UIActivityViewController crashing on iOS 8 iPads

Question

I am currently testing my app with Xcode 6 (Beta 6). UIActivityViewController works fine with iPhone devices and simulators but crashes with iPad simulators and devices (iOS 8) with following logs

Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSGenericException', 
reason: 'UIPopoverPresentationController 
(<_UIAlertControllerActionSheetRegularPresentationController: 0x7fc7a874bd90>) 
should have a non-nil sourceView or barButtonItem set before the presentation occurs.

I am using following code for iPhone and iPad for both iOS 7 as well as iOS 8

NSData *myData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:_filename];
NSArray *activityItems = [NSArray arrayWithObjects:myData, nil];
UIActivityViewController *activityViewController = [[UIActivityViewController alloc] initWithActivityItems:nil applicationActivities:nil];
activityViewController.excludedActivityTypes = @[UIActivityTypeCopyToPasteboard];
[self presentViewController:activityViewController animated:YES completion:nil];

I am getting a similar crash in of one my other app as well. Can you please guide me ? has anything changed with UIActivityViewController in iOS 8? I checked but i did not find anything on this

Answer 1

I see a lot of people hardcoding iPhone/iPad etc. while using Swift code.

This is not needed, you have to use the language features. The following code assumes you will use a UIBarButtonItem and will work on both iPhone and iPad.

@IBAction func share(sender: AnyObject) {
    let vc = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: ["hello"], applicationActivities: nil)
    vc.popoverPresentationController?.barButtonItem = sender as? UIBarButtonItem
    self.presentViewController(vc, animated: true, completion: nil)
 }

Notice how there are no If statements or any other crazy thing. The optional unwrapping will be nil on iPhone, so the line vc.popoverPresentationController? will not do anything on iPhones.

Answer 2

Fix for Swift 2.0

    if UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiom.Phone {
        self.presentViewController(activityVC, animated: true, completion: nil)
    }
    else {
        let popup: UIPopoverController = UIPopoverController(contentViewController: activityVC)
        popup.presentPopoverFromRect(CGRectMake(self.view.frame.size.width / 2, self.view.frame.size.height / 4, 0, 0), inView: self.view, permittedArrowDirections: UIPopoverArrowDirection.Any, animated: true)
    }

Answer 3

Swift 3:

class func openShareActions(image: UIImage, vc: UIViewController) {
    let activityVC = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: [image], applicationActivities: nil)
    if UIDevice.current.userInterfaceIdiom == .pad {
        if activityVC.responds(to: #selector(getter: UIViewController.popoverPresentationController)) {
            activityVC.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = vc.view
        }
    }
    vc.present(activityVC, animated: true, completion: nil)
}

Answer 4

On iPad the activity view controller will be displayed as a popover using the new UIPopoverPresentationController, it requires that you specify an anchor point for the presentation of the popover using one of the three following properties:

• barButtonItem
• sourceView
• sourceRect

In order to specify the anchor point you will need to obtain a reference to the UIActivityController's UIPopoverPresentationController and set one of the properties as follows:

if ( [activityViewController respondsToSelector:@selector(popoverPresentationController)] ) { 
// iOS8
 activityViewController.popoverPresentationController.sourceView =
parentView;
 }

Answer 5

In Swift to fix this for iPad, best way is to do like this I found.

    let things = ["Things to share"]
    let avc = UIActivityViewController(activityItems:things, applicationActivities:nil)
    avc.setValue("Subject title", forKey: "subject")
    avc.completionWithItemsHandler = {
        (s: String!, ok: Bool, items: [AnyObject]!, err:NSError!) -> Void in
    }

    self.presentViewController(avc, animated:true, completion:nil)
    if let pop = avc.popoverPresentationController {
        let v = sender as! UIView // sender would be the button view tapped, but could be any view
        pop.sourceView = v
        pop.sourceRect = v.bounds
    }

Answer 6

swift = ios7/ ios8

let activityViewController = UIActivityViewController(activityItems: sharingItems, applicationActivities: nil)

//if iPhone
if (UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiom.Phone) {
    // go on..
} else {
    //if iPad
    if activityViewController.respondsToSelector(Selector("popoverPresentationController")) {
        // on iOS8
        activityViewController.popoverPresentationController!.barButtonItem = self.shareButtonItem;
    }
}
self.presentViewController(activityViewController, animated: true, completion: nil)