Navigating between views in an iOS app¶

If your iOS app has multiple views, you can add voice commands to navigate between them. In this tutorial, we will add a new view to our starter iOS app and create commands to switch between the app views with voice.

What you will learn¶

How to send commands from the voice script to an iOS app
How to handle commands on the iOS app side
How to navigate between views in an iOS app with voice

What you will need¶

To go through this tutorial, make sure you have completed the following tutorial: Building a voice assistant for an iOS Swift app. You can also use an example app provided by Alan: SwiftTutorial.part1.zip. This is an XCode project of the app already integrated with Alan.

Step 1: Add a new view to the app¶

Note

This step is required if you are using the starter iOS app created in the previous tutorial. You can also use your own app with several views. In this case, skip this step and go to step 2.

In the Building a voice assistant for an iOS Swift app tutorial, we have created an iOS app with a single view, and added the Alan button to it. Let’s add a new view to this app. We will use the Navigation Controller to manage the app views.

In Xcode, open the app’s storyboard: Main.storyboard.
In the storyboard, select the app view by clicking the view dock.
Go to Editor > Embed In > Navigation Controller. The Navigation Controller will be added to the storyboard, and the app view will be linked to it.
Go to View > Show Library to open the Library, find View Controller in it and drag it to the storyboard. Place the added View Controller element to the right of the first View Controller.
From the Library, add a button to the first View Controller and name the button, for example: Show Second View.
Select the button, press and hold the Control key on the keyboard and drag from the button to the second View Controller. In the displayed window, select Show.
Select the created segue and in the Attribute Inspector, in the Identifier field, set the ID for it: goForward. We will use this ID later in this tutorial to switch to the second view with voice.

Open the ViewController.swift file and replace:

class ViewController: UIViewController

with

class ViewController: UINavigationController

Run the app. When the app is launched on the simulator, tap the Show Second View button to navigate forward. In the second view, tap the Back button at the top to get back to the initial view.

../../../_images/xcode-storyboard-run.png

Step 2: Add voice commands to navigate between views¶

We can navigate between views using the app’s UI. Now we need to add new commands to the Alan script to navigate between views with voice. In Alan Studio, open the project and in the code editor, add the following intents:

intent(`Navigate forward`, p => {
        p.play({command: 'navigation', route: 'forward'});
        p.play(`Navigating forward`);
});

intent(`Go back`, p => {
        p.play({command: 'navigation', route: 'back'});
        p.play(`Going back`);
});

Now, when we say one of these commands to the app, two things happen:

Alan sends the command provided in the intent to the app. To send the command, we need to specify a JSON object in the p.play function. Here the object contains the command name and routing data: forward or back.
Alan plays back the action confirmation to us.

Step 3: Handle commands on the app side¶

When we say Navigate forward or Go back, Alan sends a command to the app. We need to handle this command on the app side and make sure an appropriate action is performed. Let’s add a handler for Alan events to our app.

In the ViewController.swift file, in ViewDidLoad(), call the setupAlanEventHandler() function:

class ViewController: UINavigationController {

    /// Alan button
    fileprivate var button: AlanButton!

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        /// Set up the Alan button
        self.setupAlan()

        /// Set up a handler for events from Alan
        self.setupAlanEventHandler()
    }
...
}

To the ViewController class, add the function itself. In this function, we add an observer for events coming from the Alan voice script. Once an event is received, the handleEvent() function is invoked.

class ViewController: UINavigationController {
...
    fileprivate func setupAlanEventHandler() {
        /// Add an observer to get events from Alan
        NotificationCenter.default.addObserver(self, selector: #selector(self.handleEvent(_:)), name:NSNotification.Name(rawValue: "kAlanSDKEventNotification"), object:nil)
    }

    @objc func handleEvent(_ notification: Notification) {
    /// Get the user info object with JSON from Alan
    guard let userInfo = notification.userInfo,
        let jsonString = userInfo["jsonString"] as? String,
        let jsonData = jsonString.data(using: .utf8),
        let jsonObject = try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject(with: jsonData, options: []) as? [String: Any],
        /// Get the object with the command data
        let commandObject = jsonObject["data"] as? [String: Any],
        /// Get the command name string
        let commandString = commandObject["command"] as? String
    else {
        return
    }

        /// Get the command name string
        if commandString == "navigation" {
            /// Get the route name string
            guard let routeString = commandObject["route"] as? String else {
                return
            }
            /// Forward command
            if routeString == "forward" {
                DispatchQueue.main.async {
                    self.goForward()
                }
            }
            /// Back command
            else if routeString == "back" {
                DispatchQueue.main.async {
                    self.goBack()
                }
            }
        }
    }
...
}

And finally, to the ViewController class, add functions to navigate to the necessary view: goForward() and goBack(). Have a look at the goForward() function: here we use the ID of the segue we created in the first step.

class ViewController: UINavigationController {
...
    fileprivate func goForward() {
        /// Get the first view controller
        if let firstVC = self.viewControllers.first {
            /// Perform a segue to push the second view controller to the navigation stack. The segue is defined in the storyboard.
            firstVC.performSegue(withIdentifier: "goForward", sender: self)
        }
    }

    fileprivate func goBack() {
        /// Remove the second (last) view controller from the navigation stack
        self.popViewController(animated: true)
    }

Let’s review the code above to see how it works. When the Navigation Controller is loaded, the setupAlanEventHandler() is invoked, and our app starts listening for events coming from Alan. Once an event, in our case, a command with a JSON object, is received from the voice script, the handleEvent() function is triggered. The function processes the object and checks the value passed in the route key.

If the value is forward, the goForward() function is invoked, taking us to the second view. If the value is back, the goBack() function is invoked, and the initial view is displayed.

You can test it: run the app on the simulator, tap the Alan button and say: Navigate forward. The app will open the second view. Then say Go back, and the initial view will be displayed.

What you finally get¶

After you pass through this tutorial, you will have an iOS app with two views and will be able to send voice commands to navigate between them. You can get an example of such an app from the Alan GitHub to make sure you have set up your app correctly.

SwiftTutorial.part2.zip: XCode project of the app
SwiftTutorial.part2.js: voice commands used for this tutorial

What’s next?¶

Have a look at the next tutorial: Passing the app state to the voice script.