iOS 9 - NSUserActivity userinfo property showing null

Question

I had a quick question about NSUserActivity's userInfo property.

NSString *activity = @"com.test.activity";  
NSUserActivity *userActivity = [[NSUserActivity alloc] initWithActivityType:activity];  
userActivity.title = @"Test";  
userActivity.keywords = [NSSet setWithArray:@[@"Test"];  
userActivity.userInfo = @{@"location": location};  

userActivity.eligibleForSearch = YES;    
self.userActivity = userActivity;  
[self.userActivity becomeCurrent];  

I have the above snippet implemented in one of view controllers viewDidLoad(). When my item appears within spotlight search it calls the continueUserActivity delegate method.

I'm trying to access the userActivity.userInfo property but it's returning null even though it's been set above.

Here's the continueUserActivity snippet:

-(BOOL)application:(nonnull UIApplication *)application continueUserActivity:(nonnull NSUserActivity *)userActivity restorationHandler:(nonnull void (^)(NSArray * __nullable))restorationHandler {

NSString *locationName = [[userActivity.userInfo objectForKey:@"location"] valueForKey: @"name"];

// Do stuff with locationName

return NO;

}

EDIT: I changed the location object to return as a primitive type but I'm still getting null on the delegate method.

Is anyone else having this problem in iOS 9 beta 3?

Answer 1

Hi could you check in your continueUserActivity snippet:

if ([userActivity.activityType isEqualToString:@"com.test.activity"])
{
      NSString *locationName = [[userActivity.userInfo objectForKey:@"location"] valueForKey: @"name"];
}

If it doesn't go there I assume that you have Core Spotlight integrated in your app and you get in Spotlight exactly by these elements from Core Spotlight.

Hope it was helpful.

P.S. At the moment(Xcode 7 beta 3) many developers can't get Search API through NSUserActivity to work, including me.

Answer 2

I'm working in iOS 9 beta 5, and another way that userInfo may be nil within the application:continueUserActivity:restorationHandler: is if you have also set NSUserActivity's webPageURL property. If you set the webPageURL property and would like userInfo to not be nil, then you will need to include the appropriate keys in NSUserActivity's requiredUserInfoKeys property. This took me forever to figure out, but shame on me for missing this in the docs.

NSUserActivity *activity = [[NSUserActivity alloc] initWithActivityType:activityType];
activity.title = @"title";
activity.webpageURL = [NSURL URLWithString:webLinkUrlString];
activity.userInfo = @{@"id": webLinkUrlString, @"deep_link": deepLinkUrl};
// set requiredUserInfoKeys if you're also setting webPageURL !!
// otherwise, userInfo will be nil !!
activity.requiredUserInfoKeys = [NSSet setWithArrays:@[@"id", @"deep_link"]];
activity.eligibleForSearch = YES;
activity.eligibleForPublicIndexing = YES;
activity.contentAttributeSet = attributeSet;
activity.keywords = [NSSet setWithArray:keywordsArray];
self.activity = activity;
[self.activity becomeCurrent];

Answer 3

It was a problem with beta 3 that was causing this error. Everything is working fine as of beta 5.