iosobjective-caidl

Is there an equivalent in Objective-C to Android's aidl file?

I'm making an API in Objective-C.

Is there an equivalent in Objective-C to Android's aidl file?

Solution

  • There's no direct inter-process communication on iOS, so there's no need for an IDL[*]. Apps can send each other data by using URLs to open the other apps.

    If your API needs to be embedded into another developer's app, then you need to distribute it as a static library and a collection of Objective-C headers (protocol and interface declarations).

    [*]The more general situation of "using Objective-C" includes Mac OS X with Cocoa, and other platforms with GNUstep or Cocotron, where you have Distributed Objects available. In that case, the interface is (optionally) defined via an Objective-C protocol, roughly equivalent to an Interface in Java.