appex — Using the Pythonista Sharing Extension

The appex module allows you to access the input data of the iOS share sheet when you’re using the Pythonista extension from another app.

Note

When you invoke the share sheet in another app, the Pythonista extension will not show up automatically, you have to activate it by tapping the More button first. If it doesn’t show up at all, this usually means that the type of data being shared is not supported.

Special Considerations

• When you present a ui.View (using ui.View.present()), the presentation style is ignored. On iPhone, the presentation is always full-screen, on iPad, the view will cover the main view of the app extension, and it’s not possible to create full-screen views.
• Some functions, most importantly webbrowser.open(), will not work within an extension script. The notification module is also unavailable.
• The camera is not available to app extensions, so photos.capture_image() will not work.

Functions in the appex module:

appex.is_running_extension()

Return True if the script is running within the app extension, False otherwise.

In case you want to test your script in the main app, you can e.g. use this to load dummy data to replace the share sheet’s input.

appex.get_attachments(uti='public.data')

Return a list of attachments that match the given type identifier. In most cases, it is a lot easier to use the type-specific functions (like get_image(), get_url()...) instead.

appex.get_images(image_type='pil')

Return a list of images in the input of the share sheet. image_type can be either ‘ui’ or ‘pil’. If the type is ‘ui’, ui.Image instances will be returned, otherwise PIL images. If there are no images in the input, the return value will be an empty list.

appex.get_image(image_type='pil)

Return the first image in the input of the share sheet. image_type can be either ‘ui’ or ‘pil’. If the type is ‘ui’, a ui.Image instance will be returned, otherwise a PIL image. If there are no images in the input, the return value will be an empty list.

appex.get_image_data()

Return raw image data for the first image in the share sheet’s input. The data is returned as a byte string. If there is no image in the input, the return value is None.

appex.get_images_data()

Return raw image data for all images in the share sheet’s input. The data is returned as a list of byte strings. If there are no images in the input, the return value is an empty list.

appex.get_text()

Return text input of the share sheet (as a unicode string). If there is no text in the input, the return value is None.

appex.get_urls()

Return a list of URLs in the share sheet’s input. If there are no URLs in the input, the return value is an empty list.

appex.get_url()

Return the first URL in the share sheet’s input. If there is no URL in the input, the return value is None.

appex.get_file_paths()

Return a list of file paths in the share sheet’s input. If there are no file paths in the input, the return value is an empty list.

appex.get_file_path()

Return the first file path in the share sheet’s input. If there is no file path in the input, the return value is None.

appex.get_vcards()

Return a list of VCard records in the share sheet’s input. Each record is represented as a string. If there are no Vcards in the input, the return value is an empty list.

appex.get_vcards()

Return the first VCard record in the share sheet’s input. The record is represented as a string. If there are no Vcards in the input, the return value is None.

watch submodule

watch.set_input_suggestions(suggestions)

Call this before raw_input in a script that is started from the Apple Watch to set the list of suggestions that is shown in the text input dialog. suggestions should be a sequence of strings (note: If you pass a single string, it is interpreted as a sequence of characters, so you’ll get a separate suggestion for each letter).