AWS SDK for iOS FAQs

Overview

Q: What is the AWS SDK for iOS?

The AWS SDK for iOS provides a library, code samples, and documentation for developers to build connected mobile applications using Amazon Web Services.

Example applications include:

• A media application that uploads photos, videos, and more to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) for world-wide distribution through Amazon CloudFront.
• A social game that shares moves, high scores, and other data between devices using Amazon SimpleDB.
• A messaging client that broadcasts messages between devices using Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) and Amazon Simple Notifications Service (Amazon SNS), without requiring any additional server infrastructure.

The AWS SDK for iOS makes it easier for software developers to call an AWS web service API directly from a mobile application. Previously, developers either wrote their own libraries to handle the HTTP connection, request retries, and error handling, or built additional infrastructure to proxy the API requests through a server fleet. With the mobile SDKs, developers can add the following infrastructure to their mobile applications:

• Storage—Store and retrieve any amount of data using Amazon S3.
• Database—Add a highly available, scalable, and flexible non-relational data store using Amazon SimpleDB with little or no administrative burden.
• Messaging—Integrate reliable, highly scalable mobile-to-mobile communication into applications using Amazon SQS, and Amazon SNS. Send bulk and transactional email to customers using Amazon SES.
• Compute—Launch and manage Amazon EC2 instances with a number of features for building scalable, failure resilient, and enterprise class applications.
• Monitoring—Monitor your Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon EBS volumes, Elastic Load Balancers, and Amazon RDS database instances in real-time with Amazon CloudWatch.

Q: What services does the AWS SDK for iOS support?

The AWS SDK for iOS supports the AWS infrastructure products. For a complete list of services, see http://aws.amazon.com/sdkforios

We’ll plan to continue to add support for infrastructure services and features over time. Let us know if there’s anything particular you want to see in our Mobile Development forum.

Q: What features are included in the AWS SDK for iOS?

The SDK includes:

• AWS iOS Library—Build mobile applications for iOS on top of APIs that take the complexity out of coding directly against a web service interface. The library provides APIs that hide much of the lower-level plumbing, including authentication, request retries, and error handling.
• Code Samples—Practical examples for how to use the library to build applications.
• Documentation—Reference documentation demonstrating how to use the SDK.
• Credential Management—The SDK includes support for using temporary security credentials provided by the AWS Security Token Service. The SDK provides two sample applications that demonstrate how to connect to a token vending machine (TVM) which serves as an interface to the AWS Security Token Service. The TVM retrieves the temporary security credentials from the AWS Security Token Service and distributes them to the mobile application which can then use the credentials to access AWS resources. See the Token Vending Machine article for more details.

Q: Why is AWS writing an SDK for iOS?

The AWS infrastructure services provide language-agnostic web service APIs that can be used by any number of programming languages and technologies. The AWS SDK for iOS makes application development easier for our customers by providing a tailored development experience for iOS developers.

Q: How do I get support for the AWS SDK for iOS?

All customers can get support for the AWS SDK for iOS through our community forums, getting started guide, and reference documentation available at (http://aws.amazon.com/sdkforios). AWS Premium Support customers can additionally get support through the Support Center at http://aws.amazon.com/support.

Installation and Licensing

Q: How can I get the AWS SDK for iOS?

You can download the AWS SDK for iOS from our web site, or grab the source code from Git. Check out our web page at http://aws.amazon.com/sdkforios for details.

Q: What version of iOS does the SDK support?

The SDK requires requires iOS v4.1 or later.

Open Source and Licensing

Q: Where can I find the source code?

The source code is available through our Git repository on GitHub, https://github.com/aws/aws-sdk-ios. There, you can browse the source code online, download the entire package source, or create your own clone.

Q: Is the AWS SDK for iOS open source? How is the SDK licensed?

The library and sample application source code is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, so you can modify and re-distribute the code with the appropriate attribution.

Q: Do you accept code contributions?

Yes. To provide a bug fix or improvement, post the code to our Mobile Development forums.