Orchard

Device identification for iOS, watchOS, and tvOS.

Orchard is a library for iOS, watchOS, and tvOS to identify the device running your code. Built in both Swift and Objective-C variants, the code uses the device model identifier of the system to identify the device.

Use

“But I thought we weren’t supposed to do it like this!”

For most cases, you shouldn’t use the model of the device to control features of your app. Instead of hardcoding which devices support Touch ID or Face ID, use LAContext. Instead of computing layout based on device model, use Auto Layout and size classes.

There are certain instances where it is important to know which device your code is running on. Whether you’re trying to sell accessories for the user’s current device, draw onscreen elements in actual size, or locate device hardware relative to the screen, sometimes you need to know the actual device, and that’s where Orchard comes in.

Objective-C

To use Orchard in Objective-C, use the Orchard category on UIDevice (or WKInterfaceDevice on watchOS) to get an enum value representing the device—either an OrchardiOSDevice, OrchardwatchOSDevice, or OrchardtvOSDevice, depending on the OS. You can then use this value in a switch statement or pass it to other methods, such as OrchardMarketingNameForiOSDevice(), which returns an NSString representing the marketing name for the device (e.g. “iPhone XS Max”). You can see this in the example below:

OrchardiOSDevice device = [UIDevice.currentDevice orchardiOSDevice];

switch (device) {
  case OrchardiOSDeviceiPhoneXSMax:
    NSLog(@"You have an iPhone XS Max!)";
}

Swift

To use Orchard in Swift, use the DeviceIdentity enum. You can obtain the instance representing the current device using the deviceIdentity computed property of UIDevice or WKInterfaceDevice. Instances of the DeviceIdentity enum have a marketingName property that returns the marketing name for the device (e.g. “iPad Pro (12.9-inch) (3rd Generation)”). You can see this in the example below:

let deviceIdentity = UIDevice.current.deviceIdentity

print("I’m an \(deviceIdentity.marketingName ?? "unknown device").")

switch deviceIdentity {
case .iPhone(.iPhone11ProMax), .iPhone(.iPhoneXSMax), .iPhone(.iPhone8Plus),
     .iPhone(.iPhone7Plus), .iPhone(.iPhone6sPlus), .iPhone(.iPhone6Plus),
     .iPad(.iPadPro12_9Inch), .iPad(.iPadPro12_9Inch2),
     .iPad(.iPadPro12_9Inch3), .iPad(.iPadPro12_9Inch4):
    print("You got the big one!")
default: break
}

Mixed-Source Projects

Orchard’s Objective-C code is completely usable from Swift; device names are annotated with NS_SWIFT_NAME and therefore can be used in the above example just as their Swift-native counterparts.

Installation

CocoaPods

Orchard can be installed using CocoaPods. There are two subspecs, Swift and ObjC, so use either of these lines in your Podfile:

pod "Orchard/ObjC"

pod "Orchard/Swift"

Swift Package Manager

The Swift portion of Orchard can be installed using the Swift package manager.

Development

Orchard uses Swift gyb to generate both Objective-C and Swift source files. The actual device data is in the Data folder, in TSV format. To add new devices, simply update the TSV file(s) with new device info and rebuild both targets; the source code will be regenerated. Do not modify any file for which there is a corresponding .gyb file, as the builds will overwrite your changes.

Orchard assumes you’ve installed gyb with Homebrew as outlined in the NSHipster article; to install it, simply run:

brew install nshipster/formulae/gyb

Orchard also ships with a Brewfile; simply run this command to install gyb:

brew bundle

Orchard uses the enum type in Python. To use this with the system Python (2.7 as of macOS 10.15.4), simply run this command to install it:

sudo easy_install pip
pip install --upgrade pip enum34