IOS7 Multipeer Connectivity Creating custom nearby browser list using advertiser's discovery Info

Question

I'm using Multipeer Connectivity Framework in IOS7 to make a chatting application. And I'm using the built-in MCBrowserViewController to display a list of nearby peers.

I'd like to include the advertiser's profile info in the nearby peer list. So that browsers see a list that contains and image and some data about the nearby peers.

I think it can be accomplished by passing data through discoveryInfo when the advertiser is initialized. I pass the discoveryInfo data in like this:

// create Discovery Info
NSArray *objects=[[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"datguy",@"28", nil];
NSArray *keys = [[NSArray alloc] initWithObjects:@"Name",@"Age", nil];
self.dictionaryInfo = [[NSDictionary alloc] initWithObjects:objects forKeys:keys];

//  Setup Advertiser
self.advertiser = [[MCAdvertiserAssistant alloc] initWithServiceType:@"txt_msg_service" discoveryInfo:self.dictionaryInfo session:self.advertiseSession];
[self.advertiser start];

But is there any way to create a custom MCBrowserViewController that displays the discoveryInfo on the other end rather than using the built in one? Does anyone have any example code?

Answer 1

I suggest creating your own tableView to display the list of nearby devices from your MCBrowser.

I am creating a wrapper with convenient methods so that you can populate the nearby devices much more easily. https://github.com/thkien/THMultipeer

First set your discovery info as you want before you start broadcasting (this is including advertising and browsing):

THMultipeer.me().serviceType = "thkeen-test"
THMultipeer.me().info = ["model": UIDevice.currentDevice().model]
THMultipeer.me().broadcast()

Now you have full control of how you want to populate the UI. All you need to do is implement the delegate in your view controller:

- (void)multipeerNewPeerFound:(MCPeerID*)peerID withName:(NSString*)name andInfo:(NSDictionary*)info atIndex:(NSInteger)index;
- (void)multipeerPeerLost:(MCPeerID*)peerID atIndex:(NSInteger)index;
- (void)multipeerAllPeersRemoved;

If you want to get the whole list of peers, simply call: THMultipeer.me().peers (Swift language)

Everything is already handled by the library. Yet the part I have not done is the custom MCSession, I'm only done with the Discovery part. Hope I can finish it in 2 - 4 weeks. The library is in Objective-C so it should be backward compatible.