LctvSwift

Still under development

Please note: This library is still under development. There will be bugs or missing features and also thigs may change in future versions. Be aware of that before using it.

Requirements

Registration of your app

To use LctvSwift you need to register an app on Livecoding. Visit the Livecoding homepage to get information on how to do so.

When registering choose the following configuration for your app:

Client Type: public

Authorization Grant Type: authorization-code

Redirect Uris: http://localhost:8080/oauth-callback

Settings in your XCode project

Within your Info.plist file add the following setting:

AppTransportSecuritySettings

This is a Dictionary-Type entry. Add the following sub-entry to it:

Allow Arbitrary Loads = YES

This disables forced https-only connectivity. Within the authorization process the library starts an internal http-server, that’s what this setting is necessary for. May not be necessary in future versions, if the local server supports https.

Other requirements

• Make sure that port 8080 is not used by another application/server. LctvSwift is using this port for its internal server during authorization.

Installation

Example

To run the example project, clone the repo, and run pod install from the Example directory first. Then edit the Secret.swift file and insert your Livecoding API clientId and secret.

Make sure you don’t store your clientId and secret in a real world app, as it is done in this Example application!

Usage

Initialize the API

Initialization of LctvSwift is recommended within your apps AppDelegate class. So within that class declare a new variable:

@UIApplicationMain
class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate {

  var window: UIWindow?
  var api: LctvApi?
  var initialViewController: UIViewController!

For initialization of the api you can write a function similar to this one:

  func initApi() {
    do {
      var config = LctvConfig(clientId: clientId, clientSecret: clientSecret)
      try api = LctvApi(config: config)
    } catch {
      print("Could not initialize. Aborting.")
      abort()
    }
  }

The init(config: LctvConfig) function is the way to get an instance of LctvApi, which is necessary to communicate with Livecoding. The function takes a LctvConfig instance as its parameter, which contains some basic information on how you want to setup the api.

In a real world app, you should do some more appropriate error handling as in this example.

When the API is initialized for the first time, you currently have to specify your clientId and secret within the LctvConfig instance. It is in your responsibility to do that in a secure way to prevent abuse of this information. After the first initialization, LctvSwift will store it securely into the device’s keychain and therefore it does not have to be provided anymore.

The LctvConfig class has more properties:

overwrite:

If set to true, this initialization will overwrite any existing client information in the device’s keychain. In this case you have to provide clientId and secret again in the config. Defaults to false and should only be set to true for debugging purposes.

grantType:

The grant type can be either AuthorizationCode or Implicit. Livecoding recommends using Implicit for mobile devices, but currently LctvSwift only supports AuthorizationCode due to some dependencies. Implicit grant type may be supported in a future version of LctvSwift.

keychainId:

The id which will be used to store and load secure information from the device’s keychain. You should specify your own unique string here to make sure, that other apps which may also use LctvSwift won’t conflict.

internalPort:

The internal port of the temporary http-server, which is used during authorization. If you have port conflicts, you can change the port here.

Call the initApi function from within application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions::

  func application(application: UIApplication,
       didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [NSObject: AnyObject]?) -> Bool {
    initApi()
  }

Preparing the authorization process

Depending on your needs it might make sense to build in a switch within the AppDelegate to decide to present a LoginViewController if the user has not authorized your app yet or to directly present your main app view controller.

The LoginViewController is different from other Login Screens in that it does not provide Username and Password fields. Instead it should only provide a Button e.g. “Login to Livecoding” which then starts the LctvSwift authorization process.

This process will then present a WebViewController with the login and authorization form provided by Livecoding.TV.

To achieve this switch, you can do that within the AppDelegate within the application:didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: method directly below the initApi call:

// Setup the application window
self.window = UIWindow(frame: UIScreen.mainScreen().bounds)

let storyboard = UIStoryboard(name: "Main", bundle: nil)
self.initialViewController = storyboard.instantiateInitialViewController()

if !self.api!.hasAccessToken() {
  let loginViewController = storyboard.instantiateViewControllerWithIdentifier("LoginViewController")
  self.window?.rootViewController = loginViewController
} else {
  self.window?.rootViewController = self.initialViewController
}

self.window?.makeKeyAndVisible()

You’ll have to add the LoginViewController to the storyboard and assign it a storyboardId of LoginViewController.

You can use the api’s hasAccessToken method to check, if an access token is already in place.

Now when starting the app, it will automatically present the “Login” screen when the user did not authorize yet. Otherwise it will directly switch to the app’s main view controller (which is the initial view controller defined within the storyboard).

Extending UIViewController

In the previous section you instantiated LctvSwift by creating a LctvApi instance within the AppDelegate. To make this instance available to all of your view controllers it makes sense to create a small extension of UIViewController:

import UIKit
import LctvSwift

extension UIViewController {

  var lctvApi: LctvApi? {
    return (UIApplication.sharedApplication().delegate as! AppDelegate).api
  }

}

Authorization

After the first api initialization, your app needs to receive an access token from the server to be able to access Livecoding resources. This token will be stored together with your secret information in the device’s keychain.

