Using UniFFI binding iOS App#

Cedarling UniFFI binding exposes its init, authz and log interfaces to different languages and on all the different platforms, including Swift for iOS. This section covers how to build and use Cedarling UniFFI binding in an iOS app.

Prerequisites#

Rust: Install it from the official Rust website.
Xcode: Available on the Mac App Store.

Building#

Clone the jans monorepo and change directory to /path/of/jans/jans-cedarling.

 git clone https://github.com/JanssenProject/jans.git
 cd /path/of/jans/jans-cedarling

Build the library:
```
cargo build --release
```
In target/release, you should find the libmobile.dylib, libmobile.so, or libmobile.dll file, depending on the operating system you are using.
.so (Shared Object) – This is the shared library format used in Linux and other Unix-based operating systems.
.dylib (Dynamic Library) – This is the shared library format for macOS.
.dll (Dynamic Link Library) - The shared library format used in Windows.
Generate the bindings for Swift by running the command below. Replace {build_file} with libmobile.dylib, libmobile.so, or libmobile.dll, depending on which file is generated in target/release.
```
cargo run --bin uniffi-bindgen generate --library ./target/release/{build_file} --language swift --out-dir ./bindings/cedarling_uniffi/output
```

Building the iOS binaries and adding these targets to Rust.

rustup target add aarch64-apple-ios-sim aarch64-apple-ios

Build the library for Swift.
```
cargo build --release --target=aarch64-apple-ios-sim
cargo build --release --target=aarch64-apple-ios
```
You should have two binaries target/aarch64-apple-ios-sim/release/libmobile.a and target/aarch64-apple-ios/release/libmobile.a.

The XCFramework will allow us to import the library with zero effort in Xcode. First, we need to rename the file ./bindings/cedarling_uniffi/output/mobileFFI.modulemap to ./bindings/cedarling_uniffi/output/module.modulemap. Then, we can create the XCFramework:

xcodebuild -create-xcframework \
        -library ./target/aarch64-apple-ios-sim/release/libmobile.a -headers ./bindings/cedarling_uniffi/output \
        -library ./target/aarch64-apple-ios/release/libmobile.a -headers ./bindings/cedarling_uniffi/output \
        -output "ios/Mobile.xcframework"

Open ./jans-cedarling/bindings/cedarling_uniffi/iOSApp in Xcode. Import both the XCFramework Mobile.xcframework and the Swift file bindings bindings/output/mobile.swift files into your project (drag and drop should work).
Run iOS project on simulator.

We have included a sample iOS app using Cedarling UniFFI binding for making authorisation decisions. Here is a demonstration video of its working.

Last update: 2025-03-24
Created: 2025-02-18