iOS 8 Swift Programming Cookbook

Chapter 12. Multimedia

12.0. Introduction

The Audio and Video (AV) Foundation framework in the iOS SDK allows developers to play and/or record audio and video with ease. In addition, the Media Player framework allows developers to play audio and video files.

Before you can run the code in this chapter, you must add the AVFoundation.framework and MediaPlayer.framework frameworks to your Xcode project. With the new LLVM compiler, the only thing you need to do to include these frameworks into your app is to import their umbrella header files like so:

import AVFoundation
import MediaPlayer

12.1. Playing Audio Files

Problem

You want to be able to play an audio file in your application.

Solution

Use the AV Foundation framework’s AVAudioPlayer class.

Discussion

The AVAudioPlayer class in the AV Foundation framework can play back all audio formats supported by iOS. The delegate property of an instance of AVAudioPlayer allows you to get notified by events, such as when the audio playback is interrupted or when an error occurs as a result of playing an audio file. Let’s have a look at a simple example that demonstrates how we can play an audio file from the application’s bundle:

import UIKit
import AVFoundation

class ViewController: UIViewController, AVAudioPlayerDelegate {
  
  var audioPlayer: AVAudioPlayer?
  
  /* The delegate message that will let us know that the player
  has finished playing an audio file */
  func audioPlayerDidFinishPlaying(player: AVAudioPlayer!,
    successfully flag: Bool) {
      println("Finished ...