I've saved a file locally and want to open it in Word if installed. For example my file's URL is:
file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/{guid}/Library/Caches/MyFile.docx
My Office URL is:
ms-word:ofe|u|file:///var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/{guid}/Library/Caches/MyFile.docx|p|my-protocol
When Word launches it says:
The link you clicked on is invalid and the document cannot be opened
However if I feed the original URL to a UIDocumentInteractionController it opens correctly.
Any ideas?
If you pass the URL to Word directly you are attempting to violate your Application Sandbox - Word doesn't have access to your App's directory, so it can't read the file.
You have to use the UIDocumentInteractionController to prompt the user to open the document in Word or you need to store the document somewhere that Word can read it (this would be external to your device - on a cloud store somewhere)
Related
I have written an iPhone App that looks at a webpage. (I have authorized the App to access Calendar.) One of the links is a calendar link. When I look at that link with Safari, I get a message.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/opzhxcrg8ye2z4v/Screen%20Shot%202018-11-23%20at%201.17.15%20PM.png?dl=0
"The website is trying to show you a calendar invite. Do you want to allow it ...". I can then add it to my calendar. However, when I open that identical link inside my app, my app does not recognize it is a calendar link and then I get options to either Open, Add to Read List, copy ...".
https://www.dropbox.com/s/wd7n8n9bz764wih/Screenshot%202018-11-23%2013.20.53.png?dl=0
My question is how to get my App to recognize that a link is a calendar link?
One determines what should be in the file by the suffix and the MIME content type.
For icalendars, the suffix is .ics and the MIME content type is text/calendar. If a link does not have .ics suffix your app can ignore it, if it has a .ics, then it should check the header for the mime-type.
What is a MIME type?
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTTP/Basics_of_HTTP/MIME_types/Complete_list_of_MIME_types
What a browser or device actually does with the file depends on what the user has set in the settings. EG: a .pdf will topen in the way that the user has told the browser to open .pdf's - either in browser or adobe reader.
EG in windows for development purposes, I have specified that calendar links (links with suffix .ics) should be opened in my editor rather than my calendar.
This question already has answers here:
App Store Connect Warns - Invalid Document Configuration
(7 answers)
Closed 4 years ago.
I got this error message when uploading my app to ItunesConnect today,
Invalid Document Configuration - Document Based Apps should support
either the Document Browser (UISupportsDocumentBrowser = YES) or
implement Open In Place (LSSupportsOpeningDocumentsInPlace = YES/NO).
Visit https://developer.apple.com/document-based-apps/ for more
information.
To Fix -
Open Info.plist file.
If you have UIDocumentInteractionController within your App use -
Add "UISupportsDocumentBrowser" select boolean YES
Otherwise -
Add "LSSupportsOpeningDocumentsInPlace" select boolean YES
Info.plist Code:
//if using - UIDocumentInteractionController
<key>UISupportsDocumentBrowser</key>
<true/>
//if not use -
<key>LSSupportsOpeningDocumentsInPlace</key>
<true/>
From the Apple Developer Documentation
UISupportsDocumentBrowser
UISupportsDocumentBrowser (Boolean - iOS) Specifies that the app is a document-based app and uses the UIDocumentBrowserViewController class.
If this key is set to YES, the user can set the document browser’s default save location in Settings. Additionally, the local file provider grants access to all the documents in the app’s Documents directory. These documents appear in the Files app, and in a Document Browser. Users can open and edit these document in place.
This key is supported in iOS 11 and later.
UIDocumentInteractionController
Use this class to present an appropriate user interface for previewing, opening, copying, or printing a specified file. For example, an email program might use this class to allow the user to preview attachments and open them in other apps.
After presenting its user interface, a document interaction controller handles all interactions needed to support file preview and menu display.
You can also use the delegate to participate in interactions occurring within the presented interface. For example, the delegate is notified when a file is about to be handed off to another application for opening. For a complete description of the methods you can implement in your delegate, see UIDocumentInteractionControllerDelegate.
Reference Link
LSSupportsOpeningDocumentsInPlace
LSSupportsOpeningDocumentsInPlace (Boolean - iOS) When set to a value of YES, enables your app to open the original document from a file provider, rather than a copy of the document. The app can access documents from the system’s local file provider, the iCloud file provider, and any third-party File Provider extensions that support opening documents in place.
The URL for a document opened in place is security-scoped. For information about working with security-scoped URLs and bookmarks, read the overview in NSURL Class Reference and read Document Provider in App Extension Programming Guide.
