I am building a MP3 player for iOS that plays audio files hosted on the web. I want to offer the ability to play the files offline so I have the files downloading using ASIHTTP but I am cannot seem to find info on initiallzing AVPlayer with a mp3 in the app documents directory. Has anyone done this before? Is it even possible?
*I posted an answer below that shows how to use the iOS AvPlayer for both local and http files. Hope this helps!
I decided to answer my own question because I felt like there is very little documentation on how to use the Apple provided AVPlayer for both local and stream (over http) files. To help understand the solution, I put together a sample project on GitHub in Objective-C and Swift The code below is Objective-C but you can download my Swift example to see that. It is very similar!
What I found is that the two ways of setting up the files are almost identical except for how you instantiate your NSURL for the Asset > PlayerItem > AVPlayer chain.
Here is an outline of the core methods
.h file (partial code)
-(IBAction) BtnGoClick:(id)sender;
-(IBAction) BtnGoLocalClick:(id)sender;
-(IBAction) BtnPlay:(id)sender;
-(IBAction) BtnPause:(id)sender;
-(void) setupAVPlayerForURL: (NSURL*) url;
.m file (partial code)
-(IBAction) BtnGoClick:(id)sender {
NSURL *url = [[NSURL alloc] initWithString:@""];
[self setupAVPlayerForURL:url];
}
-(IBAction) BtnGoLocalClick:(id)sender {
// - - - Pull media from documents folder
//NSString* saveFileName = @"MyAudio.mp3";
//NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
//NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
//NSString *path = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:saveFileName];
// - - -
// - - - Pull media from resources folder
NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"MyAudio" ofType:@"mp3"];
// - - -
NSURL *url = [[NSURL alloc] initFileURLWithPath: path];
[self setupAVPlayerForURL:url];
}
-(void) setupAVPlayerForURL: (NSURL*) url {
AVAsset *asset = [AVURLAsset URLAssetWithURL:url options:nil];
AVPlayerItem *anItem = [AVPlayerItem playerItemWithAsset:asset];
player = [AVPlayer playerWithPlayerItem:anItem];
[player addObserver:self forKeyPath:@"status" options:0 context:nil];
}
- (void)observeValueForKeyPath:(NSString *)keyPath ofObject:(id)object change:(NSDictionary *)change context:(void *)context {
if (object == player && [keyPath isEqualToString:@"status"]) {
if (player.status == AVPlayerStatusFailed) {
NSLog(@"AVPlayer Failed");
} else if (player.status == AVPlayerStatusReadyToPlay) {
NSLog(@"AVPlayer Ready to Play");
} else if (player.status == AVPlayerItemStatusUnknown) {
NSLog(@"AVPlayer Unknown");
}
}
}
-(IBAction) BtnPlay:(id)sender {
[player play];
}
-(IBAction) BtnPause:(id)sender {
[player pause];
}
Check out the Objective-C source code for a working example of this. Hope this helps!
-Update 12/7/2015 I now have a Swift example of the source code you can view here.