I'm looking for a way to develop an iOS in which I can access all network traffic, (I mean System-Wide) and route it through my app. Something like a proxy server but notice that I want to force the route and access all the traffic not only web requests (Something like what VPN Connections do).
I think that may go a bit beyond Apple limitations regarding App Store Guidelines. Any VPN API accessible for doing that ? Any practical suggestion or description on undocumented and private APIs is really appreciated.
P.S: This article may help understanding what I'm looking for;
To be able to do VPN functionalities you have to create a vpnplugin, the problem is that it's a pseudo-Private API, I'm saying "pseudo" because there are companies that had access to the documentation and there are apps on the App Store that uses it (OpenVPN connect for example). You can try reverse engineering some of those app plugins (it's the folder with the .vpnplugin extension).
By the way, someone already did that and published the vpn plugin API to github: https://github.com/Smartype/iOS_VPNPlugIn/blob/master/iOSVPNPlugIn.h
Network Extension of iOS9 will allow custom VPN tunnel implementations and NEPacketTunnelProvider is probably what you are looking for.
Check out the WWDC video.
https://developer.apple.com/videos/wwdc/2015/?id=717
You need to send an email to apple to get access to this function.
https://github.com/shadowsocks/shadowsocks-iOS/issues/124
Related
In short i'm trying to build an App that will grant/block wifi access to my son's wifi for his Ipad and his PS4 remotely using an App. I researched the topic and can't figure out how this can be done. Ideally i'd like to be able to grant/block wifi access independently Ie. block wifi to the Ipad and allow PS4.
How can this be done, no need for the full code ( well if you insist i'll take it ) but just point me in the right direction.
Depending on the router you're using you're going to need to write something that interacts with the router's API, if it has one. If it doesn't, you will need to replace the firmware on your router with something like ddwrt that can be scripted. From there, you might be able to create an app that talks to the router's API.
TLDR: You're probably better off simply bookmarking the management page for the router and enabling/disabling access for the devices.
Edit:
It occurred to me that some mainstream consumer router/access point manufacturers (Linksys, Asus, etc) have companion apps for managing their devices from the LAN side. You should see if such an app exists for your router, and if not, perhaps consider getting a different router that supports such an app.
I have couple of URLs that has to be called(programatically) through wifi not with mobile data.
As WIFI ASSIST is on , whenever the wifi is weak ,packets get transferred through Mobile data.
I would like to stop this from happening.
As far as I have researched, there is no API to toggle wifi assist switch on and off programatically
I can find if the user has mobile data and wifi on with the help of Reachability Class I believe and I can alert the user to keep wifi assist off but this is a very bad user experience.
so I decided to look if its possible to be done with the help of iOS mobile configuration file.
But I couldn't find any keys related with wifi-assist in Apple configuration profile reference.
so I am wondering , is it possible to force wifi to be used for certain URLs.
I remember this is possible with VPN ON DEMAND we can have certain domains to be accessed via VPN.
I am wondering if same is possible for wifi as well through configuration profile
Any suggestions are welcome.
As others have mentioned, there is no way to do manipulate this setting programmatically in iOS. This is not really what you are asking, as you seem to already know the answer to this is "No".
You are asking about the configuration profile, so I am assuming these are managed devices. Unfortunately, there is no configuration profile payload I am aware of that forces the managed devices to disable Wi-Fi Assist.
Your intent, however, is a bit different than what is being asked, I believe. I think you basically have an app that communicates with a resource that is only accessible via the Wi-Fi network (likely a corporate Wi-Fi network). If the app tries to connect to the resource while on cellular, it will not be able to connect. In some cases, when the Wi-Fi signal is weak, the device tries to be helpful and switches to cellular, causing issues with the app. If we could figure out a way to force iOS to not take advantage of Wi-Fi Assist when your app is running, you would be in good shape.
If you can install this app as a managed app, there is a way to identify that the app should only be allowed to run on a Wi-Fi connection. Setting the network usage rules AllowCellularData to false should do this (see this for more details). The thing I am not sure of with this solution, is whether this simply causes the connections to fail when Wi-Fi Assist is on and active, or if it makes iOS prefer to not use Wi-Fi assist when the app is running because it cannot connect over cellular. So I think you can tell an app to only connect over WiFi, but it doesn't really give you a better solution to your user experience problem. The only think it really buys you is that your app connection won't ever try to connect when connected to cellular. There is a chance, however, if you change this value to false for your app bundle ID, it will prevent Wi-Fi Assist from enabling when your app is running. I don't have access to MDM to try it out, but you could test and see.
