How to set up AWS mobile SDK in iOS project in Xcode

Question

The aws docs for this are really confusing. Following the steps from here https://docs.aws.amazon.com/aws-mobile/latest/developerguide/getting-started.html#ios-swift , I created the awsconfiguration.json using amplify, but it seems to be empty, it looks like this:

   {
    "UserAgent": "aws-amplify/cli",
    "Version": "0.1.0",
    "IdentityManager": {
        "Default": {}
    }
}

I dragged that json into the root of my xcode project, but when I run the project trying to call an aws api (specifically rekognition), I get this error:

Terminating app due to uncaught exception 'NSInternalInconsistencyException', reason: 'The service configuration is nil. You need to configure awsconfiguration.json, Info.plist or set defaultServiceConfiguration before using this method.'

I don't know if that's because the json isn't being read properly, or because it's empty, or what. This whole setup just seems to be a mess.

Answer 1

I did a hacky solution, I made a new app in mobile hub, downloaded the aws config json from there, added

 "Rekognition": {
        "Default": {
            "Region": "eu-west-1"
        }
    } 

to the json, gave permissions to the role created by mobile hub in the IAM dashboard to use rekognition, and it worked. Horrible solution.

Also this helped explain a lot of my concerns: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mobile/how-amazon-cognito-keeps-mobile-app-users-data-safe/