The purpose Swift URL Components in iMessage Apps? - ios

Question

I am brand new to iMessage App development. Looking at some examples, it looks like the way information is transferred from the sender to the recipient with iMessage Apps is via URLComponents.
Is this the only way to send information on iMessage Apps?
I am unfamiliar with URLComponents in swift, does the actual URL even matter?
Thanks!!

Answer 1

MSMessage's url property is where you can store your custom data.
You can use iMessageDataKit library for storing key-value pairs in MSMessage objects. It makes setting and getting data really easy like:
let message: MSMessage = MSMessage()
message.md.set(value: 7, forKey: "user_id")
message.md.set(value: "john", forKey: "username")
message.md.set(values: ["joy", "smile"], forKey: "tags")
print(message.md.integer(forKey: "user_id")!)
print(message.md.string(forKey: "username")!)
print(message.md.values(forKey: "tags")!)
(Disclaimer: I'm the author of iMessageDataKit)

Answer 2

You can use it w/ native swift as well:
let layout = MSMessageTemplateLayout()
var components = URLComponents()
let caption = URLQueryItem(name: "caption", value: self.melody)
let decodedMelody = URLQueryItem(name: "melody", value: self.melody)
components.queryItems = [caption, decodedMelody]
let message = MSMessage(session: session ?? MSSession())
layout.image = self.screenImage.image
layout.caption = "Melody built with haptic and vibro."
layout.subcaption = "sent via iVibrio"
message.summaryText = "something summary"
message.url = components.url!
message.layout = layout
Here's my complete example how to send data and image via iMessage application