Beginning iOS 4 Application Development

Chapter 18. Bonjour Programming

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER

• How to publish a service on the network using the NSNetService class

• How to discover services on the network using the NSNetServiceBrowser class

• How to resolve the IP addresses of services on the network

Bonjour is Apple's implementation of the Zeroconf protocol, which enables the automatic discovery of computers, devices, and services on an IP network. In this chapter, you will learn how to implement Bonjour on the iPhone by using the NSNetService class to publish a service. You will also use the NSNetServiceBrowser class to discover services that have been published.

Creating the Application

In this section, you will create the user interface for the application. You'll use a Table view to display the users that you have discovered on the network. As users are discovered, they will be added to the Table view.

TRY IT OUT: Creating the Application's UI

1. Using Xcode, create a View-based Application (iPhone) project and name it Bonjour.

2. Double-click the BonjourViewController.xib file to edit it in Interface Builder. Populate the View window with the following views (see Figure 18-1):

   • Label (set its text to Discovered Users)

   • Table View

   • Text View

   

   Figure 18.1. FIGURE 18-1

3. In the BonjourViewController.h file, add the following bold statements:

   #import <UIKit/UIKit.h>
   
   @interface BonjourViewController : UIViewController
       <UITableViewDelegate, ...