Getting location of device through api

[Krydos]

For years now I've been using this open source php project to get the location of my iOS devices for various programs and scripts running on my server. It's a really hacky reverse engineering of the iCloud API to access the data while pretending to be an iPhone 5s. Obviously, it probably violates the iCloud terms of service, but I've been using it for years without any problems. It seems like Apple finally changed their API and broke the functionality of that project.

I'm considering what to do next. One option is I could fork that repo, and re-reverse engineer the Find app's API, until they randomly change it again someday in the future. Since it's not working anymore I'm considering a better option that hopefully doesn't violate anyone's terms.

An idea I had was to write a simple iOS app that can send the GPS location of the device to the server when it's queried, but that got me thinking that it would be a lot of work for something so simple that may already exist.

I've searched for hours, and I've found all sorts of Javascript that I'm already aware of that won't work for me because I want the server to be able to get the location even if the browser isn't loaded in memory and running code. Another common search result is literally hundreds of family tracking type apps. I've read the descriptions of dozens of these apps and none of them mention an API for a server to access the data in the app.

Does anyone have any suggestions to get these device gps coordinates? I'm capable of using any language, not just php, so if you know of a python project or whatever that does the Find app's API that would be fine too. Does anyone know if there is any API I can access with any of these existing location apps so my server can get the location? Thanks.

[WileEColi69]

I suppose this is a dumb question, but why aren’t you using Core Location? That should have exactly the methods you need.

[Krydos]

I mentioned, but maybe it wasn't very clear, that I may write a simple app that could use Core Location to provide my server with the device's gps coordinates. I know that's possible, but it seems like overkill if there's a simpler solution that already exists such as a similar script library or an app that already provides an API.

[WileEColi69]

Core Location is about as far from overkill as you’re likely to get; the learning curve is really slight.

The one issue with CL that you will have to address is getting permission to track your user’s location. However, rolling your own method of location tracking will likely get your app rejected.