how much did I have to change in the sample application? Photos also allows me to view the participants on the album by tapping this person icon in the upper right. Subscriptions are one of the most valuable CloudKit features. and the cells that correspond to unshared objects don't. Were you able to figure it out? after they're downloaded from the CloudKit server. It brings together a huge amount of domain knowledge. Learn to share data between CoreData and CloudKit in a SwiftUI app. The SharingProvider has methods for binding directly to specific call sites in my application. For example, if you want to extend this app to handle multiple Notes rather than just one, you could do so more readily (and with higher resulting performance) than if youd just used Apples convenience APIs. But in my application, I took a slightly different approach. The first is the notion of a set of actors. wherever you need to customize your user interfaces. So that's how we use NSPersistentCloudKitContainer. Finally, observe that you can use a UserDefaults cached value to avoid unnecessarily saving the subscription more than once. Observe CloudSharingView in the context of updating permissions. This means not only the owner but also the second user can modify the data shared with them. For example, I can send it to my friends as an iMessage or email. Here I can see their invitation status and some of the permissions on the shared album. 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