iOS Blog Feed Widget

[r3econ]

• Adds native iOS home screen widget that displays recent posts from Lichess blog feeds. The PR also lays the groundwork for adding more iOS widgets in the future.

Disclaimer: iOS home screen widgets can't be written using flutter. iOS requires writing them using native code.

• Feed content is configurable via the widget settings sheet and supports:
  • Official Blog (default)
  • Community Blog
  • User Blog — shows a username field
• Feeds are fetched as Atom (all Lichess feeds use Atom format)
• Tapping a post deep-links into the app and opens it in the in-app browser.
• See EXTENSIONS.md for how to sign and test the extension as well as what is required to make it work when releasing in the App Store.
• Partially resolves Platform home widget #1790
• Feedback is highly welcomed 🙂 🆗

Demo

iPhone

iPad

Widget Catalog

Settings

Video

demo.mov

[veloce]

Another feedback: instead of showing a relative date for the blog post, always show the day and month, and the year if it is a different year (we don't need the hour), like it is done on lichess.

We already have the hour for when the widget has been updated, which is great.

[r3econ]

Nice, I've implemented the feedback:

• Show author in the bommunity blog ☑️
• Format date ☑️

[veloce]

I have another feedback after having tested it. The widgets now look really nice, thanks!

What I found is that community and user blogs are way less discoverable since you have to modify the widget to see them. Would it be possible to include them in the widgets list?

[veloce]

We're using fastlane match for code signing in release mode in this project. It would be nice to update these instructions to take that into account.

[r3econ]

Yes, definitely. I added fastlane instructions in daba1a0. They might require some fine-tuning once you create a build and see how fastlane handles the new widget extension. Hopefully it works with no changes 🚀

[veloce]

@r3econ in case you missed it:

What I found is that community and user blogs are way less discoverable since you have to modify the widget to see them. Would it be possible to include them in the widgets list?

do you think this is feasible?

[r3econ]

@veloce, yes, very good point, the widgets must be easily discoverable. I've updated the code so that all 3 kinds of widgets appear in the widget gallery (Community, Official and User blog feeds). Below a preview:

widget_gallery_vid.mov

Additionally I've improved the design when widget content can't be loaded (e.g. when there is no internet connection).