I was hoping to create a single private CKRecord type that contains fields that are defined by multiple child classes. For example, an ApplicationOptions record type that contains all options, but having those options divided up into child classes, like the example below. I thought a way to do this might be to have the child classes inherit from EVObject, like so:

public class ApplicationOptions: EVCloudKitDataObject {
    public var audio = AudioOptions()
    public var video = VideoOptions()
    public var playback = PlaybackOptions()
}

public class AudioOptions: EVObject {
    public audioPreferenceOne: Bool = false
}

public class VideoOptions: EVObject {
    public videoPreferenceOne: Bool = false
}

public class PlaybackOptions: EVObject {
    public playbackPreferenceOne: Bool = false
}

The desired result would be an ApplicationOptions CKRecord that contains fields named something like audio_audioPreferenceOne, video_videoPreferenceOne and playback_playbackPreferenceOne. In this case, there will only ever be a single record instance for application options, and it would be overkill imho to also create separate record types for each of the child classes. They are also expected to only result in a single record instance per user.

When I attempt something like the above example, I get this unhandled exception:

*** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: 'Objects of class __NSDictionaryM cannot be set on CKRecord'

Is there any way to accomplish this type of thing, or is this beyond the scope of what is supposed to be possible? Thanks...

I have found the root cause of some of my problems with property values not being their expected values when retrieving data saved in CloudKit using EVCloudKitDao. I'm not sure if this can be easily or at all fixed though. Please review my observations on this and provide your thoughts.

Consider a class structure like the following:

public class A : EVCloudKitDataObject {
    public var b = B()

    public required init() {
        super.init()
        b.intProp = 9
    }
}

public class B: EVCloudKitDataObject {
    public required init() {
        super.init()
        intProp = 5
    }

    public var intProp = 0 {
        didSet {
            EVLog("intProp set to \(intProp)")
        }
    }

    // NOT storing the intProp property value in CloudKit is key to this issue
    override public func propertyMapping() -> [(String?, String?)] {
        return [("intProp", nil)]
    }
}

If you set breakpoints in Class A's assignment of 9 to the b.intProp property and the EVLog("intProp set to...") statements, you will see the following behavior in action.

If an instance of class A is saved to CloudKit using EVCloudKitDao, then retrieved, the value of the "b" variable in the class A instance will be 5, not 9 as expected. This is due to a second instance of class B being directly instantiated by EVCloudKitDao and assigned to the class A instance's "b" property after it has already been instantiated from an instance of Class A. This also means sub-objects are instantiated multiple times, one per level of however deep they are nested in the root EVCloudKitDataObject being saved.

Is it possible to assign stored values to the already-instantiated sub-objects instead of instantiating new instances? If not, I believe this means I will have to remove any objects that I was expecting EVCloudKitDao to ignore using the propertyMapping override.

Hi Edwin,

These changes ended up being pretty substantial. As I mentioned before, my experience with iOS/tvOS is limited, and my app, along with your project, is the first Swift coding I've done. I have no doubt that these changes could be implemented differently, and could probably be implemented in better, simpler, and/or smarter ways. I welcome your review and comments. I have already learned a lot from your project, and fully expect to learn more from us discussing these changes. I hope your schedule will allow you to do so.

Here's some notes on my thinking behind the changes:

