IceIAP
IceIAP is a transport plug-in that enables clients to communicate via the Apple iAP protocol reserved for accessories.
iAP allows iOS client applications to communicate with accessories over Bluetooth, the Apple Lightning connector, or the Apple 30-pin connector. This section reviews some concepts that will help you as you learn more about IceIAP.
The IceIAP transport is based on Apple's External Accessory framework and enables Ice clients running on iOS devices to communicate with Ice servers running on connected accessories. This transport is a client-side only transport for iOS. It doesn't for instance provide the server-side transport that is required on the accessory side. For information on how to implement the server side, you need to be a MFI licensee and get in touch with ZeroC.
Accessory Discovery
An accessory can be discovered based on a number of attributes:
its name
its manufacturer
its model number
an advertised protocol
An accessory endpoint can be configured with any of these attributes to find an accessory.
Installing IceIAP
The IceIAP plug-in is included in all builds of the Ice C++ library for iOS. You enable (“load”) the plug-in by adding it to the pluginFactories field of InitializationData:
Ice::InitializationData initData;
initData.properties = Ice::createProperties(argc, argv);
initData.pluginFactories = {Ice::iapPluginFactory()};
Ice::CommunicatorPtr communicator = Ice::initialize(initData);Using IceIAP
An iAP endpoint in a proxy specifies attributes that are used to find and connect to a matching accessory. An iAP endpoint has the following syntax:
iap [-p PROTOCOL] [-n NAME] [-m MANUFACTURER] [-o MODELNUMBER]
For example, to invoke on a proxy for the greeter object running on an accessory that implements the com.example.visitor protocol, use the following stringified proxy:
hello:iap -p com.example.visitor
To use the secured iAP endpoint, replace iap with iaps.