Wednesday 29 February 2012

iCloud Key-Value example: chat2self

Apple introduced a new API in iOS5 - iCloud Key-Value Data Storage - which lets your applications share a collection of key-value data between devices (with the same App Store login). It's fairly restricted (limited number of keys, limited data size, and no guaranteed time to sync), but it's also very easy to use.

Because the storage is only shared with the same user, it's pretty useless for a chat program. On the other hand, I was keen to play with Miguel's latest BubbleCell example. The result: a simple chat program that only sends messages between your iCloud-registered devices. Each device uses a single 'key' to save the last message you wrote on that device, and iCloud takes care of sync'ing that out to your other devices. When they receive the sync'd data, a notification kicks in and it appears in the conversation! It's definitely half-duplex...


Grab the (MonoTouch) code from Github. Remember: you'd never actually build a chat-service with iOS5 iCloud Key-Value Data Storage, this is just for fun :-)

UPDATE: some handy tips for setting up iCloud for MonoTouch development.