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I’m an amateur coder working on a project right now, and I was wondering if you could help me.

Basically, I’ve been doing a lot of research on a particular algorithm that I find runs much faster using Python. The goal is to get this Python code to run in my IOS application. What I’ve found is that the Python interpreter has to be embedded with the Swift application in order to do this. However, I haven’t found much useful documentation or other sources on how to do this. Do you have any suggestions or advice?

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  • Hey @Aaron, Almost after 4 years, Apple has not introduced any proper way to use Python in iOS. As you were able to get it done with the help of PythonistaAppTemplate (github.com/omz/PythonistaAppTemplate), can you please let me know how to get required return values from the python scripts in iOS? Commented Nov 25, 2020 at 10:11

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This tutorial seems to be fairly clear and easy to follow, and cover the necessary steps. Is there any chance you could share what the algorithm in question is? It might make more sense to use C - it looks like you can mix Obj-C with Swift. That said, I am not confident that you can actually do this on iOS.

First of all, your app might not get through App Store review if it has an executable for Python in it. Apple has its own docs on embedding Python in OSX/Mac OS apps, but not for iOS.

Additionally, I don't think an official executable of Python for iOS even exists. The closest thing I could think of, or find, is Pythonista, but I believe the developer made their own version of Python for iOS.

It looks like you can export Pythonista code to stand-alone apps, although how useful this is, and weather or not you can do this for iOS, I don't know. Additionally, that feature only works with Python2. Hope this helps.

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5 Comments

I used the Pythonista template and it works on my iphone! Thank you!
@AaronMednick great! If this answer solved your problem / answered your question, please mark it as correct by clicking the green checkmark.
My answer is really too tenuous / speculative to be getting so many up-votes. If you up-vote this, and then arrive at a more conclusive answer to the question on your own, please share your results! I suspect a better answer than my own exists.
Erica's tutorial is slighltly unrelated. It's about how to run Python script files in Xcode using the Python installed on your Mac. Basically "external build system" option of Xcode. This way you can't build, run or upload the app.
A article on the matter using BeeWare’s Python-Apple-support and PythonKit that allows you to publish to the store with ease: medium.com/swift2go/…
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The Kivy framework is a good cross-platform development UI framework candidate if you are looking for deploying on iOS. Look at their packaging documentation for generating your artifacts for App Store.

I created an application template project as a proof of concept here and successfully deployed the app on iOS and other platforms (windows, linux, macOS, Android)

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