FireTVKit

Discovering your FireTV and controlling the built-in media player is now easy and reactive

The Amazon Fling SDK lacks a ready to use view controller for discovering FireTVs and controlling the built-in receiver app (media player). That's why I created FireTVKit. It offers a themable view controller for discovering FireTVs in your local network. All the necessary magic happens under the hood. In addition the FireTVKit brings a themable view controller for controlling the built-in media player of a FireTV. Even there all the magic happens under the hood. Thanks to the protocol oriented approach you can easily create your own discovery and player view. If you want to be completely free just use the FireTVManager to do the discovery and get the FireTVs. Then show the FireTVs to your users the way you want it.

The implementation of the FireTVPlayer and the FireTVSelection follows the VIPER architecture pattern. Make yourself comfortable with VIPER first if you want to implement a custom view.

Features

	Feature
🔎	Themable view controller for FireTV discovery and selection (customize no devices text)
🎮	Themable view controller for controlling the built-in media player of a FireTV
🐶	FireTVManager to do the discovery and get the list of available FireTVs
📡	Built-in wifi connection validation (customize alert title and message)
✅	Unit tested
🗽	Extendable API
🚀	Written in Swift

Examples

1. FireTV Player Selection with Dark Theme

2. FireTV Player Selection in no devices state

3. FireTV Player Selection in no wifi state

4. FireTV Player with Dark Theme

5. FireTV Player with Light Theme

To run the example project, clone the repo, and run pod install from the Example directory first.

How to use

Create and present a FireTVSelectionViewController

import AmazonFling
import FireTVKit
import UIKit

final class ViewController: UIViewController {
	private lazy var SAMPLE_VIDEO_METADATA: Metadata = {
		var metadata = Metadata(type: .video)
		metadata.title = "Testvideo"
		metadata.description = "A video for test purposes"
		metadata.noreplay = true
		return metadata
	}()
	private let SAMPLE_VIDEO_URL = "http://commondatastorage.googleapis.com/gtv-videos-bucket/sample/BigBuckBunny.mp4"
	private lazy var SAMPLE_VIDEO: URL? = {
		guard let url = URL(string: SAMPLE_VIDEO_URL) else {
			return nil
		}

		return url
	}()
	private var selectedPlayer: RemoteMediaPlayer?

    override func viewDidLoad() {
    	super.viewDidLoad()
    	
    	guard let url = SAMPLE_VIDEO else {
    		return
    	}
    	
    	let media = FireTVMedia(metadata: SAMPLE_VIDEO_METADATA, url: url)
    	let theme = FireTVSelectionDarkTheme()
    	let playerId = "amzn.thin.pl"
    	let fireTVSelectionVC = try FireTVSelectionWireframe.makeViewController(theme: theme, playerId: playerId, media: media, delegate: self)
    	present(fireTVSelectionVC, animated: true)
    }
}

extension ViewController: FireTVSelectionDelegateProtocol {
	func didSelectPlayer(_ fireTVSelectionViewController: FireTVSelectionViewController, player: RemoteMediaPlayer) {
		fireTVSelectionViewController.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)

		selectedPlayer = player
	}

	func didPressCloseButton(_ fireTVSelectionViewController: FireTVSelectionViewController) {
		fireTVSelectionViewController.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
	}
}

Create and present a FireTVPlayerViewController

import AmazonFling
import FireTVKit
import UIKit

final class ViewController: UIViewController {
	private var selectedPlayer: RemoteMediaPlayer?

    override func viewDidLoad() {
    	super.viewDidLoad()
    	
    	guard let selectedPlayer = selectedPlayer else {
    		return
    	}
    	
    	let theme = FireTVPlayerDarkTheme()
    	let fireTVPlayerVC = try FireTVPlayerWireframe.makeViewController(forPlayer: player, theme: theme, delegate: self)
		present(fireTVPlayerVC, animated: true)
    }
}

extension ViewController: FireTVPlayerDelegateProtocol {
	func didPressCloseButton(_ fireTVPlayerViewController: FireTVPlayerViewController) {
		fireTVPlayerViewController.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
	}
}

FireTVManager

In the following code example you will see how to discover and get the available FireTVs using a FireTVManager instance. You can control the built-in media player of a FireTV using a PlayerService instance.

import AmazonFling
import FireTVKit
import RxSwift
import UIKit

final class FireTVManagerExampleViewController: UIViewController {
    private var fireTVManager: FireTVManager?
    private var disposeBag: DisposeBag?
    @IBOutlet private weak var firstPlayerLabel: UILabel!
    
    deinit {
        print("FireTVManagerExampleViewController deinit")
    }
    
    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        
        let disposeBag = DisposeBag()
        self.disposeBag = disposeBag

        do {
            fireTVManager = try FireTVManager()

            try fireTVManager?.startDiscovery(forPlayerID: "amzn.thin.pl")

            fireTVManager?.devicesObservable
                .subscribe(onNext: { [weak self] player in
                    if !player.isEmpty {
                        self?.firstPlayerLabel?.text = player.first?.name()
                    } else {
                        self?.firstPlayerLabel.text = "No player found"
                    }
                }, onError: { error in
                    print(error)
                }).disposed(by: disposeBag)
        } catch {
            print(error)
        }
    }
    
    override func viewWillDisappear(_ animated: Bool) {
        super.viewWillDisappear(animated)
        
        fireTVManager?.stopDiscovery()
    }
    
    @IBAction private func didPressCloseButton(_ sender: UIButton) {
        dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
    }
}

Customize

Before you start creating your own selection or player view make yourself familiar with the VIPER architecture pattern. This article is a good starting point.

You can use the FireTVSelectionViewProtocol to create your own view for the fire tv selection.
Use the FireTVPlayerViewProtocol to create your custom player view.
With the FireTVSelectionThemeProtocol and the FireTVPlayerThemeProtocol you can build custom themes for the themable selection and player view controller.

Logging

To enable logging store a boolean value using the key FireTVKitUserDefaultsKeys.fireTVKitLogging.rawValue in the UserDefaults.

If you want to log only a specific event store a LogEvent enum case as raw value using the key FireTVKitUserDefaultsKeys.fireTVKitLogEvent.rawValue in the UserDefaults.

Documentation

Code documentation

Requirements

Currently there is only a reactive implementation. That's why you need RxSwift.
Deployment target of your App is >= iOS 9.0 .
At the moment Bitcode is not supported. I hope that I will make progress in the future.
To get rid off the cocoapods warning Transitive dependencies use the following in your Podfile (origin: the AmazonFling dependency contains a static framework):

pre_install do |installer|
    # workaround for https://github.com/CocoaPods/CocoaPods/issues/3289
    Pod::Installer::Xcode::TargetValidator.send(:define_method, :verify_no_static_framework_transitive_dependencies) {}
end

Installation

FireTVKit is available through CocoaPods. To install it, simply add the following line to your Podfile:

pod 'FireTVKit'

Author

Christian Elies, chris.elies13@gmail.com

License

FireTVKit is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.

crelies/FireTVKit