Get Started
To use the Search SDK, you must first configure your credentials and then add the SDK as a dependency in your project. Here's a brief overview of the steps:
Configure credentials
Before installing the SDK, you will need to gather the appropriate credentials.
The SDK requires two pieces of sensitive information from your Mapbox account. You can sign up if you do not have an account.
- A public access token: from your account's tokens page, you can either copy your default public token or click the Create a token button to create a new public token.
- A secret access token with the
Downloads:Read
scope.- From your account's tokens page, click the Create a token button.
- From the token creation page, give your token a name and make sure the box next to the
Downloads:Read
scope is checked. - Click the Create token button at the bottom of the page to create your token.
- The token you've created is a secret token, which means you will only have one opportunity to copy it somewhere secure.
You should not expose these access tokens in publicly-accessible source code where unauthorized users might find them. Instead, you should store them somewhere safe on your computer and make sure they're only added when your app is compiled (see next section).
Configure your secret token
Your secret token enables you to download the SDK directly from Mapbox. To use your secret token, you will need to store it in a .netrc
file in your home directory (not your project folder). This approach helps avoid accidentally exposing your secret token by keeping it out of your application's source code. Depending on your environment, you may have this file already, so check first before creating a new one.
The .netrc
file needs 0600 permissions in order to work properly.
The .netrc file is a plain text file that is used in certain development environments to store credentials used to access remote servers. The login should always be mapbox
. It should not be your personal username used to create the secret token. To set up the credentials required to download the SDK, add the following entry to your .netrc
file:
machine api.mapbox.com
login mapbox
password YOUR_SECRET_MAPBOX_ACCESS_TOKEN
Configure your public token
To configure your public access token, open your project's Info.plist
file and add a MBXAccessToken
key whose value is your public access token.
If you ever need to rotate your access token, you will need to update the token value in your Info.plist
file.
Learn how to keep access tokens private in mobile apps.
Add the dependency
Mapbox provides the Search SDK via Swift Package Manager and CocoaPods.
The Mapbox Search SDK can be consumed via Swift Package Manager (SPM). To add the Search SDK with SPM, you will need to configure your environment to download it from Mapbox. This requires a Mapbox access token with the Downloads:Read
scope. In a previous step, you added this token to your .netrc
file.
- Open your Xcode project or workspace, then go to File > Swift Packages > Add Package Dependency.
- Enter
https://github.com/mapbox/search-ios.git
as the URL, pressEnter
to pull in the package, and click Next. - Set Version to Exact and enter
1.0.0-rc.9
. Click Next. - Once Xcode finishes fetching and checking out all the dependencies, select the MapboxSearchUI library (or MapboxSearch if you don’t need any UI components). Click Next.
- In your code, you can now
import MapboxSearch
as well as any of the other packages that were downloaded as dependencies.
Notes
- If you need to update your packages, you can click on File > Swift Packages > Update To Latest Package Versions.
- Sometimes, artifacts cannot be resolved or errors can occur, in this case select File > Swift Packages > Reset Package Cache.
- If your Xcode crashes, delete your derived data folder.
Add search to an app
You can start by adding a search UI to your application using Swift.
Insert the following code snippets into your ViewController
.
Run your application and you will see a functional search UI. Begin typing in the search bar or click on a category to see results.