About

Vandelay is a Swift-based iOS importer/exporter. It supports Codable, strings and data and comes with built-in support for exporting and importing strings and data to and from a bunch of data sources.

Installation

Swift Package Manager

The easiest way to add Vandelay to your project is to use Swift Package Manager:

.package(url: "git@github.com:danielsaidi/Vandelay.git" ...)

CocoaPods

pod "Vandelay"

Carthage

github "danielsaidi/Vandelay"

Manual installation

To add Vandelay to your app without a dependency manager, clone this repository, add Vandelay.xcodeproj to your project and Vandelay.framework as an embedded app binary and target dependency.

Exporting data

Vandelay uses exporters to let you export strings, data and Encodable.

Vandelay comes with the following built-in exporters:

• EmailExporter - exports strings & data as email attachments
• FileExporter - exports strings & data to local files
• MessageExporter - exports strings & data as message attachments
• PasteboardExporter - exports strings to the pasteboard

You can extend Vandelay with custom exporters as well.

Use string exporters if you want platform-agnostic, readable exports. Use a data exporters when you only have Data or when a type can’t be serialized.

Importing data

Vandelay uses importers to let you import strings, data and Decodable types.

Vandelay comes with the following built-in importers:

• FileExporter - imports strings & data from local files
• PasteboardExporter - imports strings from the pasteboard
• UrlExporter - imports strings & data from custom urls

You can extend Vandelay with custom importers as well.

When importing, the same goes as when exporting: data is more powerful, but strings are more universal.

Importing external files

You can use the existing importers to import data by sharing external files to Vandelay, e.g. by tapping an e-mail attachment or sharing a file to the app.

To import files, your app must be correctly configured to handle the file type. You have to register Document types and Exported Type UTIs and implement the correct functions in AppDelegate (iOS 12 and earlier) or SceneDelegate (iOS 13+). Once the functions are triggered, you can use a UrlImporter to import the tapped file.

Check out the demo app for an example on how this can be done.

QR Code support

You can generate QR codes with the QrCodeGenerator implementations in this library. You can import data from a scanned QR code with a UrlImporter.

Demo App

This repo contains a demo app that lets you export/import todo items (strings) and photos (data). To run the demo app, open and run the Vandelay.xcodeproj project.

The demo app registers a custom file type .vdl which it uses to export and import data. Have a look at Info.plist, AppDelegate and SceneDelegate to see how it handles imports.

Contact me

Feel free to reach out if you have questions or if you want to contribute in any way:

• E-mail: daniel.saidi@gmail.com
• Twitter: @danielsaidi
• Web site: danielsaidi.com

License

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