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Getting Started.md

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Getting started

The Readium Swift toolkit enables you to develop reading apps for iOS and iPadOS. It provides built-in support for multiple publication formats such as EPUB, PDF, audiobooks, and comics.

⚠️ Readium offers only low-level tools. You are responsible for creating a user interface for reading and managing books, as well as a data layer to store the user's publications. The Test App is an example of such integration.

Design principles

The toolkit has been designed following these core tenets:

  • Modular: It is divided into separate modules that can be used independently.
  • Extensible: Integrators should be able to support a custom DRM, publication format or inject their own stylesheets without modifying the toolkit itself.
  • Opiniated: We adhere to open standards but sometimes interpret them for practicality.

Packages

Main packages

Specialized packages

Adapters to third-party dependencies

  • ReadiumAdapterGCDWebServer provides an HTTP server built with GCDWebServer.
  • ReadiumAdapterLCPSQLite provides implementations of the ReadiumLCP license and passphrase repositories using SQLite.swift.

Overview of the shared models (ReadiumShared)

The Readium toolkit provides models used as exchange types between packages.

Publication models

Publication

Publication and its sub-components represent a single publication – ebook, audiobook or comic. It is loosely based on the Readium Web Publication Manifest.

A Publication instance:

  • holds the metadata of a publication, such as its author or table of contents,
  • allows to read the contents of a publication, e.g. XHTML or audio resources,
  • provides additional services, for example content extraction or text search.

Link

A Link object holds a pointer (URL) to a resource or service along with additional metadata, such as its media type or title.

The Publication contains several Link collections, for example:

  • readingOrder lists the publication resources arranged in the order they should be read.
  • resources contains secondary resources necessary for rendering the readingOrder, such as an image or a font file.
  • tableOfContents represents the table of contents as a tree of Link objects.
  • links exposes additional resources, such as a canonical link to the manifest or a search web service.

Locator

A Locator object represents a precise location in a publication resource in a format that can be stored and shared across reading systems. It is more accurate than a Link and contains additional information about the location, e.g. progression percentage, position or textual context.

Locator objects are used for various features, including:

  • reporting the current progression in the publication
  • saving bookmarks, highlights and annotations
  • navigating search results

Data models

Asset

An Asset represents a single file or package and provides access to its content. There are two types of Asset:

  • ContainerAsset for packages which contains several resources, such as a ZIP archive.
  • ResourceAsset for accessing a single resource, such as a JSON or PDF file.

Asset instances are obtained through an AssetRetriever.

You can use the asset.format to identify the media type and capabilities of the asset.

if asset.format.conformsTo(.lcp) {
    // The asset is protected with LCP.
}
if asset.format.conformsTo(.epub) {
    // The asset represents an EPUB publication.
}

Resource

A Resource provides read access to a single resource, such as a file or an entry in an archive.

Resource instances are usually created by a ResourceFactory. The toolkit ships with various implementations supporting different data access protocols such as local files or HTTP.

Container

A Container provides read access to a collection of resources. Container instances representing an archive are usually created by an ArchiveOpener. The toolkit ships with a ZIPArchiveOpener supporting local ZIP files.

Publication objects internally use a Container to expose its content.

Opening a publication (ReadiumStreamer)

To retrieve a Publication object from a publication file like an EPUB or audiobook, you can use an AssetRetriever and PublicationOpener.

// Instantiate the required components.
let httpClient = DefaultHTTPClient()
let assetRetriever = AssetRetriever(
    httpClient: httpClient
)
let publicationOpener = PublicationOpener(
    publicationParser: DefaultPublicationParser(
        httpClient: httpClient,
        assetRetriever: assetRetriever,
        pdfFactory: DefaultPDFDocumentFactory()
    )
)

let url: URL = URL(...)

// Retrieve an `Asset` to access the file content.
switch await assetRetriever.retrieve(url: url.anyURL.absoluteURL!) {
case .success(let asset):
    // Open a `Publication` from the `Asset`.
    switch await publicationOpener.open(asset: asset, allowUserInteraction: true, sender: view) {
    case .success(let publication):
        print("Opened \(publication.metadata.title)")

    case .failure(let error):
        // Failed to access or parse the publication
    }

case .failure(let error):
    // Failed to retrieve the asset
}

The allowUserInteraction parameter is useful when supporting a DRM like Readium LCP. It indicates if the toolkit can prompt the user for credentials when the publication is protected.

See the dedicated user guide for more information.

Accessing the metadata of a publication

After opening a publication, you may want to read its metadata to insert a new entity into your bookshelf database, for instance. The publication.metadata object contains everything you need, including title, authors and the published date.

You can retrieve the publication cover using await publication.cover().

Rendering the publication on the screen (ReadiumNavigator)

You can use a Readium navigator to present the publication to the user. The Navigator renders resources on the screen and offers APIs and user interactions for navigating the contents.

Please refer to the Navigator guide for more information.