Sharing bundled assets between app and extension

Question

My Photo Sharing extension plans to use the same design assets (for navigation and for adding \'stamps / stickers\' to the photo).

As explained in App Sa

Answer 1

Regarding sharing data:

If you want to share files between your iOS8 extension and your Containing app, you want to write files to a shared container or use the shared user defaults.

From Apple's iOS8 current documentation:

By default, your containing app and its extensions have no direct access to each other’s containers

You want to create an App Group, and add your containing app and its extensions to this group. This is pretty simple using Xcode 6, here's how to do it in xcode:

In the app group name, input a constant like:

group.com.bundle.app.soething

This creates a shared container for your containing app and extension, which allows:

• Share NSUserDefaults:

  [[NSUserDefaults alloc] initWithSuiteName:@"group.com.bundle.app.soething"];
  

• Share a directory on the filesystem:

  NSURL *containerURL = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] containerURLForSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier:@"group.com.bundle.app.soething"];
  

EDIT This will print out all the path combinations we have:

// App group's path

NSURL  *containerURL = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] containerURLForSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier:@"group.com.test.app"];

NSLog(@"App group: %@", containerURL.path);



// Bundle path

NSLog (@"Bundle: %@", [[NSBundle mainBundle] bundlePath]);



// Good old Documents path

NSArray *Paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);

NSString *path = [Paths objectAtIndex:0];

NSLog(@"Documents: %@ ", path);

EDIT - and for Swift:

• Share NSUserDefaults:

  var sharedDefaults = NSUserDefaults(suiteName: "group.com.bundle.app.soething")
  

• Share a directory on the filesystem:

  var containerURL = NSFileManager.defaultManager().containerURLForSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier("group.com.bundle.app.soething")!
  

I hope this helps you :)

Resources: Apple's iOS8.0 Extensions Development Guide - https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/General/Conceptual/ExtensibilityPG/ExtensionScenarios.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40014214-CH21-SW1

Apple's iOS8.0 NSFileManager Class Reference - https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsfilemanager/1412643-containerurlforsecurityapplicati