AVAudioPlayer not playing audio Swift - ios

Question

I am attempting to play a sound as an alert to the user of my app and I've looked at a few sources in trying to help me do this:
AVAudioPlayer not playing audio in Swift (to help me solve the problem I am running into now, to no avail)
Creating and playing a sound in swift (where I started originally)
And these videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq7eVJ6RSp8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKfe7xzHEZk
All of which are not giving me the desired outcome (the sound doesn't play).
Here is my code:
private func playFinishedSound(){
if let pathResource = NSBundle.mainBundle().pathForResource("3000", ofType: "mp3"){
let finishedStepSound = NSURL(fileURLWithPath: pathResource)
var audioPlayer = AVAudioPlayer()
do {
audioPlayer = try AVAudioPlayer(contentsOfURL: finishedStepSound)
if(audioPlayer.prepareToPlay()){
print("preparation success")
audioPlayer.delegate = self
if(audioPlayer.play()){
print("Sound play success")
}else{
print("Sound file could not be played")
}
}else{
print("preparation failure")
}
}catch{
print("Sound file could not be found")
}
}else{
print("path not found")
}
}
Currently I see "preparation success" and "sound play success" but no sound is played. The class I am implementing this in is an AVAudioPlayerDelegate and the file is called "3000.mp3" which is within the project directory. In context the method is called here:
private func finishCell(cell: TimerTableViewCell, currentTimer: TimerObject){
currentTimer.isRunning = false
cell.label.text = "dismiss"
cell.backgroundColor = UIColor.lightMintColor()
if(!currentTimer.launchedNotification){
playFinishedSound()
}
currentTimer.launchedNotification = true
}
Any help would be appreciated.

Answer 1

UPDATE/SOLUTION:
So the problem was that audioPlayer would become deallocated before it would play the sound, to fix this I had to make it a property within the class instead of just creating an instance of it within the function. The updated code looks like this:
Optional reference within the property declarations of the class:
var audioPlayer : AVAudioPlayer?
The function that utilizes the audioPlayer:
private func playFinishedSound(){
if let pathResource = NSBundle.mainBundle().pathForResource("3000", ofType: "mp3"){
let finishedStepSound = NSURL(fileURLWithPath: pathResource)
audioPlayer = AVAudioPlayer()
do {
audioPlayer = try AVAudioPlayer(contentsOfURL: finishedStepSound)
if(audioPlayer!.prepareToPlay()){
print("preparation success")
audioPlayer!.delegate = self
if(audioPlayer!.play()){
print("Sound play success")
}else{
print("Sound file could not be played")
}
}else{
print("preparation failure")
}
}catch{
print("Sound file could not be found")
}
}else{
print("path not found")
}
}