I was googling this question but nothing useful or current came up. I'd like to know if (and if, how) you can select an MP3 file (from itunes?) and upload the contents to one of my own servers on iOS (iphone & ipad app).
One of my clients is asking me if it's possible to do this, and I havn't found the answer yet.
Thanks in advance!
The short answer would be YES.
Here is a working solution for me. But you need to use a third party library. Then this is what you need to do:
Create a temp folder either in the NSDocuments directory or a temp directory.
Use MPMediaQuery to load the music files.
The object that you will get from the MPMediaQuery is an MPMediaItem. With this you can get the asset URL of the media item.
Code:
NSString *assetURL = [mediaItem valueForProperty:MPMediaItemPropertyAssetURL];
get the extension of with the asset URL
NSString *extension = [TSLibraryImport extensionForAssetURL:assetURL];
set a location URL (This will be the location where the mp3 music data will be imported).
NSString *locationURL = [[NSURL fileURLWithPath:[path stringByAppendingPathComponent:musicTitleYouWant]] URLByAppendingPathExtension:extension];
Now you can import the contents of the mp3 from to the directory you set earlier.
TSLibraryImport *libraryImport = [[TSLibraryImport alloc] init];
[libraryImport importAsset:assetURL toURL:locationURL completionBlock:^(TSLibraryImport *libraryImport)
{
if(libraryImport.status == AVAssetExportSessionStatusCompleted)
{
//Once complete the file will be store on the location URL you set earlier. Now you can get the file from that location and convert it to NSData and send it to the server. There are plenty of ways to do that.
}
else
{
//Here means import failed. :(
}
}];
Hope this helps. :)
Related
This is strange, but basically I download and save a video locally, and the store the url path to provide to an AVPlayer to play.
This works fine the first time I do it. I download a file, and then I can play it to my hearts content as many times UNTIL I exit the app. When I launch the app a second time, I now get a black screen when I try to play the same exact video using the same exact path.
Because I am using the Simulator I can verify that the videos and pictures indeed very much still exist in the same folder I saved them to, and I can still play them if I click on them from the Finder.
Maybe it's a caching issue? If it matters, I've saved them straight to the Library directory as I test this.
Relevant Code:
NSString *outputFile = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"video_%#.mp4", guid];
NSString *outputDirectory = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSApplicationSupportDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *tempPath = [outputDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:outputFile];
NSURL *fileURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:tempPath];
// save the video to the URL
Then I "persist" it using an NSString [fileURL path] (The way I've built this out, assume the solution requires an NSString to NSURL conversion).
Later I create an AVPlayerItem:
NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:persistedObject.contentURL];
NSLog(#"url: %#", url); // prints a valid location**
AVPlayerItem *item = [AVPlayerItem playerItemWithURL:url];
** for example this is a sample url location
url: file:///Users/gabriel/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/CE1FC933-808C-4003-9BE4-DEC59B787FF7/data/Containers/Data/Application/FAD072B4-B5B0-4487-8A76-57B047324A00/Library/picture_D8DEAFA5-0843-4AA3-BB32-C61E32D13579.mp4
It's been suggested I use URLForDirectory:inDomain:appropriateForURL:create:error: and URLByAppendingPathComponent: instead, which I will look into. But still confused as to why it would play when I first download it, but not after app exits when it's the same exact file.
You've made a classic mistake. You are persisting the full path. But the full path changes. Never persist a full path. Only persist the part of the path relative to the value obtained from NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains.
Given what you are doing, you should only persist the base filename (outputFile). Then when the app starts, you rebuild the full path again like you did originally but use the persisted filename to append it to the dynamically obtained path to the application support folder.
I am trying to use Brad Larson's GPUImage library to record a video file. So far, the issue I am running into is the following piece of code:
NSString *pathToMovie = [NSHomeDirectory() stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"Documents/Movie.m4v"];
unlink([pathToMovie UTF8String]); // If a file already exists, AVAssetWriter won't let you record new frames, so delete the old movie
NSURL *movieURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:pathToMovie];
movieWriter = [[GPUImageMovieWriter alloc] initWithMovieURL:movieURL size:CGSizeMake(480.0, 640.0)];
This is picked up directly from his example from his GitHub page
https://github.com/BradLarson/GPUImage
Now, I looked at the source code and I see he does the usual AVFoundation stuff - creates AVAssetWriter instance and adds inputs to it. MY question here is that where is #"Documents/Movie.m4v" located? How can I play this video back? Or how do I even access it? I know it is located in an arbitrary location where the app bundle is copied during run-time. My goal is to be able to write the video into the Gallery or atleast an album in Gallery that is created by my app. Does anyone know where the file is being written to?
Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but the movie is at the path pathToMovie (or URL movieURL.
You can play it back with something like this:
#import <AVFoundation/AVFoundation.h>
#import <AVKit/AVKit.h>
// later
AVPlayerViewController *avc = [[AVPlayerViewController alloc] init];
avc.player = [[AVPlayer alloc] initWithURL:movieURL];
[myViewController presentViewController:avc animated:YES completion:nil];
If you want to download the file to your computer, you can select your connect device in Xcode > Devices, then select your app and download the package. Your movie will be in the Documents directory.
To save it to the gallery, do
// TODO: use completion arguments for a better user experience
UISaveVideoAtPathToSavedPhotosAlbum(pathToMovie,nil,nil,nil);
I am trying to update my app for WatchKit and I save a NSKeyedArchiver file to the NSDocumentsDirectory normally.
With updating to app groups I need to store it in the app groups folder. The issue I am having is I cant figure out how to just get the path, and not have it referenced as a file I am looking for.
The way it is set up now is to find the file it gives the path as a NSString
/Users/ME/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/43F/data/Containers/Data/Application/5E/Documents/fav
but when I store to app groups, no matter which way I access the folder, it is returned
file:///Users/ME/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/43F/data/Containers/Data/Application/5E/Documents/fav
What is the best way to just obtain the path to the shared group, rather than have the app looking for the direct file?
So coffee deprived me had forgotten about the .path for filemanager.
NSURL *fileManagerURL = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] containerURLForSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier:#"group.com"];
NSString *tmpPath = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#", fileManagerURL.path];
NSString *finalPath = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#",[string stringByAppendingString:#"/Favourites2"]];
I was running into the same problem. I was going through the whole process of building a string to my save location and now I'm switching over to app groups and using the
NSURL *fileManagerURL = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] containerURLForSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier:groupID];
Well, the problem is, now instead of a string to the location that starts with "/Users/yourname/Library..." you get "file:///Users/yourname/Library..."
Here's what I did. I created the NSURL. Then I called absoluteString on it.
NSURL groupPath = [[fileManager containerURLForSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier:groupID] absoluteString];
I now have a string that I need to strip off the first 7 characters of, then my old code works just fine, except now instead of being in the Documents directory, it's in a shared app group that can be accessed by both my old code and my new watchkit extension.
Here's the code to strip off the first 7 characters (index 6 since you start with 0), you should be able to use either method...
NSString *newGroupPath = [groupPath substringFromIndex:6];
or
NSString *newGroupPath = [groupPath substringWithRange:NSMakeRange(6, [str length]-6)];
This just removes the "file://" from the absoluteString that was made from the NSURL and gives you back your older string path the starts "/Users/YourName/Library/Developer/yada yada yada"
Hope that helps you, I have spent 4 hours figuring it out.
It seems to work for me on the simulator, I haven't tried it on the Watch yet. But at least my app is now working the way it was before, just saving the data in a shared app group. (I have a singleton that manages all of my data throughout my app, and I want that same singleton to provide data to my watch app).
So I'm pretty lost with this one and really new to epub files. I've done a bit of searching but can't seem to put everything together in my head.
My app uses DropBox's Chooser API to get a file from a user's DropBox folder. In this case, I want to open up a .epub file. So when the user chooses a file, the DropBox API gives me back an NSURL object to that file. For example:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/1/view/e8bmxpkree6nc67/The%20Art%20of%20War.epub
And now, I've tried a couple different tools to try to read this file. Originally, I tried using KFEpubKit. But when I called:
epubURL; // The url from DropBox (shown above)
NSURL *documentsURL = [[[NSFileManager defaultManager] URLsForDirectory:NSDocumentDirectory inDomains:NSUserDomainMask] lastObject];
self.epubController = [[KFEpubController alloc] initWithEpubURL:epubURL andDestinationFolder:documentsURL];
self.epubController.delegate = self;
[self.epubController openAsynchronous:YES]
I would get back an error that the file couldn't be unzipped. The error reads as:
Epub Error: Error Domain=KFEpubKitErrorDomain Code=1 "Could not extract epub file." UserInfo=0x170275400 {NSLocalizedDescription=Could not extract epub file.}
I looked into the code and narrowed down the problem a little bit. The KFEpubKit uses the SSZipArchive utility to unzip files. And from this point on, I'm a bit stuck. The [SSZipArchive unzipFileAtPath: toDestination:] call seems to be failing when used with the epubURL.path. I'm not sure if this has something to do with the fact that my file is a .epub extension and not a .zip extension. Or maybe there's some stuff to do after getting the URL from DropBox and before giving it to the KFEpubKit tool?
