The CometChat iOS UI Kit is developed to keep developers in mind and aims to reduce development efforts significantly.
The UI Kit’s customisable UI components simplify the process of integrating text chat and voice/video calling features to your website or mobile application in a few minutes.

I want to checkout iOS UI Kit.

Follow the steps mentioned in the README.md file.Kindly, click on the below button to download our iOS Chat UI Kit.iOS Chat UI KitView on Github
I want to integrate UI Kit with my App
  1. UI Components
  2. Customize UI Kit

I want to explore sample apps.

Import the app into Xcode and follow the steps mentioned in the README.md file.Kindly, click on the below button to download our Swift Sample App.Swift Sample AppView on GithubOr else, you can also checkout our Objective-C Sample App.Objective-C Sample AppView on Github

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Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have met the following requirements:
  • You have installed the latest version of Xcode. (Above Xcode 12 Recommended)
  • iOS Chat UI Kit works for iOS devices from iOS 11 and above.
If you’re building the new project, the please add below line in AppDelegate.swift> > var window: UIWindow?
Please install the latest pod version on your Mac to avoid integration issuesPlease follow the below steps:
  1. sudo gem update cocoapods —pre
  2. pod update
  3. clean
  4. build

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Installing iOS Chat UI Kit

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1. Setup 🔧

i. Register on CometChat 🧑💻 ii. Get Your Application Keys 🔑
  • Create a new app
  • Head over to the QuickStart or API & Auth Keys section and note the App ID, Auth Key, and Region.
iii. Add the CometChat Dependency📦 We recommend using CocoaPods, as they are the most advanced way of managing iOS project dependencies. Open a terminal window, move to your project directory, and then create a Podfile by running the following command Create podfile using the below command. 
$ pod init
Add the following lines to the Podfile. 
For Xcode 12 and above:

platform :ios, '11.0'
use_frameworks!

target 'YourApp' do
     pod 'CometChatPro', '2.4.1'
     pod 'CometChatCalls', '2.1.1'
end
v2.4.1+ onwards, Voice & Video Calling functionality has been moved to a separate framework. In case you do not plan to use the calling feature, please add the Calling framework pod 'CometChatCalls', '2.1.1' in your app Podfile.
And then install the CometChatPro framework through CocoaPods. 
pod install
If you’re facing any issues while installing pods then use the below command. 
pod install --repo-update

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2. Configure CometChat inside your app

i. Initialize CometChat 🎬 The init() method initializes the settings required for CometChat. We suggest calling the init() method on app startup, preferably in the didFinishLaunchingWithOptions() method of the Application class. 
import CometChatPro

class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate{

   var window: UIWindow?
   let appId: String = "ENTER APP ID"
   let region: String = "ENTER REGION CODE"
    
func application(_ application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [UIApplication.LaunchOptionsKey: Any]?) -> Bool {

let mySettings = AppSettings.AppSettingsBuilder().subscribePresenceForAllUsers().setRegion(region:   region).build()
CometChat(appId: appId ,appSettings: mySettings,onSuccess: { (isSuccess) in
       print("CometChat Pro SDK intialise successfully.")
   }) { (error) in
       print("CometChat Pro SDK failed intialise with error: \(error.errorDescription)")
    }
    return true
    }
}
Make sure you replace the appId with your CometChat appId and region with your app region in the above code.
ii. Create User 🐣 This method takes a User object and the Auth Key as input parameters and returns the created User object if the request is successful. 
let uid = "user1"
let name = "Kevin"
let authKey = "AUTH_KEY"

let newUser : User = User(uid: uid, name: name)
newUser.avatar = "ENTER AVATAR URL HERE"

CometChat.createUser(user: newUser, apiKey: authKey, onSuccess: { (User) in
      print("User created successfully. \(User.stringValue())")
  }) { (error) in
     print("The error is \(String(describing: error?.description))")
}
ii. Log in your User👤 The login() method returns the User object containing all the information of the logged-in user. 
let uid    = "cometchat-uid-1"
let authKey = "ENTER AUTH KEY"

CometChat.login(UID: uid, apiKey: authKey, onSuccess: { (user) in
  print("Login successful: " + user.stringValue())
}) { (error) in
  print("Login failed with error: " + error.errorDescription);
}
  • Make sure you replace the authKey with your CometChat Auth Key in the above code.
  • We have set up 5 users for testing having UIDs: cometchat-uid-1, cometchat-uid-2, cometchat-uid-3, cometchat-uid-4, and cometchat-uid-5.

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3. Add UI Kit to your project

To integrate CometChat UIKit inside your app. Kindly follow the below steps: i. Simply clone the UIKit Library from the below repository. 
git clone https://github.com/cometchat-pro/ios-swift-chat-ui-kit.git
ii. After cloning the repository, Navigate to the Library folder and drag and drop the Library folder inside your project’s folder.
iii. Make sure you’ve selected ✅ Copy items if needed as well as 🔘 Create group options while adding a `Library inside your project. iv. If the Library is added successfully, all added folders will be in Yellow color.

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4. Launch CometChat

CometChatUI is an option to launch a fully functional chat application using the UI Kit. In UI Kit all the UI Components are interlinked and work together to launch a fully functional chat on your website/application. To use CometChatUI user has to launch CometChatUI class. CometChatUI is a subclass of UITabbarController. 
DispatchQueue.main.async {
let cometChatUI = CometChatUI()
cometChatUI.setup(withStyle: .fullScreen)
self.present(cometChatUI, animated: true, completion: nil)
}
Please run the above code snippet in the main thread.

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5. Receive Real-time calls (Optional)

To receive real-time call events when the app is in foreground, the user has to register for them in the App Delegate class. 
CometChatCallManager().registerForCalls(application: self)
  • This method only allows user to launch the incoming call screen and other calling events when the app is in foreground mode.