Configuring Your Project to Use iCloud

Apps that use iCloud must be signed with special entitlements that grant them access to the document storage space in a user’s iCloud account. To set up these entitlements, you modify your project’s configuration and perform several steps in Xcode and the iOS Member Center. Although you can do some of this configuration later in your development cycle, this tutorial addresses these issues first so that you can be assured that your project works correctly later.

Managing Your Files Using Document Objects

Document objects are the easiest way to manage files in you store in a user’s iCloud account. Each document object manages a discrete portion of your app’s data and is responsible for writing that data to disk and reading it back into memory at appropriate times. All interactions with that data occur through the interfaces of the document class you define.

Building the App’s User Interface

Although iCloud primarily manages your app’s data, your app still needs a user interface to present that data. This tutorial uses two view controllers to present its content. The first displays the list of available documents and manages the creation and deletion of those documents. The second displays the contents of a document and allows you to edit those contents.

Searching for Existing Documents in iCloud

Searching for documents in iCloud is necessary because the list of documents can change while your app is not running. Documents can be created on different devices and the user can delete documents that are no longer needed. Your app uses a metadata query object to search for documents and detect changes to the document list.

Solving Problems and Choosing Your Next Steps

As you complete the tasks in this tutorial, you might encounter problems that you do not know how to solve. There are a few common errors that you can look for and it includes code listings that you can compare against the code in your project.

After you finish this tutorial, you should think about ways to improve your app and increase your knowledge.