Communication
Experimenting with WebRTC on iOS
While continously improving our WebRTC-enabled WebKit engine we have also been busy implementing an iOS application with WebRTC support. In the clip below, we show you a webapp running in both our WebRTC-WebKit and an iPad, with WebRTC media going between the two.
In our "iLeif" iOS application, we incorporate a common industry practice for extending web apps on these devices with new functionality. We place the webapp in a WebView, an API function of the OS that includes an entire browser rendering and JavaScript engine, with the ability to be controlled from the native application. We utilize a native bridge to communicate from the JavaScript in our app with the native implementation, and in the native code we provide a PeerConnection realization as well as a media framework.
As we keep the APIs exposed in this emulation in line with the APIs being standardised, we can run the same application code (JavaScript/HTML) in iLeif as well as our WebRTC-enabled WebKit engine. This approach also remains within the established platform restrictions, which prevent us from including a new WebKit distribution.
-- Vladimir Katardjiev and Måns Hommerberg, Ericsson Research
Comments
Hi,
I'd like to link this up with our iOS app for IPTV Multiscreen Portal. It works in the same way, using a WebView container inside a native app.
It's great you have web RTC working in Safari - I remember reading previously it was only available using Epiphany browser on Ubuntu. Have you tried it in Safari on PC or Mac too? Since we also have a PC Multiscreen Portal.
Natalie
Can I get access to what you did on iOS. We are building a Video call client app. on iPhone and are interested in using webrtc.
Roni
Hi Roni,
The code is in an experimental phase and we will not make it available at this stage, sorry.
Stefan
Hello Stefan -
WebRTC is great. I would like to start experimenting on the iPhone and Adroid with it. Just to clarify, your native code "bridge" must be installed as an "app" on the iPhone, correct?
Also, is WebRTC supported on Android's browser already/natively ???
Thanks,
Keith
Yes, this is an app that bundles a UIWebView with additional JavaScript functionality exposed via native (Objective C) code.
No Android browser that I know of currently support WebRTC.
Thanks Stefan. So will you guys be releasing a version of this? I'd really like to get video sharing on my iPhone!
I'm looking into making my own. The WebM project looks really helpful in this regard. I'm happy to share the web app code I build on top of this - a beautiful JQTouch app!
Love to ask a few questions about ICE, SDP, AVFoundation, and extending WebView Javascript...
Keith
krw2006@gmail.com
This is very nice.
We all wish to have such module.
So my question is simple : is there a chance that some day your application will be downloadable as FOSS ?
Hi,
This looks very interesting, thanks for presenting this information.
I'm trying to find out about OSS alternatives to Adobe's RTMFP, especially on iOS. You have previously mentioned using libnice, which is based on GLib; can I ask what you're using for the bit labelled "ICE" in your diagram on iOS? Is it libnice or libstun ported to iOS, or something else?
Thanks very much,
John :^P
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