Real Time Collaboration API for iOS Apps

Question

I need a way to share a JSON data between 2 users in iOS and Swift. Does anyone have any suggestions for a way to do this? Maybe an official Apple or Swift API?

Requirements:

1. Easy to integrate with swift
2. Not hosted on a personal server

Thanks.

Answer 1

Apple offer the GroupActivities framework for that. During a Facetime call you can send custom data over the same connection for whiteboard apps with realtime collaboration. This year at WWDC 2022 they added a UDP tunnel for faster (but not guaranteed) data transfers and they also increased the packet size to 256KB. Here are some resources:

Videos:

• WWDC21 session 10187: Build custom experiences with GroupActivities
• WWDC22: What's new in SharePlay

Sample code:

• Drawing Content in a Group Session Invite your friends to draw on a shared canvas while on a FaceTime call.