Ultimately, given that this is probably a corporate device situation, I think you are going to have to address this through user training. The good news is that this is a one-time step. Sure, users may have slight degradation of network performance when Wi-Fi signal is weak but cell signal is strong. This does not matter as much if these are corporate devices where the corporate apps will mostly work only on the company's Wi-Fi network.
Another solution is what you mentioned, basically using on-demand VPN to provide a connection to the internal resources. This is additional infrastructure work, and you already mentioned it, so I'm not sure if it is even an option.
Obviously, the other solution would be to expose the network resources through your firewall, which could allow you to access it over cellular. I'm suspecting this is not possible due to security constraints.
Unfortunately, there are not a lot of good options in this space. However, have hope that there is some way to do it, as Sonos appears to have done something to
allow their app to avoid switching to WiFi Assist while streaming to a local network resource: https://sonos.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/4257/~/wi-fi-assist-and-sonos
I wonder if you could have your app open a streaming audio connection to a fixed local network resource, which would cause it to use Wi-Fi. It's a pretty crazy hack, but with a low enough bitrate audio file streaming, it might do what you need while not eating up too much of the network throughput.
Per Apple's notes on Wi-Fi Assist:
Wi-Fi Assist won't automatically switch to cellular if you're data
roaming.
Wi-Fi Assist only works when you have apps running in the
foreground and doesn't activate with background downloading of
content.
Wi-Fi Assist doesn’t activate with some third-party apps
that stream audio or video, or download attachments, like an email
app, as they might use large amounts of data.
Of course the other possible solution that you could consider is improving your Wi-Fi coverage to that the signal doesn't get bad enough for Wi-Fi Assist to be needed. I know this may not be feasible, but wanted to put it out there.
Good luck with this!
There is no public API that allows you to enable/disable "Wi-Fi Assist", and even if you find a way to do it your app will be rejected.
No you can not enable or disable WiFi by programmatically and there is no API for this.
I have gone through a lot of articles on internet and most say that IOS applications allow IPC using protocol handlers (URL Schemes). But, Can't we achieve IPC using sockets, if one application opens a port and the other tries to connect to it ?
iOS8 introduced IPC support by exposing mach ports for so called "application groups". Check out this great tutorial:
http://ddeville.me/2015/02/interprocess-communication-on-ios-with-mach-messages/
It requires a bit of setup (to define application groups in dev portal, generate proper entitlements, etc..) but is not really so difficult and Xcode 6 does most of the job automatically (just enable "App groups" in general capacities section).
I can confirm, it works (I was able to create 2 apps sending messages to each other).
On iO7 there is no official support for IPS, but If you do not plan to upload your app to AppStore, you could try to exploit inter-app audio communication to achieve this.
Check out Apple's code sample, which demonstrated inter-app sound data stream between 3 apps:
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/samplecode/InterAppAudioSuite/Introduction/Intro.html
Associated WWDS video:
https://developer.apple.com/wwdc/videos/#602
I haven't try to exploit it for non-audio usage but can't see the reason why shouldn't it work. Data rate is great, and sound data are just bytes and do not have to be redirected to the speaker, but interpreted however you like.
Of course, it will be rejected in AppStore review, but it is still fine for enterprise or own usage.
No, it is not for several reasons. 1) Apple does not allow this internally and has security layers to prevent this. 2) Applications fire applicationDiD/WillEnterBackground after a short delay, at which point the way you can interact with it plummets.
If you really want to send data between applications, set up a server with certs to match your app so you can use APN (apple push notifications) to send data in silent pushes to applications. Then, set up endpoints on the server that trigger those sends, and have apps consume the API that the server exposes.
Apologies in advance for the general-ness of the question.
I'm writing a multiple client iOS app for viewing the video feed from a single camera. Can the QX10 api support two (or 3) iPad's discovering/viewing the same QX10 at the same time?
