Recipe: Trying Out iCloud

The best way to convince yourself that you have properly entitled and established iCloud is to create a file from code and assure yourself that it propagates across to all devices. That’s exactly what Recipe 18-1 does. It establishes the documents folder discussed earlier, writes a small text file (“Hello World”) to the cloud, and builds a custom URL that you can use to access that new file from outside the cloud.

Requesting this URL requires net access and can take several seconds to retrieve. Please be patient during this time. The URL remains valid for a limited time, so the code also prints out the expiration date for that access period to the console.

After running this code, you’ll want to ensure that cloud files reached their destination on each test device you have signed into the same account. Try downloading the file from the URL and, only after that, delete it using iCloud settings.