Reputation: 512586

Basic example for sharing text or image with UIActivityViewController in Swift

I started my search by wanting to know how I could share to other apps in iOS. I discovered that two important ways are

UIActivityViewController
UIDocumentInteractionController

These and other methods are compared in this SO answer.

Often when I am learning a new concept I like to see a basic example to get me started. Once I get something basic set up I can modify it how I like later.

There are many SO questions related to UIActivityViewController, but I couldn't find any that were just asking for a simple example. Since I just learned how to do this, I will provide my own answer below. Feel free to add a better one (or an Objective-C version).

Upvotes: 184

Answers (7)

yoAlex5

Reputation: 34431

iOS Share text or image

present UIActivityViewController

let controller = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: [someObject], applicationActivities: nil) 
//someObject can be UIImage, NSURL, String... iOS decide how to handle it properly

controller.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view

//add completionWithItemsHandler
controller.completionWithItemsHandler = {
    (
        activityType: UIActivity.ActivityType?,
        completed: Bool,
        arrayReturnedItems: [Any]?,
        error: Error?
    ) in
    
    if let error = error {
        //error occured
        return
    }
    
    if completed {
        if let activityType = activityType {
            switch activityType {
            case .saveToCameraRoll:
                break
            case .copyToPasteboard:
                break
            case .addToReadingList:
                break
            case .airDrop:
                break
            default:
                //all others
                break
            }
        }
    } else {
        //Cancel
    }
}

self.present(controller, animated: true)

Save image into library

If you are going to save image into library add NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription into app's .plist file or you get runtime error:

This app has crashed because it attempted to access privacy-sensitive data without a usage description. The app's Info.plist must contain an NSPhotoLibraryAddUsageDescription key with a string value explaining to the user how the app uses this data.

additionally you can exclude this opportunity:

controller.excludedActivityTypes = [.saveToCameraRoll]

variant with completionWithItemsHandler which can helps to add post logic or handle errors.

For example I run into next error when saving UIImage into Photo library in a corresponding handler:

Error Domain=ALAssetsLibraryErrorDomain Code=-1 "Unknown error" UserInfo={NSLocalizedDescription=Unknown error, NSUnderlyingError=0x600003f85110 {Error Domain=PHPhotosErrorDomain Code=3303 "(null)"}}

As figured out I tried to save CIImage. As a variant you can convert it to CGImage

let context = CIContext()
guard let cgImage = context.createCGImage(output, from: output.extent) else { return nil }
return UIImage(cgImage: cgImage)

Customize UIActivityViewController

class ImageActivityItemSource: NSObject, UIActivityItemSource {
    let image: UIImage
    let title: String
    
    public init(image: UIImage, title: String) {
        self.image = image
        self.title = title
    }
    
    func activityViewControllerPlaceholderItem(_ activityViewController: UIActivityViewController) -> Any {
        return self.image
    }
    
    func activityViewController(_ activityViewController: UIActivityViewController, itemForActivityType activityType: UIActivity.ActivityType?) -> Any? {
        return self.image
    }
    
    public func activityViewControllerLinkMetadata(_ activityViewController: UIActivityViewController) -> LPLinkMetadata? {
        let image = self.image
        let imageProvider = NSItemProvider(object: image)
        let metadata = LPLinkMetadata()
        metadata.title = self.title
        metadata.imageProvider = imageProvider
        return metadata
    }
}

using:

let imageActivityItemSource = ImageActivityItemSource(image: image, title: "Share this image with others")
let ac = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: [imageActivityItemSource], applicationActivities: nil)

Upvotes: 4

Suragch

Reputation: 512586

UIActivityViewController Example Project

Set up your storyboard with two buttons and hook them up to your view controller (see code below).

Add an image to your Assets.xcassets. I called mine "lion".

Code

import UIKit
class ViewController: UIViewController {
    
    // share text
    @IBAction func shareTextButton(_ sender: UIButton) {
        
        // text to share
        let text = "This is some text that I want to share."
        
        // set up activity view controller
        let textToShare = [ text ]
        let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: textToShare, applicationActivities: nil)
        activityViewController.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view // so that iPads won't crash
        
        // exclude some activity types from the list (optional)
        activityViewController.excludedActivityTypes = [ UIActivity.ActivityType.airDrop, UIActivity.ActivityType.postToFacebook ]
        
        // present the view controller
        self.present(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
        
    }
    
    // share image
    @IBAction func shareImageButton(_ sender: UIButton) {
        
        // image to share
        let image = UIImage(named: "Image")
        
        // set up activity view controller
        let imageToShare = [ image! ]
        let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: imageToShare, applicationActivities: nil)
        activityViewController.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view // so that iPads won't crash
        
        // exclude some activity types from the list (optional)
        activityViewController.excludedActivityTypes = [ UIActivity.ActivityType.airDrop, UIActivity.ActivityType.postToFacebook ]
        
        // present the view controller
        self.present(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
    }
    
}

Result

Clicking "Share some text" gives result on the left and clicking "Share an image" gives the result on the right.