• IMHO, adding the completion handlers while maintaining the publicDB, privateDB and ...forContainer DB constants required keeping the two fully separate. I also thought that being able to assign multiple completion handlers was a reasonable expectation. My changes support that behavior.
• I also included support for automatically calling completion handlers that are added after a constant DB entity is initialized. The new handlers are called the next time the constant entity is referenced. All assigned handlers are called again in the event of a DB reinitialization.
• A wrapper class was needed to facilitate easy removal of handlers if they were no longer needed. The wrapper class is returned as a token that the calling code is expected to keep up with, then call the wrapper's releaseToken method when the associated handler should no longer be called. I also created a manager class that I use in my app to keep up with the tokens and remove all of them when it goes out of scope. I can include that if you'd like.
• Per-user caching now uses the iCloud account's user recordId as part of the file name. This change required some semaphore usage to wait on the recordId to be retrieved the first time. Also, the local cache file name is constructed the same as before if no user recordId is returned. This may need to be changed.
• I had to change the iCloud status monitoring code from the sample code I originally provided in the feature request. I found that code was broken in varying ways depending on the OS version being used. It now uses fetchUserRecordIDWithCompletionHandler, which is also used to construct the local cache file names.
• Currently, an EVCloudKitDao DB instance has its activeUser and (new) activeUserId properties set to nil, followed by the initializeDataBase method being called, for all public and private DB instances when an iCloud status change is detected. I'm not sure if anything else needs to be reset or not (subscriptions maybe?). Please let me know or make the needed changes if other things are needed.
• EVCloudData adds a completion handler that calls disconnectAll() to each EVCloudKitDao instance that its constant entities depend on. This completion handler is given a higher priority than app-provided ones. It should always be called first, avoiding the possibility of disconnecting everything after the app-provided handlers added their needed connections.
• Being a Swift newb, I am still a little fuzzy on when closures can cause a circular reference that prevents them and their enclosing code from being released from memory. I've read about things like specifying [weak self] and [unowned self] in closures. However I'm hesitant to apply them since they can also cause premature releasing of things before everything finishes executing. I will eventually get around to using the profiler and getting a clearer understanding of when they're needed. In the meantime, discussion of this area is definitely welcomed.
• While the sample AppMessage app compiles successfully (albeit with the same warnings it exhibited prior to my changes), I didn't make any modifications to it to take advantage of my changes or to kickstart the iCloud account status monitoring. I made those changes in the tvOS app that I'm working and tested the changes from my app. We can discuss what needs to be done to integrate and reasonably exercise my changes in the sample app.
• I didn't make any documentation changes. I fully expect further changes to be needed, so I didn't see the point until everything is finalized.
• Finally, I didn't change the pod version number as I wasn't sure what you'd want it changed to with this many changes.

Hey guys.

Do you have any news about EVCloudKitDAO on Swift4? I've tried to fix the errors I got, but I'm not advanced programmer and I couldn't be able to find out the solution.

These two lines contains the same error.

And this error is reported too.

I would appreciate if you guys could help me on that.

Thanks in advance.

I need to connect to the same container from both my tvOS app and its TVTopShelfProvider extension. Thus far during the development of my app, I've been using its default container and EVCloudKit's publicDB and privateDB accessors. According to the Apple iCloud documentation (quoted below), I should be able to connect to one app's default container from another app that is developed using the same developer team account.

I attempted to do this by changing references to publicDB and privateDB to publicDBForContainer and privateDBForContainer and passing my app's bundle identifier name as the container name. After doing this, I don't see any error messages in the console output, but my app is no longer retrieving any data. Will I need to create a custom container to be used by the app and extension in order for this to work with EVCloudKitDao?

_Share Containers Between Apps_

Optionally, configure your app to use multiple containers or share a container with other apps. For example, you might use one app internally to create record types and records programmatically to return a database to a known state. This app needs to share the same container as the end-user app you are developing and testing. _To do this, you enable the first app to use the default container of the second app_ or create a custom container that both apps share. iOS and Mac apps can also be configured to share the same containers.

Tried several ways in this thread to little avail. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/24030814/swift-language-nsclassfromstring

e.g. @objc(Messsage) class Message : EVCloudKitDataObject

Fix: In EVReflection: Use objc_getClass(anyobjectTypeString) instead of swiftClassFromString(anyobjectTypeString).

Quick question for you... I am continuing to test and ran into an issue. I am simulating situations where items are added on one device and removed on another. I am hitting an unhanded exception if I follow these steps:

1. Launch my tvOS app with at least one of my EVCloudData object types in existence
2. Return to main Apple TV screen but leave my app running in Xcode
3. Delete the EVCloudData object record using the iCloud dashboard in a browser
4. Return to my app on the Apple TV and BOOM goes the dynamite.