In the end, I'm expecting to have to display the text of the book with a UIWebView. But I'm just not sure how to handle this .epub file. What should I do with the file from Dropbox? Any help is much appreciated.
A quick glance indicates that that SSZipArchive wants a local file URL, not a remote HTTP URL. Try downloading the file first (NSData with contents of URL, then write to some temp file) then create a file URL that points to the temp file, and send that into the KFEpubController:
// Download the file from dropbox
epubURL; // The url from DropBox (shown above)
NSData * epubData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:epubURL];
NSString * tempPath = [NSTemporaryDirectory() stringByAddingPathComponent:#"temp.epub"];
[epubData writeToFile:tempPath atomically:YES];
NSURL *tempURL = [NSURL URLWithString:tempPath];
NSURL *documentsURL = [[[NSFileManager defaultManager] URLsForDirectory:NSDocumentDirectory inDomains:NSUserDomainMask] lastObject];
self.epubController = [[KFEpubController alloc] initWithEpubURL:tempURL andDestinationFolder:documentsURL];
// etc.
(Coding from memory.) All normal caveats apply here-- you'll want to do proper progress/error handling on the download, get rid of the temp file, etc, etc.
QLPreviewController seems to cache file contents based on the local file's URL. In my application, the file contents can be updated remotely and would cause the new contents to be downloaded.
If I view a file in QLPreviewController, update it remotely, then re-preview it, the file does not show up as updated.
The file is definitely updated on disk, and other controls show the correct updated file.
The workaround I'm using right now is to basically move a file when it's previewed to a unique filename (using timestamp), which will of course not be in the QLPreviewController's cache. However, this has other repercussions, for example, if the app is killed or it crashes (god forbid), I won't know "where" to find the downloaded file.
I'm looking for less invasive hacks, or solutions to making QLPreviewController refresh its cache. The APIs don't seem to expose anything, so don't be afraid to submit a hack if it's less gross than the one I've presented above (not including copying/moving the file to a guaranteed unique URL, which I am already utilizing).
Just ran into this issue myself. I solved it by recreating the QLPreviewController each time I reload an item with the same name as the currently viewed item. Creating a new QLPreviewController clears the cache.
I know this is an old question but someone might have the same problem and find this answer helpful.
You should use refreshCurrentPreviewItem after downloading complete
I had the same problem. Opening a locally generated CSV file.
I have my _previewController* setup as a #property of my controller. Then what i did:
- (void)viewDidLoad
{
[super viewDidLoad];
self.previewController = [[QLPreviewController alloc] init];
_previewController.delegate=self;
_previewController.dataSource=self;
}
- (void)previewCSV
{
[_previewController reloadData]; // this triggers a reload
[self presentModalViewController:_previewController animated:YES];
}
IN other solution that comes to mind (not tested).
Depending on your URL, you could add something like http://url?time=123456 to your URL. Like this you change the URL but without side effect. The time (or any other parameter) you can change on each request.
It's the ugliest bug in iOS. Cache management in iOS 5 and beyond. I think is the same reason that makes iCloud buggy, Share-at-Home crashing and so on. Bad cache managements and so worst synchronization systems.
Well, my solution for this was to store the download file in a folder and use the current date to name the folder. It is equivalent to #Rogier's solution, but this works always. You get a name for the folder, for example, with [[NSDate date] description]. Instead of saving the file replacing the old one, you delete previous file, delete previous folder and save new file in a new folder. It's working fine for me.
Just remove all files from tmp directory like this:
- (void)clearCache
{
NSString *tempPath = NSTemporaryDirectory();
NSArray *dirContents = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] contentsOfDirectoryAtPath:tempPath error:nil];
NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
for (int i = 0; i < [dirContents count]; i++) {
NSLog(#"Directory Count: %i", [dirContents count]);
NSString *contentsOnly = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#%#", tempPath, [dirContents objectAtIndex:i]];
[fileManager removeItemAtPath:contentsOnly error:nil];
}
}