cordova-plugin-iosrtc

Cordova iOS plugin exposing the full WebRTC W3C JavaScript APIs.

• Public Google Group (mailing list) for questions and discussions about cordova-plugin-iosrtc.
• Bug Tracker for reporting issues and requesting new features (please don't use the bug tracker for questions or problems, use the mailing list instead).
• NPM package.

Yet another WebRTC SDK for iOS?

Absolutely not. This plugin exposes the WebRTC W3C API for Cordova iOS apps (you know there is no WebRTC in iOS, right?), which means no need to learn "yet another WebRTC API" and no need to use a specific service/product/provider.

Why?

Check the release announcement at the eFace2Face site.

Requirements

In order to make this Cordova plugin run into a iOS application some requirements must be satisfied in both development computer and target devices:

• Xcode >= 7.2.1
• iOS >= 9 (run on lower versions at your own risk, but don't open issues)
• cordova-ios 3.9.X (don't attempt to use 4.X)
• No bitcode (built-in libwebrtc does not contain bitcode so you need to disable it in your Xcode project settings)

Installation

Within your Cordova project:

$ cordova plugin add cordova-plugin-iosrtc

(or add it into a <plugin> entry in the config.xml of your app).

Building

• Building: Guidelines for building a Cordova iOS application including the cordova-plugin-iosrtc plugin.
• Building libwebrtc: Guidelines for building Google's libwebrtc with modifications needed by the cordova-plugin-iosrtc plugin (just in case you want to use a different version of libwebrtc or aplpy your own changes to it).

Usage

The plugin exposes the cordova.plugins.iosrtc JavaScript namespace which contains all the WebRTC classes and functions.

var pc = new cordova.plugins.iosrtc.RTCPeerConnection({
  iceServers: []
});

cordova.plugins.iosrtc.getUserMedia(
  // constraints
  { audio: true, video: true },
  // success callback
  function (stream) {
    console.log('got local MediaStream: ', stream);

    pc.addStream(stream);
  },
  // failure callback
  function (error) {
    console.error('getUserMedia failed: ', error);
  }
);

Q: But... wait! Does it mean that there is no window.RTCPeerConnection nor navigator.getUserMedia?

R: A Cordova plugin is supposed to expose its JavaScript stuff in a specific namespace and, personally, I just hate those libraries that pollute the global namespace. Said that, the plugin provides a registerGlobals() method, so you just need the following extra-code in your existing WebRTC app (assuming that cordova-plugin-device is installed):

// Just for Cordova apps.
document.addEventListener('deviceready', function () {
  // Just for iOS devices.
  if (window.device.platform === 'iOS') {
    cordova.plugins.iosrtc.registerGlobals();
  }
});

And that's all. Now you have window.RTCPeerConnection, navigator.getUserMedia, etc.

Q: What about <video> elements and video.src = URL.createObjectURL(stream)? do I need custom HTML tags or functions to display WebRTC videos?

R: No. Just use an HTML video element as usual, really. The plugin will properly place a native UIView layer on top of it by respecting (most of) its CSS properties.

Q: Can I place HTML elements (buttons and so on) on top of active <video> elements?

R: Not yet, but there is ongoing work to enable this feature (see here).

Q: What about HTML5 video events? Can I rely on video.oncanplay?

R: I see what you mean. As there is no real video attached to the <video> element, media events are artificially emitted by the plugin. The following events are emitted when the MediaStream attached to a video element is ready to render video: onloadedmetadata, onloadeddata, oncanplay, oncanplaythrough. So yes, you can rely on them.

Q: Can I read <video> properties such as readyState, videoWidth, etc?

Again, there is no real video attached to the <video> element so some peroperties are artificially set by the plugin. These are readyState, videoWidth and videoHeight.

Q: Do I need to call special methods to release/free native WebRTC objects? How are they garbage collected?

R: Good question. An RTCPeerConnection is released when close() is called on it, a MediaStream is released when all its tracks end, and other elements are garbage collected when no longer needed. Basically the same behavior as in a WebRTC capable browser.

Q: What about Android? Why just iOS?

