KeyboardKit is a Swift library for iOS keyboard extension apps. It is currently limited to the functionality I need in my own two emoji keyboard extension apps, but I will extend it as I add more stuff to these apps.
I have currently not had time to setup a demo that shows how you build a custom keyboard extension app on top of this library. For now, have a look at the code and try to make sense of these instructions.
To create a custom keyboard, either inherit the EmojiKeyboard class (the only
one that I currently use) or create a custom one that implements the Keyboard
protocol, then implement all keyboard functionality you need. A keyboard should
be able to setup itself in a view and (if you have multiple pages) handle pages.
Set its delegate property to handle any keyboard actions.
To present your keyboard in an iOS keyboard extension, add a keyboard extension
project to your app. Let the input view controller of the extension inherit the
KeyboardInputViewController class. Your subclass should as a minimum override
createKeyboard(), so that the base class knows which keyboard to use, and use
the keyboard delegate functions to detect user action on the keyboard.
KeyboardKit also provides an emoji collection view, that can be used to display your keyboard emojis in the main app as well. This is a nice feature to provide as a compliment to the keyboard extension, since users may not want to give the keyboard extension full access (which is required to copy and save emojis).
To use the collection view in your app, just add a collection view to your view
and let it inherit the EmojiCollectionView class. Then, all you have to do is
to set the keyboard property to your custom keyboard, then set emojiDelegate
to handle taps and long presses.
To show message to the user, e.g. when an emoji has been saved, you can use the
Toast class or implement your own message alert by implementing MessageAlert.
If you have a look at the source code you'll find additional functionality that
you can use in your app. The Extensions folder contains image extensions that
helps you copying, saving, resizing and styling images. The System folder has
some system urls that you can use, e.g. to take a user to keyboard settings. In
the Threading folder, you have an amazing threading operator, that simplifies
pushing operations to a background thread, then popping back to the main thread.
Enjoy!
To run the demo project, clone the repo, and run pod install from the Example
directory first. The project is currently empty and is only used to verify that
the pod will compile properly. Feel free to contribute. :)
KeyboardKit requires iOS 8 or later.
KeyboardKit is available through CocoaPods. Add it to a project by adding the following line to the Podfile:
pod "KeyboardKit"If you get an error that your extension contains unallowed frameworks, open the
build settings for the extension. Embedded Content Contains Swift Code should
be false for the extension and true (default) for the app.
After this, you must add a new run script build phase to the keyboard extension. Place it at the very end and paste this script into it:
cd "${CONFIGURATION_BUILD_DIR}/${UNLOCALIZED_RESOURCES_FOLDER_PATH}/"
if [[ -d "Frameworks" ]]; then
rm -fr Frameworks
fi
This will remove any frameworks from the keyboard extension and should make the app submit correctly to iTunes Connect.
Daniel Saidi, [email protected]
KeyboardKit is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.