I would like to get an idea whether anyone is actually using Multipeer in a recent production iOS app.
I’ve burned several days worth of my client’s money getting Multipeer set up, but the invitation system just isn’t anywhere near reliable enough to ship. The use cases is trivial, it’s just a chat room.
I assumed I was doing something wrong, so I went looking for examples on Github and my code looked much the same as everyone else’s. Eventually I found the MultipeerGroupChat sample app (https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/samplecode/MultipeerGroupChat/Introduction/Intro.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40013691), and after trying it on 3 devices I confirmed that the invite flow is broken for it too.
Although the sample app uses Apple’s UI helpers (MCBrowserViewController and MCAdvertiserAssistant), and my app has a custom UI and uses the lower-level MCNearbyServiceAdvertiser and MCNearbyServiceBrowser, I can see the underlying issues are the same.
Here’s one example which fails reliably for me:
I’ve burned several days worth of my client’s money getting Multipeer set up, but the invitation system just isn’t anywhere near reliable enough to ship. The use cases is trivial, it’s just a chat room.
I assumed I was doing something wrong, so I went looking for examples on Github and my code looked much the same as everyone else’s. Eventually I found the MultipeerGroupChat sample app (https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/samplecode/MultipeerGroupChat/Introduction/Intro.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/DTS40013691), and after trying it on 3 devices I confirmed that the invite flow is broken for it too.
Although the sample app uses Apple’s UI helpers (MCBrowserViewController and MCAdvertiserAssistant), and my app has a custom UI and uses the lower-level MCNearbyServiceAdvertiser and MCNearbyServiceBrowser, I can see the underlying issues are the same.
Here’s one example which fails reliably for me:
Boot the sample on 3 devices
Open the browser on one device and invite the others
All 3 are connected and can send messages successfully
Go home/lock one device and wait such that the others show it as disconnected; or you can force quit it
Bring the app back up on that device
Now, try and reconnect it to the other two
No matter which device(s) you try to send the invites from (either the one that returned, or one of the others), you’ll get in a mess
The invite is (usually) delivered, but then one or both devices involved will get stuck in the 'connecting' state
There’s no way out, except to disconnect the session and start again