Important: When opening a document in place, other processes can modify the document at any time. Therefore, you must coordinate your access to the document using either a UIDocument subclass or NSFilePresenter and NSFileCoordinator objects.
In iOS 11 and later, if both this key and the UIFileSharingEnabled key are YES, the local file provider grants access to all the documents in the app’s Documents directory. These documents appear in the Files app, and in a document browser. Users can open and edit these document in place.
Reference Link
Setting Up a Document Browser App Link
After downloading a PDF or any other type of file, I'm having trouble opening it from a webview. Basically, I would like to be able to display a href pointed to the local file, e.g. - and then prompt the user to open it in an external application. Currently it seems to hang / not recognize the downloaded file.
The data in this file is currently base64 encoded. Can I send this binary data to an external app?
I needed to intercept the url using onShouldStartLoadWithRequest and use the Linking native module provided by react-native. More info here: https://facebook.github.io/react-native/docs/linking.html#opening-external-links
The Apple Docs say that UIDocumentInteractionController "provides in-app support for managing user interactions with files in the local system". Is there a similar setup for viewing files on a server? I tried just sending the link to the file as the NSURL for interactionControllerWithURL:, but that didn't work. I guess the alternative would be to download the file, then open it once it has downloaded, then delete the file. That seems like a lot of extra coding work though, if there is an easier way that's already available.
Edit: I already know the name of the file I want to view/download, so I'm not really looking for the "file list" aspect of UIDocumentInteractionController. On the server, there are many Google Earth .kml files. The user isn't going to directly select which file to open from a list - I select the file to open programmatically based on actions taken by the user previously in the session.
As I understand it, presentOpenInMenuFromRect:inView:animated: will show a popover something like "Would you like to open the file 'myFile.kml' in Google Earth?". If the user selects 'Yes', the UIDocumentInteractionController launches Google Earth and opens myFile.kml. So I guess I'm not really looking for a file list viewer, just a way to trigger an "Open With" kinda functionality, where the file I'm opening exists on my server.
UIDocumentInteraction controller can't be used to view list of files present on server.
UIDocument interaction controller takes local file present in source application and shows list of applications that can open that file.Once use clicks on file then it is transferred to target app.
If you want to get file from server then you can use NSURLConnection class to download file form server and store it on device.
I think I figured this out. I don't need to use a UIDocumentInteractionController at all for what I'm looking for. I can simply
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"comgoogleearth://www.mysite.com/myfile.kml"];
BOOL canOpen = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:url];
if (canOpen)
{
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];
}
else
{
NSLog (#"Open failed. Make sure Google Earth is installed and the URL is correct.");
}
This will launch Google Earth with my file just like I'm looking for.
FYI, I got the scheme for Google Earth from elpsk's answer to this question. It looks like a pretty comprehensive list of a lot of file types and the apps that open them. Just replace the comgoogleearth in my URL with the scheme for whatever app you are trying to open a file with.
Is there any difference between creating a direct link to a file on a server, and doing something like reading the file from a location and setting the content type header then streaming back the data.
I'm curious because I have a webserver that i'm using to download apps to a blackberry, if i create a file and have a direct link to that file it works, but if i stream it back using an webpage it doesn't work. The phone gets the file but it doesn't work.
Things to note:
urls are the same in both cases ie (http://somesite.com/download/file.jad)
in a browser using fiddler the downloads/header are exactly the same byte for byte
So why would the phone prefer a file that's actually a direct link vs one that is a controller streaming the data back when the data transmitted and the url are identical?
The .JAD file is just the first part of the download - there are also the .COD files associated with it (referenced in the JAD). Did you ensure that your "streaming" method is sending back the COD file correctly and with the correct MIME types?
I discovered a fix for this problem though I'm still not sure what causes it. I have been delivering the link to the phone through the sms/email gateway. When the phone gets the sms and I select the link for download it asks if i want to get the jad i hit yes and it shows up and drop out. I put the exact same link on another page as an html link and sent an sms pointing to that page. The web site throws an error... So I copied and pasted the link into the phones browser and the page shows up just fine, I click the jad download link on the page and now the jad works fine.
So i'm thinking two things either there is some sort of security mechanism that prevents direct links in sms(but this has worked for other files) Or the way the phone gets the url is different.
I ran some tests and noticed something else, on a page that accepts an id value (http://site.com/download/145) where 145 is an id for a file, if you go to that link in a phone browser it works fine and you download the file. If you send it in an sms the server errors out saying that the id is expected to be a float and it received a string. So why is it that when the phone links directly from sms the url parameters are strings but when used in a browser the actually get parsed as a float?
Sorry for the long winded explanation but it's a strange issue.