SwiftUI Style, Adding Videos in Different Formats to iPhone App Development

Apple’s SwiftUI is a declarative tool for building user interfaces that helps developers create iPhone apps more easily. In this article, we will explain step by step from the basic structure of SwiftUI to how to add different types of videos to the app. Integrating videos in SwiftUI may sound complex, but it actually consists of a few simple steps. Through this process, we will develop a powerful app using SwiftUI and learn how to support various video formats.

Introduction to SwiftUI

SwiftUI is a framework introduced at WWDC 2019, designed to reduce the amount of code and make managing the state of the UI easier. Unlike the traditional UIKit approach, SwiftUI uses declarative programming, allowing for the implementation of intuitive UIs. This allows developers to manage the state and UI of the app clearly and enhances code reusability.

Basic Structure of SwiftUI

SwiftUI is fundamentally composed of structures that conform to the View protocol. As shown in the code example below, you can write a simple component to create a table view.

import SwiftUI

struct ContentView: View {
    var body: some View {
        Text("Hello, SwiftUI!")
    }
}

struct ContentView_Previews: PreviewProvider {
    static var previews: some View {
        ContentView()
    }

This code contains the elements needed to build a basic View in SwiftUI. The structure named ‘ContentView’ defines a view in SwiftUI, and the ‘body’ property returns UI elements.

Adding Videos: Using AVKit

In SwiftUI, you can use the AVKit framework to play videos. AVKit is a library that facilitates video playback through AVPlayer. By using AVKit, you can support various video formats (MP4, MOV, etc.).

Playing Videos with AVKit

Below is an example of how to play a video using AVPlayer.

import SwiftUI
import AVKit

struct VideoPlayerView: View {
    let player: AVPlayer

    var body: some View {
        VideoPlayer(player: player)
            .onAppear {
                player.play() // Start video playback
            }
            .onDisappear {
                player.pause() // Stop video playback
            }
    }
}

struct VideoPlayerView_Previews: PreviewProvider {
    static var previews: some View {
        VideoPlayerView(player: AVPlayer(url: URL(string: "https://www.example.com/video.mp4")!))
    }
}

In the above code, you can easily align the video using the ‘VideoPlayer’ view. The player is an instance of AVPlayer, and you must pass in the video URL. You can control video playback using the ‘onAppear’ and ‘onDisappear’ methods.

Supporting Various Video Formats

When playing videos using SwiftUI, supporting various formats is important. The commonly used video formats can be summarized as follows:

  • MP4: The most widely used video format, offering high compatibility and compression efficiency.
  • MOV: Apple’s proprietary format that supports optimized video playback on macOS and iOS devices.
  • AVI: An older format that supports various codecs but may have large file sizes and limited compatibility.
  • MKV: A container format that supports multiple video and audio streams, subtitle tracks, etc.

In addition to this, formats like WMV and FLV exist, but on iOS, MP4 and MOV formats are mainly used. To support video formats, you should utilize the functions of AVAsset to organize the metadata of various format files and properly decode them for playback.

Supporting Various Video Sources

There are several ways to add videos to the app. You can either directly include video files within the app or use external links to load the videos.

Adding Video Files to the App

To include video files in the app, you need to add them to the ‘Assets’ or ‘Bundle’ of the Xcode project. This allows you to load them directly.

let player = AVPlayer(url: Bundle.main.url(forResource: "localVideo", withExtension: "mp4")!)

Online Video Streaming

If you want to stream videos over the network, you can provide direct links through URLs. Loading videos in URL format when using AVPlayer is the most common approach.

Customizing Video UI

Customizing the UI of videos in SwiftUI is an important factor for providing an engaging user experience. The default VideoPlayer provides basic controls, but you can set up additional UI elements in the same way.

Here’s an example of hiding the basic controls of the video player and creating a custom button:

struct CustomVideoPlayerView: View {
    @State private var isPlaying = false
    let player: AVPlayer

    var body: some View {
        VStack {
            VideoPlayer(player: player)
                .onAppear {
                    player.pause() // Basic playback is paused
                }

            Button(action: {
                isPlaying.toggle()
                isPlaying ? player.play() : player.pause()
            }) {
                Text(isPlaying ? "Pause" : "Play")
                    .padding()
                    .background(Color.green)
                    .foregroundColor(.white)
                    .cornerRadius(8)
            }
        }
    }
}

Here, we demonstrate how to change the video playback state with a button click using the ‘isPlaying’ state variable.

Adding Video to Real Projects

The steps to add a video player to a real project are as follows:

  1. Add the AVKit framework to the project.
  2. Add video files to the project’s ‘Assets’ or ‘Bundle’.
  3. Create views for video playback.
  4. Load the video and customize the UI.
  5. Test and deploy.

Conclusion

Developing iPhone apps with SwiftUI allows for easier management of more complex projects while supporting various video formats and providing an intuitive user interface. By effectively utilizing AVKit, you can seamlessly integrate videos and also support various video sources. Through this tutorial, you will learn how to handle videos with SwiftUI and apply it to real projects.

We hope this article helped you add videos using SwiftUI. We plan to cover various topics in the future to provide useful skills for app developers. If you have any questions or would like us to cover a specific topic, please leave a comment.