Notes

I retested this with iOS 11 and Swift 4. I had to run it a couple times in the simulator before it worked because it was timing out. This may be because my computer is slow.
If you wish to hide some of these choices, you can do that with excludedActivityTypes as shown in the code above.
Not including the popoverPresentationController?.sourceView line will cause your app to crash when run on an iPad.
This does not allow you to share text or images to other apps. You probably want UIDocumentInteractionController for that.

//avoiding to crash on iPad
if let popoverController = activityViewController.popoverPresentationController {
     popoverController.sourceRect = CGRect(x: UIScreen.main.bounds.width / 2, y: UIScreen.main.bounds.height / 2, width: 0, height: 0)
     popoverController.sourceView = self.view
     popoverController.permittedArrowDirections = UIPopoverArrowDirection(rawValue: 0)
}

That's how it works for me

func shareData(_ dataToShare: [Any]){

        let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: dataToShare, applicationActivities: nil)

        //exclude some activity types from the list (optional)
        //activityViewController.excludedActivityTypes = [
            //UIActivity.ActivityType.postToFacebook
        //]

        //avoiding to crash on iPad
        if let popoverController = activityViewController.popoverPresentationController {
            popoverController.sourceRect = CGRect(x: UIScreen.main.bounds.width / 2, y: UIScreen.main.bounds.height / 2, width: 0, height: 0)
            popoverController.sourceView = self.view
            popoverController.permittedArrowDirections = UIPopoverArrowDirection(rawValue: 0)
        }

        self.present(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
    }

Upvotes: 10

Mr.Javed Multani

Reputation: 13294

Share : Text

@IBAction func shareOnlyText(_ sender: UIButton) {
    let text = "This is the text....."
    let textShare = [ text ]
    let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: textShare , applicationActivities: nil)
    activityViewController.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view 
    self.present(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
}
}

Share : Image

@IBAction func shareOnlyImage(_ sender: UIButton) {
    let image = UIImage(named: "Product")
    let imageShare = [ image! ]
    let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: imageShare , applicationActivities: nil)
    activityViewController.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view 
    self.present(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
 }

Share : Text - Image - URL

   @IBAction func shareAll(_ sender: UIButton) {
    let text = "This is the text...."
    let image = UIImage(named: "Product")
    let myWebsite = NSURL(string:"https://stackoverflow.com/users/4600136/mr-javed-multani?tab=profile")
    let shareAll= [text , image! , myWebsite]
    let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: shareAll, applicationActivities: nil)
    activityViewController.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view 
    self.present(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
   }

Upvotes: 119

Mahmud Ahsan

Reputation: 2055

You may use the following functions which I wrote in one of my helper class in a project.

just call

showShareActivity(msg:"message", image: nil, url: nil, sourceRect: nil)

and it will work for both iPhone and iPad. If you pass any view's CGRect value by sourceRect it will also shows a little arrow in iPad.

func topViewController()-> UIViewController{
    var topViewController:UIViewController = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow!.rootViewController!

    while ((topViewController.presentedViewController) != nil) {
        topViewController = topViewController.presentedViewController!;
    }

    return topViewController
}

func showShareActivity(msg:String?, image:UIImage?, url:String?, sourceRect:CGRect?){
    var objectsToShare = [AnyObject]()

    if let url = url {
        objectsToShare = [url as AnyObject]
    }

    if let image = image {
        objectsToShare = [image as AnyObject]
    }

    if let msg = msg {
        objectsToShare = [msg as AnyObject]
    }

    let activityVC = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: objectsToShare, applicationActivities: nil)
    activityVC.modalPresentationStyle = .popover
    activityVC.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = topViewController().view
    if let sourceRect = sourceRect {
        activityVC.popoverPresentationController?.sourceRect = sourceRect
    }

    topViewController().present(activityVC, animated: true, completion: nil)
}

Upvotes: 7

Diavel Rider

Reputation: 351

I found this to work flawlessly if you want to share whole screen.

@IBAction func shareButton(_ sender: Any) {

    let bounds = UIScreen.main.bounds
    UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions(bounds.size, true, 0.0)
    self.view.drawHierarchy(in: bounds, afterScreenUpdates: false)
    let img = UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext()
    UIGraphicsEndImageContext()
    let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: [img!], applicationActivities: nil)
    activityViewController.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view
    self.present(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)
}

Upvotes: 13

Adrien Brecheteau

Reputation: 270

Just as a note you can also use this for iPads:

activityViewController.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = sender

So the popover pops from the sender (the button in that case).

Upvotes: 17