Parse SDK for tvOS

[waterclock]

Please make available a tvOS-compatible version of the Parse frameworks. Apple TV apps will not be able to compile against the iOS frameworks upon official release of Apple's tvOS SDK.

[nlutsenko]

This issue is for tracking progress/work for Parse SDK for tvOS. It's currently work in progress, but should be out very soon. If you have specific requests or ideas - please comment here, so we are aware of this and can have a good overall discussion.

To use the development version aka current latest, update your Podfile as follows:

pod 'Parse', :git => 'git@github.com:ParsePlatform/Parse-SDK-iOS-OSX.git', :branch => 'master'

The incomplete list of required changes:

• [x] Add basic target for tvOS SDK
• [x] Fix imports for frameworks that aren't available on tvOS
• [x] Update PFLocationManager to use compatible APIs when running on tvOS
• [x] Disable extensions data sharing APIs (they don't work on tvOS)
• [x] Disable PFPush (at least for the first release)
• [x] Disable PFInstallation (at least for the first release, unless we have final confirmation that APNS works on tvOS)
• [x] Make PFPurchase work (we have StoreKit, woohoo)
• [x] Disable PFNetworkActivityIndicatorManager (API not available on tvOS)
• [x] Update PFFile staging controller to use caches folder, when running on tvOS
• [x] Update installationId storage to use NSUserDefaults when running on tvOS
• [x] Update PFUser.currentUser() to use NSUserDefaults for storage of non-sensitive data on tvOS
• [x] Update PFAnalytics to run analytics events right away, instead of going through EventualyQueue
• [x] Disable Local Datastore APIs, since there is no local storage on tvOS
• [x] Disable saveEventually/deleteEventually, since there is no persistent storage on tvOS
• [x] Explicitly test deployment with bitcode for end applications
• [x] Add tvOS SDK to deployment packages
• [x] Add tvOS starter project (optional)
• [x] Make Parse.podspec compatible with tvOS

This comment is constantly updating, sometimes without you noticing

[waterclock]

Great news, thanks!

[vikmeup]

+1

[WillChilcutt]

+1

[artisanglobal]

+1

[gabek]

+1

[vikmeup]

@nlutsenko any estimates? Thanks.

[nlutsenko]

Amazing to see this level of excitement. Let me output some updates here:

• Since there is no local storage or push notifications on tvOS as of right now, we are investigating what parts of the SDK should be evicted from tvOS target
• For user authentication and analytics tracking we still need a place to put currentUser and installationId (these are just files right now, but you don't really want them to be synced to all your devices, so iCloud containers are not an option)
• We are aiming to nail down the list of all the things that we need to build/change/remove/rinse/repeat to support tvOS by mid next week
• This list should appear on this issue, so we are publicly tracking it and can develop in the wild open (as well as accept contributions)

Any feedback so far about parts that you think are the most important to have, or even something new that you can see us building are very welcome!

[WillChilcutt]

As you pointed out, since we cannot store data locally, the first thing to get working is sending and retrieving information. I think the "nice to haves" like the custom UI and analytic, etc. can come later as we have a few weeks before apps will be released, but having the ability to store data remotely is the most important issue right now.

EDIT: Just wanted to throw out a quick thank you for the fast response from the Parse team on recognizing the importance of making this framework work with tvOS!

[ghost]

+1

[reggatta]

Maybe there's a way to put a wrapper around the javascript API or create a lightweight IOS SDK that allows the basics? It seems that the tvOS limits are such that maybe a better approach is to provide connectivity to Parse cloud code.

[waterclock]

Llightweight local storage is available via NSUserDefaults (up to 500K). Also, caches can be written to disk for things like image caching, but they can be deleted by the system so will need to test for their existence prior to reading.

Definitely need the basic Objective-C API of Parse.framework and ParseUI.framework. All the social authentication frameworks can wait till twitter and Facebook figure out how to offer third-party authentication on a platform without a web view.

[ay8s]

Agree with @WillChilcutt & @waterclock. Having the ability to retrieve and store information would be great before looking into the nice to haves.

There is some more discussion about the NSUserDefaults/local storage options here... https://forums.developer.apple.com/thread/16967

[ebender001]

My wish list for tvOS support would be a Cloud Code framework that would allow serving various templates that Apple has defined. It would be a shame to make a UIKit based TV app when TVML based UI is so nice looking on the TV.

[waterclock]

Native UIKit apps look every bit as good or better than the TVML samples and a native Parse tvOS framework is a must.

[Silkjaer]

I opened a bug report with Apple for requesting persistent local storage. It has already been marked by Apple as a duplicate. If we are enough people requesting this, we may be heard.

[waterclock]

I understand persistent local storage is very nice to have, but it really shouldn't be a show-stopper for a tvOS Parse framework. Again, as I understand it, caches for things like PFFiles are supported. It's just that the framework will need to test for the expected existence of a cache before reading from or writing to it (as tvOS may have deleted it during routine or resource-constrained cleanup operations). The whole point of Parse is to act as our server-based datastore. Even no local storage at all were possible (which is not the case), it should still be possible to do 99.99 percent of what we need it to do outside of perhaps the transmission of extremely large data files.

