Basic example for sharing text or image with UIActivityViewController in Swift

Question

I started my search by wanting to know how I could share to other apps in iOS  I discovered that two important ways are    UIActivityViewController UIDocumentInteractionController   These and other methods are compared in this SO answer    Often when I am learning a new concept I like to see a basic example to get me started  Once I get something basic set up I can modify it how I like later    There are many SO questions related to UIActivityViewController  but I couldn t find any that were just asking for a simple example  Since I just learned how to do this  I will provide my own answer below  Feel free to add a better one  or an Objective-C version

User · Answer

You may use the following functions which I wrote in one of my helper class in a project.

just call

showShareActivity(msg:"message", image: nil, url: nil, sourceRect: nil)

and it will work for both iPhone and iPad. If you pass any view's CGRect value by sourceRect it will also shows a little arrow in iPad.

func topViewController()-> UIViewController{
    var topViewController:UIViewController = UIApplication.shared.keyWindow!.rootViewController!

    while ((topViewController.presentedViewController) != nil) {
        topViewController = topViewController.presentedViewController!;
    }

    return topViewController
}

func showShareActivity(msg:String?, image:UIImage?, url:String?, sourceRect:CGRect?){
    var objectsToShare = [AnyObject]()

    if let url = url {
        objectsToShare = [url as AnyObject]
    }

    if let image = image {
        objectsToShare = [image as AnyObject]
    }

    if let msg = msg {
        objectsToShare = [msg as AnyObject]
    }

    let activityVC = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: objectsToShare, applicationActivities: nil)
    activityVC.modalPresentationStyle = .popover
    activityVC.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = topViewController().view
    if let sourceRect = sourceRect {
        activityVC.popoverPresentationController?.sourceRect = sourceRect
    }

    topViewController().present(activityVC, animated: true, completion: nil)
}

User · Answer

Just as a note you can also use this for iPads   activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   sender   So the popover pops from the sender  the button in that case

User · Answer

I found this to work flawlessly if you want to share whole screen    IBAction func shareButton   sender  Any         let bounds   UIScreen main bounds     UIGraphicsBeginImageContextWithOptions bounds size  true  0 0      self view drawHierarchy in  bounds  afterScreenUpdates  false      let img   UIGraphicsGetImageFromCurrentImageContext       UIGraphicsEndImageContext       let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems   img    applicationActivities  nil      activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   self view     self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil

User · Answer

Share   Text     IBAction func shareOnlyText   sender  UIButton        let text    This is the text           let textShare     text       let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems  textShare   applicationActivities  nil      activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   self view      self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil        Share   Image   IBAction func shareOnlyImage   sender  UIButton        let image   UIImage named   Product       let imageShare     image        let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems  imageShare   applicationActivities  nil      activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   self view      self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil       Share   Text - Image - URL       IBAction func shareAll   sender  UIButton        let text    This is the text          let image   UIImage named   Product       let myWebsite   NSURL string  https   stackoverflow com users 4600136 mr-javed-multani tab profile       let shareAll   text   image    myWebsite      let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems  shareAll  applicationActivities  nil      activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   self view      self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil

User · Answer

I ve used the implementation above and just now I came to know that it doesn t work on iPad running iOS 13  I had to add these lines before present   call in order to make it work    avoiding to crash on iPad if let popoverController   activityViewController popoverPresentationController        popoverController sourceRect   CGRect x  UIScreen main bounds width   2  y  UIScreen main bounds height   2  width  0  height  0       popoverController sourceView   self view      popoverController permittedArrowDirections   UIPopoverArrowDirection rawValue  0      That s how it works for me  func shareData   dataToShare   Any             let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems  dataToShare  applicationActivities  nil             exclude some activity types from the list  optional            activityViewController excludedActivityTypes                   UIActivity ActivityType postToFacebook                        avoiding to crash on iPad         if let popoverController   activityViewController popoverPresentationController               popoverController sourceRect   CGRect x  UIScreen main bounds width   2  y  UIScreen main bounds height   2  width  0  height  0              popoverController sourceView   self view             popoverController permittedArrowDirections   UIPopoverArrowDirection rawValue  0                     self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil

User · Answer

UIActivityViewController Example Project  Set up your storyboard with two buttons and hook them up to your view controller  see code below      Add an image to your Assets xcassets  I called mine  lion      Code  import UIKit class ViewController  UIViewController           share text      IBAction func shareTextButton   sender  UIButton                text to share         let text    This is some text that I want to share               set up activity view controller         let textToShare     text           let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems  textToShare  applicationActivities  nil          activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   self view    so that iPads won t crash             exclude some activity types from the list  optional          activityViewController excludedActivityTypes     UIActivityType airDrop  UIActivityType postToFacebook               present the view controller         self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil                 share image      IBAction func shareImageButton   sender  UIButton                image to share         let image   UIImage named   Image               set up activity view controller         let imageToShare     image            let activityViewController   UIActivityViewController activityItems  imageToShare  applicationActivities  nil          activityViewController popoverPresentationController  sourceView   self view    so that iPads won t crash             exclude some activity types from the list  optional          activityViewController excludedActivityTypes     UIActivityType airDrop  UIActivityType postToFacebook               present the view controller         self present activityViewController  animated  true  completion  nil             Result  Clicking  Share some text  gives result on the left and clicking  Share an image  gives the result on the right     Notes   I retested this with iOS 11 and Swift 4  I had to run it a couple times in the simulator before it worked because it was timing out  This may be because my computer is slow  If you wish to hide some of these choices  you can do that with excludedActivityTypes as shown in the code above   Not including the popoverPresentationController  sourceView line will cause your app to crash when run on an iPad  This does not allow you to share text or images to other apps  You probably want UIDocumentInteractionController for that    See also   Add sharing to your Swift app via UIActivityViewController UIActivity View Controller from NSHipster UIActivityViewController documentation Share extension documentation comparison with UIDocumentInteractionController

[ios] Basic example for sharing text or image with UIActivityViewController in Swift

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