I've been looking QX10 sample code, the camera api docs, StackOverflow, and of course the dev website and haven't seen an answer. I'd just buy the bloody thing to test with, but there are none nearby and I was hoping to avoid having to mail order/return it if it didn't work.
....And we're not locked into HW. If there's a better option, I'm open....
I don't believe it does. For ios, the camera creates a network that the ios connects to. (In ios settings/wireless) Any further attempts to connect to the camera from another device fail. Since the API only works after a network connection is established, I don't see how the API could possibly allow 2 devices could connect at once.
(No extraneous words in this post b/c that will get edited which auto down votes the question.....ahhh internet)
I did not try it, but you could use a computer with nat. For example an openrwt router to open up multiple wifi interfaces, one to connect to the camera, using the 10.0.0.0 network the camera uses and then an other network to connect your clients with NAT.
The question would be when the API would start to get confused.
So depending on what you want, maybe some mapper on that helper-computer could
do some proxying of information.
So in theory with an external box, maybe, but as Oldmicah said, it seems that only
one device can connect at the time (at least my QX100 also behaves like that). :(
I develop an enterprise application for iOS and the user should be able to add files from the desktop to the application.
I implemented this using filesharing, which works great.
Now this company wants to get rid of iTunes from their machines (which is quite understandable, iTunes is a very invasive process).
The question is, is it still possible to somehow use filesharing without iTunes? maybe with another application?
Or what other way is there to send files to the app (preferrably without the need of an internet connection)
//edit: must work on windows 7 and must not require to install iTunes (there are some other tools that allow access to the iPad filesystem, but they go through drivers installed by iTunes)
You could exchange data via the local wireless network (a connection to the internet is not required, just the iOS device and the Windows computer need to be on the same network).
One option:
You can then create a simple TCP/IP connection over sockets between an iOS app and a Windows application and exchange the data you want.
However you probably need to implement a suitable simple Windows application to do this.
An other, maybe simpler, solution:
You could start a webserver in your iOS-App and show it's IP on the screen. By entering this IP in a browser on the desktop computer you can access websites on the iOS device, which can make documents available for download or receive uploads.
For how to do this, have a look at this question.
There are a number of ways to achieve this, ranging from trivial to sophisticated.
Your question says that you would prefer to avoid an internet connection. Simple solutions may require it - if you want to abstract the difficult parts, you're going to have to let somebody do the dirty work, and that's probably going to be someone(thing) on the internet. Midrange solutions may require a network but not internet connection. A sophisticated solution could probably be whatever you want - but one thing I would say, is that trying to tap into the USB connector is either going to result in a hacktastic or very complicated solution to implement.
One method would be to integrate a third party framework that basically does what your looking for. Look at the Dropbox development kit, for example - allowing Windows (or any platform) users to drop files on their desktops into a shared dropbox, and this can then be read by an iOS application which includes the iOS drobox API.
Another method would be to setup a simple WebDAV server in your office. Host it on a windows box, or a cheap linux box. Give users desktop's access to the share via whatever protocol you want (eg, Windows File Sharing). Then you'd implement a WebDAV client in your app (eg, WTClient) to pull files.
Finally, you could build your own transmission system. A sophisticated example might involve Bonjour and TCP/IP, a simpler-but-custom solution may involve a simple JSON web service running off a local (or remote) server.
I have suggestion but that will require the Internet. I would suggest you to use the DropBox API in the windows and iPhone both. It's awesome to use and very simple for file sharing.
Now a days everybody have dropbox account and have files in it to share. So that shouldn't cost anything other than a bit of implementation (this learning can also be used in other file sharing applications).
Here are some guidance:
iOS
REST API
You can add apps and documents to USB-connected devices with the Apple Configurator
You may use a simple Ftp server installed on PC, so you can connect to server from Ios and upload/download files from iOS to PC....
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/Networking/Conceptual/CFNetwork/CFFTPTasks/CFFTPTasks.html
All work is done by Pc and your app will use IP (Intranet or Internet) of PC to share all files.
From Ios you can read all files in FTP server and work with them.
I use the FileBrowser app to get access to network shares over WiFi and will allow you to load supported files to the device. The company responsible is creating an API to allow you to do this within your own app: https://twitter.com/#!/Stratospherix/status/193114857271336960