Handling AVPlayerLayer when wrapping AVPlayer behaviour - ios

Question

I'm trying to wrap AVPlayer in my own class so I can provide a nicer API to use throughout my app and so I can mock player behaviour for testing with other objects (and because the AVPlayer KVOs are quite ugly to use!). Here's a simplified model of what I'm trying to do with just the play and pause functionality:
protocol VideoPlayerProtocol {
func play()
func pause()
}
class AVPlayerWrapped: VideoPlayerProtocol {
private let player = AVPlayer()
init(playerItem: AVPlayerItem) {
self.player.replaceCurrentItem(with: playerItem)
}
func play() {
player.play()
}
func pause() {
player.pause()
}
}
I also have a PlayerView which adds an AVPlayerLayer to a view. From the Apple docs, this is set by providing the view an AVPlayer:
class PlayerView: UIView {
override class var layerClass: AnyClass {
return AVPlayerLayer.self
}
var playerLayer: AVPlayerLayer {
return layer as! AVPlayerLayer
}
var player: AVPlayer? {
get { playerLayer.player }
set { playerLayer.player = newValue }
}
}
The problem is that when I setup an AVPlayerWrapped object, in order to display the playback in a view I need to reveal the underlying AVPlayer to the player property on PlayerView which defeats the purpose of me wrapping the player.
Is there a way for me to somehow use an AVPlayerLayer without my AVPlayerWrapped having to reveal its underlying player please? Or am I taking the wrong approach?
Any guidance much appreciated!

Answer 1

class AVPlayerWrapped: VideoPlayerProtocol {
fileprivate let player = AVPlayer()
init(playerItem: AVPlayerItem) {
self.player.replaceCurrentItem(with: playerItem)
}
func play() {
player.play()
}
func pause() {
player.pause()
}
}
extension AVPlayerLayer {
func setPlayerWrapper(_ playerWrapped: AVPlayerWrapped) {
player = playerWrapped.player
}
}
And
class PlayerView: UIView {
override class var layerClass: AnyClass {
return AVPlayerLayer.self
}
var playerLayer: AVPlayerLayer {
return layer as! AVPlayerLayer
}
func setPlayerWrapper(_ playerWrapped: AVPlayerWrapped) {
playerLayer.setPlayerWrapper(playerWrapped)
}
}
I believe you don't need a getter for your view - in my practice I haven't used it. But in case you do, you can do it with an associatedObject, but it's much slower than a real property and I would advise you to use this approach only in special cases.