When using a grant type of AuthorizationCode, usually this authorization process only has to be processed once. After the initial authorization you can get a new access token when the old one expires via the refresh token, which is also provided. The grant type Implicit does not support refresh tokens so there may be the need of re-authorization at some point. However, with Implicit you don’t need to store your client secret on the device, so it may be more secure.

Within your LoginViewController provide the following function to process the authorization with LctvSwift:

func authorizeClient() {
  let viewController = LctvAuthViewController()
  viewController.view.frame = self.view.bounds

  api.oAuthUrlHandler = viewController

  do {
    try api.authorize(scope: [.Read, .Chat])
  } catch {
    print("Could not authorize: \(error)")
  }
}

As you can see, a new ViewController gets initialized within this function. It is provided by LctvSwift and it contains a UIWebView to provide a possibility for the user to login to Livecoding and grant your app the needed permissions.

This viewController is passed to the api via the oAuthUrlHandler property.

With the authorize function you can specify a scope which defines the permissions your app will need as an array of LctvScope values. The default is .Read, which is a limited read permission. All available permissions are defined within the LctvScope enumeration:

public enum LctvScope : String {

  case Read = "read"
  case ReadViewer = "read:viewer"
  case ReadUser = "read:user"
  case ReadChannel = "read:channel"
  case Chat = "chat"
  ...
}

Now create a Login-Button in your storyboard within the LoginViewController. Add an action method for this button to the view controller class which calls the authorizeClient method:

@IBAction func loginButtonPressed(sender: UIButton) {
  authorizeClient()
}

When you start your app now, as soon as you press the Login-Button in your
LoginViewController, a browser window should appear and you will be asked to login to Livecoding. After successfully logging in, Livecoding will ask you if you want to grant the listed permissions to your app. Press “authorize” and the browser window disappears.

If everything went well, your LctvApi instance is configured and authorized to call Livecoding API functions.

Now it would be nice if the LoginViewController disappears when the user did successfully authorize your app. Unfortunately you can’t to this directly after the call to authorize because it is an asynchronous processing.

To handle this, LctvApi offers two properties:

/// Handler which is called after successfully processing the authorization screen
public var onAuthorizationSuccess: AuthSuccessHandler? = nil

/// Handler for errors during the authorization process
public var onAuthorizationFailure: AuthFailureHandler? = nil

You can specify two functions here which get called when either the authorization has been successful or failed e.g. in viewDidLoad:

override func viewDidLoad() {
  self.lctvApi!.onAuthorizationSuccess = authorizationSuccessful
  self.lctvApi!.onAuthorizationFailure = authorizationFailure
}

Now create those two functions:

func authorizationSuccessful() {
  // Present the initial view controller
  let appDelegate = UIApplication.sharedApplication().delegate as! AppDelegate
  let viewController = appDelegate.initialViewController
  self.presentViewController(viewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
}

func authorizationFailure(message: String) {
  // Do some appropriate error handling here
  print(message)
}

Calling API functions

Here are some examples how to use the LctvApi instance to access Livecoding API. Every API call has the following structure:

api.getCurrentUser(success: { user in
    // Do something with the user
    print(user.userName)
    print(user.yearsProgramming)
}, failure: { message, json in
    // Error handling
})

As you can see, each function gets a closure for success and failure. This is necessary to deal with the asynchronous nature of HTTP-calls.

From the example getCurrentUser function you’ll receive a LctvUser instance within the success closure.

There are some api functions which return big collections of data in form of a “pageable” structure. LctvSwift handles those results with the LctvResultContainer class:

api.getCodingCategories(success: {
    result in
    self.codingCategories = result
    print(result.results)
}, failure: { message, json in
    self.showAlertWithTitle("ERROR", message: message)
})

The result parameter which gets passed into success is of type LctvResultContainer<LctvCodingCategory>. It’s results property contains an array with a number of LctvCodingCategory instances. The number of results for a page can be configured by setting the api’s pageSize property:

api.pageSize = 20

There are also two properties next and previous available in a result container which contain the url’s to call the next or previous page. LctvSwift has convenience functions to achieve this:

api.nextPage(self.codingCategories!, success: { result in
    self.codingCategories = result
}, failure: { message, json in
    self.showAlertWithTitle("ERROR", message: "Could not retrieve next page: \(message)")
})

api.previousPage(self.codingCategories!, success: { result in
    self.codingCategories = result
}, failure: { message, json in
    self.showAlertWithTitle("ERROR", message: "Could not retrieve previous page: \(message)")
})

Some API functions just return simple arrays with results. This is handled by LctvSwift’s LctvArrayContainer class:

api.getCurrentUserFollowers(success: {
    result in
    print(result.array)
}, failure: { message, json in
    self.showAlertWithTitle("ERROR", message: message)
})

In the example above, the result passed into the success closure is of type LctvArrayContainer<LctvUser>. It has a property array which contains all received LctvUser-instances.

License

LctvSwift is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.