Objective

The objective of this document is to demonstrate the various concepts iOS software developers need to understand to integrate the mimik Client Library with an iOS application.

Intended Readers

The intended readers of this document are iOS software developers and system integrators using the mimik Client Library when developing an iOS application.

What You'll Be Doing

In this article you'll be covering the following topics that are relevant to integrating the mimik Client Library into an iOS application:

• Configuring a Podfile
• Installing mimik Client Library cocoapods
• Importing mimik Client Library modules
• Initializing mimik Client Library

Prerequisites

• Attaching a real iOS device to the development Mac and selecting it as the build target. This won't work with the iOS simulator.

Configuring a Podfile

The mimik Client Library cocoapods get installed in an iOS project using the CocoaPods dependency manager. Listing 1 below shows an example of a CocoaPods's Podfile that developers need to use with their iOS projects. The Podfile defines the source code repository locations containing the relevant dependencies and it also declares the mimik Client Library pod components, with additional configuration requirements at the end.

1: platform :ios, '16.0'
2: source 'https://github.com/CocoaPods/Specs.git'
3: source 'https://github.com/mimikgit/cocoapod-edge-specs.git'
4: 
5: target '<Your-Target-Name>' do
6:   use_frameworks!
7:   inhibit_all_warnings!
8:   pod 'EdgeCore'
9:   pod 'mim-OE-ai-SE-iOS-developer'
10: end
11: 
12: post_install do |installer|
13:   installer.pods_project.targets.each do |target|
14:     target.build_configurations.each do |config|
15:       config.build_settings['IPHONEOS_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET'] = '16.0'
16:       config.build_settings['BUILD_LIBRARY_FOR_DISTRIBUTION'] = 'YES'
17:     end
18:   end
19: end

Listing 1: An example Podfile for working with mimik Client Library

Installing mimik Client Library cocoapods

Once the dependencies are defined in Podfile, developers initiate the installation of EdgeCore and mim-OE-ai-SE-iOS-developer cocoapods as well as their dependencies into the iOS project using the following command:

 pod install --repo-update

Running pod install against the Podfile as described above displays output similar to the following:

 Analyzing dependencies
 Downloading dependencies
 Installing Alamofire
 Installing AppAuth
 Installing EdgeCore
 Installing JWTDecode
 Installing SwiftyJSON
 Installing mim-OE-ai-SE-iOS-developer
 Generating Pods project
 Integrating client project

At this point, the mimik Client Library is installed in the iOS project's workspace, and is ready to have its modules imported in the code.

Importing mimik Client Library modules

Before developers can initialize the mimik Client Library components, they need to import the EdgeCore and EdgeEngine modules references into their code. The code example below shows you how to use the import command inline to do so.

 import EdgeCore
 import EdgeEngine

Initializing mimik Client Library

Before developers can start using its interface, they must first initialize the mimik client library by creating an instance of the EdgeClient class. The two import statements below bring the EdgeCore and EdgeEngine modules into the project. Listing 2 provides an example of how to do this.

1: import EdgeCore
2: import EdgeEngine
3: 
4: let edgeClient: EdgeClient = {
5:     EdgeClient.setLoggingLevel(module: .edgeCore, level: .debug, privacy: .publicAccess)
6:     EdgeClient.setLoggingLevel(module: .edgeEngine, level: .debug, privacy: .publicAccess)
7:     return EdgeClient()
8: }()

Listing 2: The code for initializing the mimik Client Library in an iOS application

Notice the line return EdgeClient(). This is where the instance of the EdgeClient class gets created.

EdgeClient.setLoggingLevel control the console logging output levels from the mimik Client Library components.

Ready

With that, the mimik Client Library has been initialized, its modules imported and its interface is ready to be used in your iOS project.

Additional reading

In order to get more out of this article, the reader could further familiarize themselves with the following concepts and techniques:

• Understanding the mimik Client Library for iOS.
• Creating a Simple iOS Application that Uses an edge microservice.
• Working with mim OE in an iOS project.
• Working with edge microservices in an iOS project.
• Working with AI language models in an iOS project.