Twilio Chat Tutorial for Swift

Swift implementation of Twilio Chat

Running the Application

1. Clone the repository and cd into it

2. Install the application's dependencies with CocoaPods

   $ pod install

3. Open the project with Xcode but don't use twiliochat.xcodeproj file. For CocoaPods dependencies to work you must use twiliochat.xcworkspace.

4. Twilio Chat requires an access token generated using your Twilio credentials in order to connect. First we need to setup a server that will generate this token for the mobile application to use. We have created web versions of Twilio Chat, you can use any of these applications to generate the token that this mobile app requires. Just pick your favorite flavor:

   • PHP - Laravel
   • C# - .NET MVC
   • Java - Servlets
   • JS - Node

   Look for instructions on how to setup these servers in any of the links above.

5. Once you have the server running (from the previous step), you need to edit one file in the Xcode project.

   ProjectRoot -> twiliochat -> resources -> Keys.plist
   

   This file contains the TokenRequestUrl key. The default value is http://localhost:8000/token. This address refers to the host machine loopback interface when running this application in the iOS simulator. You must change this value to match the address of your server running the token generation application. We are using the PHP - Laravel version in this case, that's why we use port 8000.

   Note: In some operating systems you need to specify the address for the development server when you run the Laravel application, here's an example:

   $ php artisan serve --host=127.0.0.1
   

6. Now Twilio Chat is ready to go. Run the application on the simulator or your own device, just make sure that you have properly set up the token generation server and the TokenRequestUrl key. To run the application in a real device you'll need to expose your local token generation server by manually forwarding ports, or using a tool like ngrok. If you decide to work with ngrok, your Keys.plist file should hold a key like this one:

   TokenRequestUrl -> http://<your_subdomain>.ngrok.io/token
   

   No need to specify the port in this url, as ngrok will forward the request to the specified port.