Passing IOS native objects back to unity3d

Question

I implemented IOS plugin with couple of simple methods to interract my unity application with native static library.

The problem, I faced, is passing back native UI elements(objects) to unity.

Fe native SDK has method that creates badge (UIView), on the other hand I have button in unity (it could be GUI element or some 3d object, whatever)

I access this method from unity through my plugin, smth like:

[DllImport("__Internal")]    
private static extern void XcodePlugin_GetBadgeView();    

and following:

void XcodePlugin_GetBadgeView()
{
    // Generate native UIView 
    UIView *badge = [Badge badge];

    ???? Return UIView badge instance to unity (hm)?!
}

So I need something like:

[someViewOrObject addSubView:badge];

but inside unity.

I know there is ability to send message back to unity:

UnitySendMessage( "UnityCSharpClassName" , "UnityMethod", "WhateverValueToSendToUnity");

but WhateverValueToSendToUnity should be UTF8 string.

In conclusion:

Only one idea I have to pass coordinates from unity to native plugin, and then add badge to these coordinates(not sure this is best solution):

[DllImport("__Internal")]    
private static extern void XcodePlugin_AddBadgeViewToCoordinates(x,y);

Answer 1

If it's just for the badge coordinates, your idea seems fine.

If there are other things you'd like to get from iOS into Unity, I don't think there are many other options. The only other way that I can think of is to save the data in a file (eg, in NSTemporaryDirectory) and then pass the filename back as a UTF8String using UnitySendMessage. I've used this technique before (to pass images and JSON files) to Unity. Files in that directory get cleaned up automatically by iOS.