Different data for sharing providers in UIActivityViewController

Question

I'm trying to use an UIActivityViewController with one long NSString as the data. If I put a string > 140 characters, the tweet sheet in it does not display the string. And if I truncate the string before giving it to the controller, all of the UIActivities have the truncated string. I don't want Facebook or Message to be truncated.

Is there a way to give different strings to different UIActivities?

Thank you!

(e.g. Marco Arment's The Magazine app does this by having a truncated string followed by @TheMagazineApp in UIActivityPostToTwitter, and other stuff in other UIActivities.)

Answer 1

I think this is what you're looking for: Custom UIActivityViewController icons and text.

You should be able to provide different data for each activity type.

Answer 2

Hope this helps somebody. It's pretty straightforward if you subclass UIActivityItemProvider:

@interface MyActivityItemProvider : UIActivityItemProvider
@end

@implementation MyActivityItemProvider

- (id)item
{
    // Return nil, if you don't want this provider to apply 
    // to a particular activity type (say, if you provide 
    // print data as a separate item for UIActivityViewController).
    if ([self.activityType isEqualToString:UIActivityTypePrint]) 
        return nil;

    // The data you passed while initialising your provider 
    // is in placeholderItem now.
    if ([self.activityType isEqualToString:UIActivityTypeMail] ||
        [self.activityType isEqualToString:UIActivityTypeCopyToPasteboard])
    {
        return self.placeholderItem;
    }

    // Return something else for other activities. Obviously, 
    // you can as well reuse the data in placeholderItem here.
    return @"Something else";
}

@end

Then pass its instance with an array of activity items to UIActivityViewController:

MyActivityItemProvider *activityItem = 
    [[MyActivityItemProvider alloc] initWithPlaceholderItem:@"Your data"];
NSArray *sharingItems = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:
    activityItem, _myUITextView.viewPrintFormatter, nil];

UIActivityViewController *activityController = 
    [[UIActivityViewController alloc] 
        initWithActivityItems:sharingItems applicationActivities:nil];