Using iOS Notifications, Cryptography and iCloud to build your own Chat App XI

I should start this article with a disclaimer, it based on iOS 13, Swift 5 and Xcode 11.x. If you reading this and those numbers look dated, be forewarned.

I should also warn you that notifications and iCloud code, involve Apple’s infrastructure which means you will need an Apple Developers account to use them.

Obviously this is part XI. It is an ongoing series in which I blogging the development of whatsapp type app using the above tech. To get the most of it you need to start at the beginning.

What are we doing. The fact that two users need to be logged in at the same time to start off the conversation worries me, its not practical. What can we do about it.

I tried a local notification, that didn’t work. I need an alert that will appear even when I not running the app. One that I can respond too. We need a notification content extension.

As before this is a reasonably major update, so you should backup what you have so that if it all goes horribly wrong, you can start again.

What is the plan. We going to change the alert that pops up in the app the first time someone tries to talk to you. We’re going to change it to a notification with an action. We should do three actions. An accept action, which will launch the app so you can configure it. An later action, which will send back a message to say later. And a deny action, that will block any more…