[ebender001]

Agree with waterclock, but, in a pinch, one can use the Parse REST API and SwiftyJSON (with or without Alamofire as the URL loading platform). I do miss the convenience of PFFiles, however.

[gabek]

I started integrating the Parse REST API with AFNetworking last night and I'll move to the SDK when it's available. I suggest you all do the same if you want to get any work done.

[forbze]

+1

[nlutsenko]

Guys, we are aiming to have a precise list of things to be done as well as rough timeline for tvOS SDK by the EoD tomorrow. Thanks for bearing with us, we are going to get there soon!

[mandazi]

+1

[michaelnew]

Any updates to the timeline?

[phin]

+1 :)

[poojanjhaveri]

+1

[hvsw]

+1 @kuquert @pietrodegrazia

[reggatta]

+1

[reidmweber]

+1

[rrroni]

+1

[StephenLJohnson]

+1

[waterclock]

Nearly two weeks since any word on this. I sure hope it's coming along, as time is winding down on being able to submit Parse-enabled apps to the Apple TV App Store in time for release. Any updates appreciated!

[lfarah]

+1

[quentinhayot]

+1

[twomedia]

+1

[coolioxlr]

+1

[hawthornelove2016]

Any update to this? I would love to implement Parse into our first app for Apple TV and being that it can only use CloudKit for storage I would hope this was available before launch.

[waterclock]

Fairly confident at this point that a team of assassins took out the engineers working on this. Disaster.

[StephenLJohnson]

I am with @SloanHawthorne on this. I would rather use Parse than CloudKit for my tvOS app, especially since I already have a lot of code that works with Parse.

[nlutsenko]

Hey guys, engineers behind this are still alive :grin:, though there was some suspicious assassin activity nearby.

The current rough plan is:

• Finish up all the work for watchOS 2 SDK, since it overlaps tightly with requirements for tvOS
• Add tvOS target and port over tests
• Start including classes/features piece by piece, and exclude things that don't work or mark them as unavailable for tvOS

Here is the current idea of what the feature set of first tvOS release we are going to have:

• PFObject and PFQuery
• ACLs, Roles, Geo Points
• PFUser for authentication, PFSession for sessions
• Anonymous users
• PFCloud
• PFConfig
• No Local Datastore (doesn't make much sense, since no local storage)
• PFFile might be unavailable for uploads, since we need to change how we store the data for it

Anything not in this list is a nice to have, but might be unavailable. If you have any requirements - please let us know.

I am going to come back to this issue and compile a brief list of explicitly actionable things, so we can rage through them together with everyone. As well as include some instructions on how to compile the tvOS SDK for yourself.

[waterclock]

PFImageView is a big one, and ours are typically populated with images from PFFiles. We're using it everywhere in our prototype Parse tvOS app. Would be pain to remove. Caching of such image PFFiles is helpful too, so any clever ways to allow caching of returned PFFile images is a big help. Have steered away from reliance upon other parts of ParseUI like table and collectionview subclasses, though they might not actually too difficult to bring over.

PFFile uploading is not important, and likely won't be for a long while for most tvOS apps as it is not currently a content-creation device.

Many thanks, glad the assassins failed! Cheers!

[reggatta]

Sound like some progress! If anyone has a wrapper around the Parse REST API that can be used in the interim, please let us know.

[poojanjhaveri]

@waterclock PFFile transfer seems easy. Grab the PFObject through Rest API. Then grab url from that json -> dictionary object. Use SDWebImage library for caching images and loading images from url. It is one of the best image caching libraries I have ever used.

[apersaud]

+1 Thanks.

[Blueteak]

Any idea if we will be able to get the Unity SDK updated for AppleTV support in the near future?

[richardjrossiii]

@Blueteak This is more of a discussion for our .NET repository: https://github.com/ParsePlatform/Parse-SDK-dotNET

Feel free to open an issue over there and we can begin tracking the things needed to support unity on tvOS.

[MobileVet]

+1

Beta 3 appears to now support Push Notifications, though I haven't been able to verify it yet (had anticipated using Parse to do it but clearly not an option currently).

[UIApplication registerForRemoteNotifications] compiles and the documentation indicates it is now supported by tvOS.

Personally I would love to see Push supported / included by Parse in their tvOS build.

[JackoPlane]

+1

@nlutsenko Do we have any update on the timeline and/or how we should go about compiling on tvOS?

[coolioxlr]

I use this lightweight parse sdk for my tvOS project https://github.com/hackiftekhar/IQParseSDK so far been working fine.

[waterclock]

@coolioxlr Looks nifty! No idea how well it's caching (assuming such exists) will work on tvOS, and it hasn't been updated in a year so it's evidently not changed anything to accommodate tvOS' lack of persistent local storage.

I guess if those rumored assassins succeed in taking out the proper Parse tvOS port team it's a good fallback. ;)

[nlutsenko]

Hey guys, letting you know - I updated the second comment on this issue with a first pass on the list of things that we want to tackle to build required minimal SDK for tvOS. That issue is going to be constantly updating, as well as I am going to attach all Pull Requests to this issue.