CODEWITHSUNDEEP
iosfiledocuments
Thomas Boyd
Thomas Boyd

Reputation: 1

iOS File Browsing app

I am attempting to create a file browsing app for iPads. I'm reluctant to use another app, such as Documents5, because I want to custom design it and bring in features we need.

Essentially I am looking to create an almost identical app to Documents5 with iCloud Drive support.

I have the code for viewing PDFs, MP3s etc., but I'm a bit bewildered with iCloud Drive integration and the menu interface for file browsing. Additionally, although I already have code for this, how do I link the files to the viewer/player?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 90

Answers (1)

Chris Loonam
Chris Loonam

Reputation: 5745

iCloud Drive is pretty easy to implement. Assuming that your app has all entitlements and so on properly set up, you can move files to and delete files from iCloud by interacting with it like it is any other directory. You access the directory like this

- (NSString *)iCloudPath
{
    NSURL *URL = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] URLForUbiquityContainerIdentifier:nil];
    return [[URL path] stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"Documents"];
}

Moving files to this directory (to iCloud) is done like this

NSString *fileName = //the name of the file;
NSURL *fileURL = //the file you want to move;    
NSString *iCloudPath = [self iCloudPath];
[[NSFileManager defaultManager] setUbiquitous:YES itemAtURL:fileURL destinationURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:[iCloudPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:fileName]] error:nil];

The easiest way to display files is through a table view. You can implement a system where the file paths are stored in an array, so that when a cell is selected, you can decide how to open it based off of the file's extension. For example, let's say your table view looks like this

-----------------
|  video.mp4    |
-----------------
|   text.txt    |
-----------------
|   file.pdf    |

if your user selects row 1 (text.txt), you could implement something like this

- (void)tableView:(UITableView *)tableView didSelectRowAtIndexPath:(NSIndexPath *)indexPath
{
    NSString *filePath = self.files[indexPath.row];
    NSString *fileExtension = [filePath pathExtension];

    if ([fileExtension isEqualToString:@"txt"])
    {
        //open the text file
    }
}

Upvotes: 1

Related Questions