The unhandled exception is occurring in the EVCloudData deleteObject method.

/**
 Delete an object from every data collection where it's part of

 - parameter recordId: The recordId of the object that will be deleted
 :return: No return value
 */
private func deleteObject(recordId: String) {
    for (filter, _) in self.data {
        let itemID: Int? = data[filter]!.EVindexOf {item in return item.recordID.recordName == recordId}
        if itemID != nil {
            data[filter]!.removeAtIndex(itemID!)
            NSOperationQueue.mainQueue().addOperationWithBlock {
                (self.deletedHandlers[filter]!)(recordId: recordId, dataIndex:itemID!)
                (self.dataChangedHandlers[filter]!)()
                self.postDataDeletedNotification(filter, recordId: recordId, dataIndex: itemID!)
            }
            dataIsUpdated(filter)
        }
    }
}

This line of code is the culprit:

let itemID: Int? = data[filter]!.EVindexOf {item in return item.recordID.recordName == recordId}

It blows up when the item's recordName/recordId comparison is attempted. Here's the exception output:

2015-11-30 15:52:47.748 Marquees[1818:672274] -[__NSDictionaryM recordName]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x147758100
2015-11-30 15:52:47.751 Marquees[1818:672274] *** Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[__NSDictionaryM recordName]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x147758100'
*** First throw call stack:
(0x1857458e8 0x184db3f80 0x18574c5fc 0x1857495a0 0x18564d6cc 0x1001e18f4 0x1001e0d40 0x1001d5da4 0x1001d6278 0x1001e55f0 0x1001f2f20 0x1001db530 0x100083010 0x1000830f8 0x18a6200b0 0x18a60ef20 0x186ceb790 0x186cebb10 0x1856fcee4 0x1856fc978 0x1856fa678 0x1856296c0 0x186b34088 0x18a3d1d64 0x1000855b0 0x1851ca974)
libc++abi.dylib: terminating with uncaught exception of type NSException
Message from debugger: Terminated due to signal 6

Prior to executing the problem line, I inspected the item:

Printing description of item:
(EVCloudKitDao.EVCloudKitDataObject) item = 0x00000001476fb3f0 {
    EVReflection.EVObject = {
        ObjectiveC.NSObject = {}
    }
    recordID = 0x0000000147758100 {
        ObjectiveC.NSObject = {}
    }
    recordType = "Performance"
    creationDate = 0x000000014775cab0 2015-11-30 21:48:51 UTC
    creatorUserRecordID = Some {
        Some = 0x0000000147757ec0 {
            ObjectiveC.NSObject = {}
        }
    }
    modificationDate = 0x000000014775cb20 2015-11-30 21:48:51 UTC
    lastModifiedUserRecordID = Some {
        Some = 0x000000014773f5e0 {
            ObjectiveC.NSObject = {}
        }
    }
    recordChangeTag = "ihmhmw90"
    encodedSystemFields = 0 bytes {
        Some = 0x000000014773f060 0 bytes
    }
}

Have you seen this issue before? I'm not sure if any of my recent changes would have impacted this or not.

Added NSNotificationManager-based push notifications to be used in addition to or instead of handlers passed to the connect method. Also changed the completion handler’s isFinished Bool parameter to a new “status” ConnectStatus enumeration value.

Apologies for the extraneous whitespace changes. Also, while I tested the additions in my own tvOS app, I didn't add any testing to the AppMessages sample app. I can do so, perhaps in the TestsViewController if that's what you're using to test with, but wanted input from you before proceeding with that.

Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.

Hi Edwin,

Per the tvOS documentation, local storage is very limited for tvOS apps. I wanted to get your thoughts on disabling local EVCloudData caching on tvOS or forcing it to store the local files in the cache folder instead of the documents directory. I will be happy to implement what is needed once I hear from you. Thanks!

