Updating Glance data in watchOS2.2

Question

I'm hoping you smart people can help me as most of the data online is out of date. I have an iPhone app that displays financial information. I would like to present this on a watch glance screen.

I can get the app to send the dictionary of the latest information and the glance does update live if both the Glance screen and phone app are open.

I would like to know how to use the Glance screen to ask the phone app for the latest information. The phone app will probably be closed so it would need waking up and then asked for the current information.

I'm using swift 7 and WatchOS 2.2 and IOS 9.3

A lot of information here on Stackoverflow refers to watchOS 1 so no longer works.

I look forward to your solutions.

Answer 1

Look into WCSession as there are different methods for sending different types of data. This implementation is sending a dictionary.

Must setup a WCSession on both watch and phone devices. AppDelegate in didFinishLaunchingWithOptions: and I use the ExtensionDelegate in its init method. Be sure to import WatchConnectivity when using WCSession. Using the AppDelegate as a WCSessionDelegate below.

// AppDelegate.swift
class AppDelegate: UIResponder, UIApplicationDelegate, WCSessionDelegate {

    func application(application: UIApplication, didFinishLaunchingWithOptions launchOptions: [NSObject: AnyObject]?) -> Bool {

        // Setup session on phone
        if WCSession.isSupported() {
            let session = WCSession.defaultSession()
            session.delegate = self
            session.activateSession()
        }

        return true
    }

    // WCSessionDelegate method receiving message from watch and using callback
    func session(session: WCSession, didReceiveMessage message: [String : AnyObject], replyHandler: ([String : AnyObject]) -> Void) {

        // Reply with a dictionary of information based on the "message"
        replyHandler(["Key": "Value"])
    }
}

Setup WCSession on the watch:

// ExtensionDelegate.swift
override init() {
    let session = WCSession.defaultSession()
    session.activateSession()
}

Send message, consisting of a dictionary, to the phone in order to receive information in the callback:

// GlanceController.swift
 WCSession.defaultSession().sendMessage(["Please give Glance data": "Value"], replyHandler:{ (response) in
    // Extract data from response dictionary
}) { (error) in
    // Handle error
}