intrepidpursuits/ipbackgroundaudio

Summary

IPBackgroundAudioManger is meant to ease implementation of background audio in iOS5+ applications. It is ideal for applications that play audio tracks and need to handle remote control events as well as audio route change events (e.g. when the user unplugs their headphones). It also assists in setting up an AVAudioSession for music playback, and includes convenience methods for setting the "now playing" info on the lock screen.

Setup

Include the 2 IPBackgroundAudioManager source files in your project, and also add these frameworks:

• AVFoundation.framework
• AudioToolbox.framework
• MediaPlayer.framework

Next, add the UIBackgroundModes key to your info.plist

Start the audio session before your app begins playing audio:

[[IPBackgroundAudioManager sharedManager] startSessionWithCategory:AVAudioSessionCategoryPlayback error:nil];

(Optional) Handle notifications for remote control and audio route change events. The background audio manager will post the following NSNotifications:

• IPBackgroundAudioNotificationRouteChanged: Posted when the default route changes for any reason.
• IPBackgroundAudioNotificationRouteUnavailable: Posted when the default route changes because the previous route has become unavailable (e.g. headphones were unplugged). It's usually good form to stop playing audio when this happens.
• IPBackgroundAudioNotificationRemoteControl: Posted when the app receives a remote control event. The relevant UIEvent object will be in the notification's userInfo dictionary, under the key IPBackgroundAudioRemoteControlEventKey

(Optional) Set the now playing info when playing tracks. When a track changes, you can set the lock screen's "now playing" info with a convenience method on IPBackgroundManager:

- (void) setNowPlayingInfoWithArtist:(NSString *)artist
                           album:(NSString *)album
                           title:(NSString *)title
                         artwork:(UIImage *)artwork
                        duration:(NSNumber *)duration

Demo

A sample project can be found in the "Demo" folder.