iOS 11 Swift Programming Cookbook

Chapter 13. Web and Search

iOS brings with it some really exciting functionality, such as indexing content inside your app as searchable content on an iOS device. Even better, you can contribute to iOS’s public search index so that your searchable content appears on devices that don’t even have your app installed. That’s pretty cool, don’t you agree? In this chapter, we’ll have a look at all these great features.

13.1 Continuing a Spotlight Search Within Your App

Problem

You are already indexing your app content in Spotlight (more recipes on that in this chapter), but you also want to allow the user to continue the search from Spotlight directly in your app (see Figure 13-1).

Figure 13-1. The “Search in App” button at the upper right lets you search within the host application

Solution

Follow these steps:

1. Add the CoreSpotlightContinuation key to your Info.plist file with a Boolean value of YES. This will allow your app to take part in Spotlight search continuation.
2. Index your searchable items, as you will learn in Recipe 13.2.
3. Implement the application(_:willContinueUserActivityWithType:) method of your app delegate.
4. In this method, see whether the given activity type is CSQueryContinuation​ActionType. If yes, return true; otherwise, return false (or, if you have other activity types to process, look at those as well before returning false).
5. Implement the application(_:continue:restorationHandler:) ...