How to play audio from an http data stream in swift - ios

Question

I have an audio data stream coming in from a http response. I receive packets of bytes using the URLSessionDataDelegate method:
urlSession(_ session: URLSession, dataTask: URLSessionDataTask, didReceive data: Data)
I have successfully played the audio after appending all the data packets into a single Data object, using an AVAudioPlayer object and it's initWithData: initializer method.
What I really want to do is start audio playback while data is still coming in - streaming audio effectively. I haven't seen any answers that seem elegant for this use-case.
Options I've seen are:
Using the AudioToolbox: Audio File Stream Services & Audio Queues
Using the NSStream API, writing to a file and playing audio from that file concurrently
How would I achieve audio streaming playback from the Data packets coming in?

Answer 1

The easiest way is to use AVPlayer of AVFoundation framework. Instantiate the playerItem with your URL and pass it the player. Following code will do for you.
let urlString = "your url string"
guard let url = URL.init(string: urlString)
else {
return
}
let playerItem = AVPlayerItem.init(url: url)
player = AVPlayer.init(playerItem: playerItem)
player.play()

Answer 2

Consider AVPlayer for your requirement, something like this :
import AVKit
var player: AVPlayer?
func audioPlayer() {
do {
try AVAudioSession.sharedInstance().setCategory(AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback)
player = AVPlayer(url: URL.init(string: "your url")!)
//This is for a player screen, if you don't want to show a player screen you comment this part
let controller = AVPlayerViewController()
controller.player = player
controller.showsPlaybackControls = false
self.addChildViewController(controller)
let screenSize = UIScreen.main.bounds.size
let videoFrame = CGRect(x: 0, y: 130, width: screenSize.width, height: (screenSize.height - 130) / 2)
controller.view.frame = videoFrame
self.view.addSubview(controller.view)
// till here
player?.play()
} catch {
}
}
For more please read this : https://developer.apple.com/documentation/avfoundation/avplayer