Hi! Is it possible to use objC library from kotlin...

# ios

[Mikolaj]

Hi! Is it possible to use objC library from kotlin/iosMain? I would like to use ZipArchive. Is it possible to call its methods directly from kotlin or do I need a cinterop wrapper? Does cocoapods integration plugin generate the cinterop automatically?

[magnumrocha]

yes, you can use cinterop for that:
https://kotlinlang.org/docs/native-c-interop.html

here is a example: https://kotlinlang.org/docs/native-c-interop.html#filter-headers-by-module-maps

you can download the .framework and create kotlin bindings for it using the cinterop tool

https://gist.github.com/Ribesg/95a172ceb2177d74cf5b15993d40092e

[Mikolaj]

This is very cool. So one can say kotlin/native is more similar to C/C++ in terms of project config and library ecosystem. I could create kotlin bindings for some C libraries on linux too, right?

[magnumrocha]

yes, if you have the header files for that, you can create a .def file to generate kotlin bindings for the libraries

[Mikolaj]

Awesome! Thank you. I will need to probably create some projects to fully understand but this looks very promising

[magnumrocha]

just remember you have to add the dependency on your iOS project anyway (Swift PM or pod file), because Kotlin Native will only create bindings.

I mean the binary of the bound library will not be embedded on the produced kotlin library

[Mikolaj]

This is important insight. I will keep that in mind 🙌

[brandonmcansh]

Interesting. This is great.