How to use iCloud with swift data

Generated on 8/2/2024

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To use iCloud with SwiftData, you can leverage CloudKit for synchronization. Here are the steps and relevant information from the WWDC sessions:

  1. Adopt SwiftData:

    • SwiftData is a framework that makes it easy to build your app's model layer and persist it across launches of your app. It provides persistence, modeling, migration, graph management, and synchronization with CloudKit.
    • To use SwiftData with models in your app, import the framework and decorate each model with the @Model macro. This allows your views to fetch models from the model container and populate the view using queries.

    What’s new in SwiftData (00:01:01)

  2. Sync with CloudKit:

    • Enable CloudKit under iCloud services and create a new container for syncing your data.
    • Add background modes and enable the remote notifications capability to process remote changes in the background.
    • Update your configuration to include the CloudKit container option and pass in your new container's ID.

    Customize feature discovery with TipKit (00:11:20)

  3. Handle Cloud Saves:

    • Use a cloud save manager class to handle syncing. Set it up using your iCloud identifier and specify an existing folder containing saved data.
    • At game launch, call sync and pass a completion handler block to handle any merge conflicts between local data and cloud data.
    • To save progress to the cloud, call upload every time you write into save files, and pass a completion handler to resolve any conflicts.

    Port advanced games to Apple platforms (00:19:28)

  4. Track Model Changes:

    • SwiftData provides access to the history of changes in a datastore, which is useful for tracking local changes that need to be synced to a remote web service.
    • You can migrate to SwiftData history if you are using coexistence with CoreData to benefit from persistent history.

    Track model changes with SwiftData history (00:16:20)

By following these steps, you can effectively use iCloud with SwiftData to synchronize your app's data across devices.

What’s new in SwiftData

What’s new in SwiftData

SwiftData makes it easy to add persistence to your app with its expressive, declarative API. Learn about refinements to SwiftData, including compound uniqueness constraints, faster queries with #Index, queries in Xcode previews, and rich predicate expressions. Join us to explore how you can use all of these features to express richer models and improve performance in your app. To discover how to build a custom data store or use the history API in SwiftData, watch “Create a custom data store with SwiftData” and “Track model changes with SwiftData history”.

Create a custom data store with SwiftData

Create a custom data store with SwiftData

Combine the power of SwiftData’s expressive, declarative modeling API with your own persistence backend. Learn how to build a custom data store and explore how to progressively add persistence features in your app. To get the most out of this session, watch “Meet SwiftData” and “Model your schema with SwiftData” from WWDC23.

Port advanced games to Apple platforms

Port advanced games to Apple platforms

Discover how simple it can be to reach players on Apple platforms worldwide. We’ll show you how to evaluate your Windows executable on Apple silicon, start your game port with code samples, convert your shader code to Metal, and bring your game to Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Explore enhanced Metal tools that understand HLSL shaders to validate, debug, and profile your ported shaders on Metal.

Track model changes with SwiftData history

Track model changes with SwiftData history

Reveal the history of your model’s changes with SwiftData! Use the history API to understand when data store changes occurred, and learn how to use this information to build features like remote server sync and out-of-process change handing in your app. We’ll also cover how you can build support for the history API into a custom data store.

Platforms State of the Union

Platforms State of the Union

Discover the newest advancements on Apple platforms.

Customize feature discovery with TipKit

Customize feature discovery with TipKit

Focused on feature discovery, the TipKit framework makes it easy to display tips in your app. Now you can group tips so features are discovered in the ideal order, make tips reusable with custom tip identifiers, match the look and feel to your app, and sync tips using CloudKit. Learn how you can use the latest advances in TipKit to help people discover everything your app has to offer.