I made a pinterest integration in my iPad app. But, because Pinterest doesn't have an API for posting yet, I used the following method. I just create programmatically an HTML Web Page and add a Pin it button to that page programmatically. Then I show a Web View and allow user to click Pin it once more. These are more explained steps.
1) Create a WebViewController, that has a UIWebView. Add Close button, add UIWebViewDelegateProtocol, spinner, htmlString property.
2) Generate an HTML programmatically to put to that UIWebView, when user clicks your "Pin it" button in your app. In this case I put to the HTML page different images for different products.
- (NSString*) generatePinterestHTMLForSKU:(NSString*)sku {
NSString *description = @"Post your description here";
// Generate urls for button and image
NSString *sUrl = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"http://d30t6wl9ttrlhf.cloudfront.net/media/catalog/product/Heros/%@-1.jpg", sku];
NSLog(@"URL:%@", sUrl);
NSString *protectedUrl = (__bridge NSString *)CFURLCreateStringByAddingPercentEscapes(NULL,(__bridge CFStringRef)sUrl, NULL, (CFStringRef)@"!*'\"();:@&=+$,/?%#[]% ",CFStringConvertNSStringEncodingToEncoding(NSUTF8StringEncoding));
NSLog(@"Protected URL:%@", protectedUrl);
NSString *imageUrl = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"\"%@\"", sUrl];
NSString *buttonUrl = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"\"http://pinterest.com/pin/create/button/?url=www.flor.com&media=%@&description=%@\"", protectedUrl, description];
NSMutableString *htmlString = [[NSMutableString alloc] initWithCapacity:1000];
[htmlString appendFormat:@"<html> <body>"];
[htmlString appendFormat:@"<p align=\"center\"><a href=%@ class=\"pin-it-button\" count-layout=\"horizontal\"><img border=\"0\" src=\"http://assets.pinterest.com/images/PinExt.png\" title=\"Pin It\" /></a></p>", buttonUrl];
[htmlString appendFormat:@"<p align=\"center\"><img width=\"400px\" height = \"400px\" src=%@></img></p>", imageUrl];
[htmlString appendFormat:@"<script type=\"text/javascript\" src=\"//assets.pinterest.com/js/pinit.js\"></script>"];
[htmlString appendFormat:@"</body> </html>"];
return htmlString;
}
This is an example of my HTML page generation method.
3) Create a method to call when user taps your "Pin it" button, which shows that webView with the image, that you will post and the "Pin it" button on the UIWebView. This is my example:
- (void) postToPinterest {
NSString *htmlString = [self generatePinterestHTMLForSKU:self.flProduct.sku];
NSLog(@"Generated HTML String:%@", htmlString);
WebViewController *webViewController = [[WebViewController alloc] initWithNibName:@"WebViewController" bundle:nil];
webViewController.htmlString = htmlString;
webViewController.showSpinner = YES;
[[[[UIApplication sharedApplication] keyWindow] rootViewController] presentModalViewController:webViewController animated:YES];
}
4) Put a "Close" button to your WebViewController to close it. Also you can add spinners to track the loading of the UIWebView.
- (IBAction)closeClicked:(id)sender {
[self dismissModalViewControllerAnimated:YES];
}
- (void)webViewDidStartLoad:(UIWebView *)webView {
if (showSpinner) {
// If we want to show Spinner, we show it everyTime
[UIHelper startShowingSpinner:self.webView];
}
else {
// If we don't -> we show it only once (some sites annoy with it)
if (!spinnerWasShown) {
[UIHelper startShowingSpinner:self.webView];
spinnerWasShown = YES;
}
}
}
-(void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView {
[UIHelper stopShowingSpinner];
}
P.S. I used the same method to add Google Plus's +1 button to the iPad app. (It doesn't have posting API too, only readonly API at the moment)