Apple documentation on tvOS storage:

Local Storage for Your App Is Limited

The maximum size of an Apple TV app is limited to 200 MB. Moreover, your app can only access 500 KB of persistent storage that is local to the device (using the NSUserDefaults class). Outside of this limited local storage, all other data must be purgeable by the operating system when space is low. You have a few options for managing these resources:

• Your app can store and retrieve user data in iCloud.
• Your app can download the data it needs into its cache directory. Downloaded data is not deleted while the app is running. However, when space is low and your app is not running, this data may be deleted. Do not use the entire cache space as this can cause unpredictable results.
• Your app can package read-only assets using on-demand resources. Then, at runtime, your app requests the resources it needs, and the operating system automatically downloads and manages those resources. Knowing how and when to load new assets while keeping your users engaged is critical to creating a successful app. For information on on-demand resources, see On-Demand Resources Guide This means that every app developed for the new Apple TV must be able to store data in iCloud and retrieve it in a way that provides a great customer experience.

Existence must be checked before insert a record into table. but these are 2 operations(check&insert), when multiple users do this in the same time, it will cause issue of inserting 2 same records.

How to handle this?

UserA: |----> check ----> not existence ----> insert ----> insert succ UserB: |--------> check ----> not existence ----> insert ----> insert succ

So 2 same records will be inserted into table.

I just found an error occurred during startup, "Could not cast value of type 'CKNotification' (0x35cde2ac) to 'CKQueryNotification' (0x35cde2d4)." in the line : var queryNotification: CKQueryNotification = cloudNotification as! CKQueryNotification. This is inside the function didReceiveRemoteNotification() in the EVCloudKitDao.swift. I think its the downcast problem.

Hey Edwin!

I built and submitted via Xcode 11.5 and my app targets iOS 12+.

Here's what Apple said in the binary rejection email I received (twice):

ITMS-90338: Non-public API usage - The app contains or inherits from non-public classes in Frameworks/EVCloudKitDao.framework/EVCloudKitDao: CKDiscoveredUserInfo . If method names in your source code match the private Apple APIs listed above, altering your method names will help prevent this app from being flagged in future submissions. In addition, note that one or more of the above APIs may be located in a static library that was included with your app. If so, they must be removed. For further information, visit the Technical Support Information at http://developer.apple.com/support/technical/

I know when I tried to build with Xcode 12 last week, the build failed due to CKDiscoveredUserInfo not existing anymore (I think there were deprecation warnings and now it's finally removed in iOS 14). But not sure what would cause a rejection already when not even using Xcode 12. 🤔

I add a new object using EVCloudData.publicDB.saveItem. Subsequently attempting to call recordID.recordName causes an exception to be thrown.

'NSInvalidArgumentException', reason: '-[__NSCFString recordName]: unrecognized selector sent to instance 0x1c2e63980'

Sometimes this happens in upsertObject at let itemID: Int? = data[filter]!.EVindexOf {i in return i.recordID.recordName == recordId}.

I have a subscription by using connect(...) to the type, with the predicate value true (all items).

This appears to be happening on several subclasses of CKDataObject when there is a 'connection' to the class.

Reported by Joseph Gates:

Hi,

Now running with

Using EVCloudKitDao (3.5.1) Using EVReflection (5.6.0)

Testing worked fine with XCTAssertNotNil et al. Thanks for your help!

I did find another issue. You may want me to add it to the issue tracker for EVCloudKitDao.