R: In modern versions of Android the WebView component is based on the Chromium open source project which already includes WebRTC (more info). For older versions of Android the CrossWalk project provides new WebView versions with WebRTC support as well.

Documentation

Read the full documentation in the docs folder.

Demo Application

Check our iOSRTCApp (Google's AppRTC adapted to Cordova iOS with pure HTML5/JavaScript and cordova-plugin-iosrtc).

NOTE: The demo app is currently unmaintained and it may just fail.

Who Uses It

People and companies using cordova-plugin-iosrtc.

If you are using the plugin we would love to heard back from you!

Known Issues

iOS Safari and crash on WebSocket events

Don't call plugin methods within WebSocket events (onopen, onmessage, etc). There is an issue in iOS Safari (see issue #12). Instead run a setTimeout() within the WebSocket event if you need to call plugin methods on it.

Or better, just load the provided ios-websocket-hack.js script into your Cordova iOS app and you are done.

HTML5 video API

As explained above, there is no real media source attached to the <video> element so some HTML5 video events and properties are artificially emitted/set by the plugin on behalf of the video element.

Methods such as play(), pause() are not implemented. In order to pause a video just set enabled = false on the associated MediaStreamTrack.

Changelog

Version 2.2.4

• Fix crash (issue #144).

• Update NPM dependencies.

Version 2.2.3

• Enable iOS native H.264 encoder/decoder.

• RTCDataChannel: Allow empty label (issue #124).

• Update yaeti dependency (issue #123).

• Fix retain on pluginMediaStreamTrack does not allow camera/mic to be freed (PR #126). Credits to @oNaiPs.

• Allow a handled video element to be removed from the DOM and added again later (PR #127). Credits to @oNaiPs.

Version 2.2.2

• Update libwebrtc to revision 11063 so MediaStream events (onaddtrack and onremovetrack) work again (issue #95).

Version 2.2.1

• getUserMedia(): Fire errback if given video constraints are not satisfied.

Version 2.2.0

• Move from getMediaDevices() to enumerateDevices().
• Implement video constraints in getUserMedia(): deviceId, width.min, width.max, height.min, height.max, frameRate, frameRate.min, frameRate.max).
• Update deps and build on Node >= 4.

Version 2.1.0

• Update libwebrtc to latest revision (rev 10800).
• Enble iOS native H264 codec.

Version 2.0.2

• Enable CSS padding (thanks to @saghul) (pull request #89).

Version 2.0.1

• Don't crash if user or iOS settings deny access lo local audio/video devices (issue #73).

Version 2.0.0

• Swift 2.0 is here! Credits to @saghul for his pull request.
• extra/hooks/iosrtc-swift-support.js: Set BUILD_VERSION to 7.0.

Version 1.4.5

• Add cordova.plugins.iosrtc.observeVideo(video) API for the plugin to handle <video> elements not yet in the DOM (issue #49).

Version 1.4.4

• Support CSS border-radius property in HTML video elements.

Version 1.4.3

• Make private properties more private (issue #34).

Version 1.4.2

• Use yaeti module as EventTarget shim.

Version 1.4.1

• Release MediaStreamRenderer and revert <video> properties when the attached MediaStream emits "inactive" (issue #27).

Version 1.4.0

• Implemented some <video> properties such as readyState, videoWidth and videoHeight (issue #25).
• Building simplified for both Cordova CLI and Xcode by providing a single "hook" the user must add into his Cordova application (check the Building documentation for further details).

Version 1.3.3

• CSS object-fit: none properly implemented (don't clip the video).

Version 1.3.2

• CSS object-fit property implemented in <video> elements (issue #23).

Version 1.3.1

• Stop "error" event propagation in <video> element when attaching a MediaStream to it (issue #22).

Version 1.3.0

• Plugin moved to NPM registry and plugin ID renamed to cordova-plugin-iosrtc.

Version 1.2.8

• iosrtc.registerGlobals() also generates window.webkitRTCPeerConnection and navigator.webkitGetUserMedia() for backwards compatibility with WebRTC JavaScript wrappers/adapters that assume browser vendor prefixes (webkit, moz) in the underlying WebRTC API.

Author

Iñaki Baz Castillo at eFace2Face, inc.

License

MIT :)