Question

I’ve been banging my head against this for the last week or so. I’ve already gone through the following resources:

• StackOverflow: Bonjour over bluetooth WITHOUT Gamekit ? (3844189)
• StackOverflow: How does Bonjour Over Bluetooth Work (3350094)
• StackOverflow: Using iOS GameKit’s “Bluetooth Bonjour” with other platforms (8070998)
• Technical Q&A QA1753 — Apple Developer
• WiTap sample application
• SRVResolver sample application
• DNSSDObjects sample application

I’m using Mac OS 10.7, Xcode 4.5, an iPhone 4 with iOS 6, and an iPad 1 with iOS 5.1.1.

My problem is this: I am modifying an application that currently uses GameKit’s peer picker to connect between an iPad and a iP{hone|od touch}. We want to modify this to use Bonjour over Bluetooth instead because we’ve had issues with reconnecting the devices using Gamekit if the connection is lost. I’ve used dns_sd.h API to some success and have gotten the service to advertise and resolve over wifi, but even though I am passing kDNSServiceFlagsIncludeP2P I am not getting any success over bluetooth.

I thought possibly Bluetooth Bonjour need a PAN established between devices already, but even pairing the iPad to the iMac and browsing for DNS-SD services gives me nothing…and the iPhone won’t pair to the iPad anyway.

Answer 1

I just finished solving this in my own app in the last 24 hours. I used the core classes from the OS X sample app DNSSDObjects. I only had to change three lines of code to add support for bluetooth. This works great in my iOS app.

In DNSSDBrowser.m, the call to DNSServiceBrowse needs to have kDNSServiceFlagsIncludeP2P passed in for the 2nd parameter.

In DNSSDRegister.m, the call to DNSServiceRegister needs the same change.

In DNSSDService.m, the call to DNSServiceResolve also needs the same change.

If you want to limit yourself to just bluetooth, and not WiFi, then the same three lines of code should be updated so the 3rd parameter is kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexP2P instead of kDNSServiceInterfaceIndexAny.