What happens is that the app fails to complete start up. I tracked it to this in EVCloudKitDao.swift

/**
Set or reset the quick reference to the container and database

- parameter containerIdentifier: Passing on the name of the container
*/
open func initializeDatabase(_ containerIdentifier: String? = nil) {
    let pathDir = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(.cachesDirectory, .userDomainMask, true)
    if pathDir.count > 0 {
        fileDirectory = pathDir[0] as NSString!
    } else {
        fileDirectory = ""
    }
    filemanager = FileManager.default
    ioQueue = DispatchQueue(label: "NL.EVICT.CloudKit.ioQueue", attributes: []) as DispatchQueue

    if let identifier = containerIdentifier {
        container = CKContainer(identifier: identifier)
    } else {
        container = CKContainer.default()
    }
    if self.isType == .isPublic {
        database = container.publicCloudDatabase
    } else {
        database = container.privateCloudDatabase
    }

    let sema = DispatchSemaphore(value: 0)
    container.accountStatus(completionHandler: {status, error in
        if error != nil {
            EVLog("Error: Initialising EVCloudKitDao - accountStatusWithCompletionHandler.\n\(error!.localizedDescription)")
        } else {
            self.accountStatus = status
        }
        EVLog("Account status = \(status.hashValue) (0=CouldNotDetermine/1=Available/2=Restricted/3=NoAccount)")
        sema.signal()
    })

// let _ = sema.wait(timeout: DispatchTime.distantFuture) //???!!! EVLog("Container identifier = (container.containerIdentifier.debugDescription)") }

The second to last statement is let _ = sema.wait(timeout: DispatchTime.distantFuture) //???!!!

It waits on the semaphore forever. I commented it out and everything runs as expected. Any suggestions on what I might have or have not done that would cause the wait forever? I’m sure that your other users would have reported this before now if it were a common mistake. I checked the open/closed issues bur haven’t seen anything related.

Let me know how I can help, and thanks again for your help,

Joseph Gates [email protected] mailto:[email protected]

🌀 ERROR: Unexpected type while converting value for JsonSerialization: <CKRecordID: 0x1c4437260; recordName=BACAF2DF-2B84-4815-94F5-F246E27B5489, zoneID=_defaultZone:defaultOwner> 🌀 ERROR: Unexpected type while converting value for JsonSerialization: <CKReference: 0x1c4422ac0; recordID=<CKRecordID: 0x1c4233a00; recordName=53BA8280-6396-4A6D-9F51-40BF78D22FBE, zoneID=defaultZone:defaultOwner>> 09/22/2017 15:45:59:967 Reading)[380:.] EVCloudKitDao.swift(538) backupData(:toFile:): Data is written to /var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/1A249C94-6DD9-439F-8DA2-FB5BC17CADF7/Library/Caches/Filter_TraceReaderCount.bak)

Hi,

I really want to use this component. I just don't like using Cccoapods. Can this be used via Carthage (preferred)? Or (in the future) SPM when Swift 3.0 is released?

The fetchChangeNotifications method is accessed via EVCloudData.privateDB and EVCloudData.publicDB. If my app is storing data in both the public and private DBs, should calls to both DB's fetchChangeNotifications methods be made?

Also, I see messages like this in the console all the time, indicating that received notifications are not CloudKit Query notifications, even though they do appear to be just that. Is this indicating a problem, or can it be safely ignored?

01/20/2016 15:38:16:975 Marquees)[459:.] AppDelegate.swift(257) application(_:didReceiveRemoteNotification:):
    Push received

01/20/2016 15:38:16:976 Marquees)[459:.] AppDelegate.swift(259) application(_:didReceiveRemoteNotification:):
    Not a CloudKit Query notification.

01/20/2016 15:38:16:978 Marquees)[459:.] EVCloudKitDao.swift(1195) didReceiveRemoteNotification(_:executeIfNonQuery:inserted:updated:deleted:completed:):
    WARNING: The retrieved notification is not a CloudKit query notification.
===>userInfo = [ck: {
    ce = 2;
    cid = "iCloud.com.tommyb.Marquees";
    nid = "363ec9be-24c5-4c2f-949e-5989c0567272";
}]
notification = <CKNotification: 0x14470a510; notificationType=0, notificationID=<CKNotificationID: 0x144725e90; UUID=363ec9be-24c5-4c2f-949e-5989c0567272>, containerIdentifier=iCloud.com.tommyb.Marquees>

Thanks for the needed clarification on this.