Objective-C: Making AVPlayer plays in all the app controllers (or in the background)

Question

I'm making a news iOS app, i want to implement a live audio streaming in all the pages like the picture below:

App Screenshot

The orange view is a UIView that says "Live Streaming" (in Arabic), it exists in all the viewControllers, i want to let the AVPlayer plays when the user clicks on it and still plays even if the user navigates to other viewControllers.

I can't seem to find a good solution or tutorial about this, sorry if this is a noob question cause i'm new to iOS.

So how can i do that ? and where(in which viewController) should i put the AVPlayer declaration ?

Thanks in advance.

I would probably try using NSUserDefaults to store the users selection, and have each view check whether anything has been selected and if so to play it. — App Dev Guy, Jul 03 '15 at 13:02
@SaSmith and how can i keep the AVPlayer playing, i think through the audio session, i tried it and didn't work — Fadi Obaji, Jul 03 '15 at 13:12
To be honest, I am not too sure. I wouldn't think it should be dismissing the AVPlayer when switching views though, not unless you have coded that somewhere, that AVPlayer should stop playing when view is changed. The only thing I could think of is if the app is retrieving content from online it may not be allowed to keep playing in the background, but I am not 100% sure about that. — App Dev Guy, Jul 03 '15 at 13:15

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

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If you are testing in the simulator, the change of views will not continue the audio in the background. If it is not working your device try this:

NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString: yourURLHere];    
AVURLAsset *avAsset = [AVURLAsset URLAssetWithURL:url options:nil];    
AVPlayerItem *playerItem = [AVPlayerItem playerItemWithAsset:avAsset];    
AVPlayer *audioPlayer = [AVPlayer playerWithPlayerItem:playerItem];    
//This enables background music playing
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] beginReceivingRemoteControlEvents];    

[audioPlayer play];

Place this code in your viewDidLoad method, before [super viewDidLoad];

I found two links that exaplin some of the issues on this:

If this does not work, I would recommend placing a bounty on the question as it seems your issue's are a little more in depth than a simple solution.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:51

Community

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answered Jul 03 '15 at 13:24

App Dev Guy

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Made edit as AVAudioPlayer only plays local files, you asked AVPlayer, which is for http links. – App Dev Guy Jul 03 '15 at 13:28
Thanks, let me try that :) – Fadi Obaji Jul 03 '15 at 13:38
@FadiObaji did this work for you? It's the best and seemingly most reliable solution I could find. – App Dev Guy Jul 03 '15 at 14:16
the music plays fine, but when i click on something in the side menu to navigate to another ViewController, the stream stops – Fadi Obaji Jul 03 '15 at 14:28
Are you testing using a device? It's a common issue using a simulator for audio to not work as desired. – App Dev Guy Jul 03 '15 at 14:31
Let me check on a real device – Fadi Obaji Jul 03 '15 at 14:32
Didn't work either, but i think i have to make a Singleton Class in order for this to work, i'm gonna try that – Fadi Obaji Jul 03 '15 at 15:28

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 13 '15 at 20:16

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I found the solution, i had to make a singleton class.

The singleton class allow only one object to be used in the entire iOS application by all the ViewControllers.

And i did put all the needed methods like play and pause in the singleton class and i accessed them from all the ViewControllers.

If anybody wants an example, please ask in the comments.

answered Jul 13 '15 at 20:16

Fadi Obaji

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please , give a example with multiple Video palys On Click of forward and backword Button in AVPlayer – Hiren kanetiya Oct 06 '15 at 10:32

Objective-C: Making AVPlayer plays in all the app controllers (or in the background)

2 Answers2