How to get items from extension context in Share extension for iOS?

Question

Once my share extension is loaded, not everytime and not everything is visible for user immediately. The most common is that there you can see image, number of images, and content text. However there are cases where there is a lot more informations.

How to get access to them?

I know that within SLComposeServiceViewController there is extensionContext and its inputItems property.

Ok, so I stopped the debugger at time, and print out on console some things with following command:

po (extensionContext!.inputItems[0] as! NSExtensionItem).userInfo![NSExtensionItemAttachmentsKey]

Is it correct way to do this?
Is there usually one input item?

there was two NSItemProvider objects as attachments to first NSExtensionItem

Ok, then I print out the first of attachments:

How to get that image from that NSItemProvider and url from the next one? Can you deliver some code?

I suppose we will use

loadItemForTypeIdentifier(_:options:completionHandler:)

but do not know how.

score 9 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 05 '15 at 08:43

import MobileCoreServices

There is a simple function you can apply to your code:

private func fetchAndSetContentFromContext() {

    guard let extensionItems = extensionContext?.inputItems as? [NSExtensionItem] else {
        return
    }

    for extensionItem in extensionItems {
        if let itemProviders = extensionItem.attachments as? [NSItemProvider] {
            for itemProvider in itemProviders {
                if itemProvider.hasItemConformingToTypeIdentifier(kUTTypeText as String) {

                    itemProvider.loadItemForTypeIdentifier(kUTTypeText as String, options: nil, completionHandler: { text, error in

                    })
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 09 '19 at 09:52

So now you know to use the loadItemForTypeIdentifier(_:options:completionHandler:) method to load your aspired data.

In your snapshots you wan to get image and url objects.

Let's begin.

guard
  let items = extensionContext?.inputItems as? [NSExtensionItem],
  let item = items.first,
  let attachments = item.attachments
else { return }

var image: UIImage?
var url: URL?

let semaphore = DispatchSemaphore(value: 2)
for attachment in attachments {
  if attachment.hasItemConformingToTypeIdentifier(kUTTypeImage as String) {
    attachment.loadItem(forTypeIdentifier: kUTTypeImage as String) { item, _ in
      image = item as? UIImage
      semaphore.signal()
    }
  }

  if attachment.hasItemConformingToTypeIdentifier(kUTTypeURL as String) {
    attachment.loadItem(forTypeIdentifier: kUTTypeURL as String) { item, _ in
      url = item as? URL
      semaphore.signal()
    }
  }
}

_ = semaphore.wait(timeout: .now() + 1.0)

print(String(describing: image))
print(String(describing: url))

How to get items from extension context in Share extension for iOS?

2 Answers2