Is there any way to check version number of other application which is installed from appstore ?
Note:
1. Not in jail broken devices
2. With out using third party library.
Not Possible. your control is upto the level of your App Sandbox.
What is Sandbox?
For security reasons, iOS places each app (including its preferences and data) in a sandbox at install time. A sandbox is a set of fine-grained controls that limit the app’s access to files, preferences, network resources, hardware, and so on. As part of the sandboxing process, the system installs each app in its own sandbox directory, which acts as the home for the app and its data.
It is not possible to check version of another application as in IOS, Applications work in SandBox environment which doesn't allow the application to access other application.
Two applications can communicate with the help of URL schemes,following is the link for URL Schemes of few Applications:
http://wiki.akosma.com/IPhone_URL_Schemes
http://handleopenurl.com/
using URL schemes we can access limited information(Exposed by the Developers of that application)
Although , there are few options,
1)If two application are using same/common web-services ,then this information can be shared
2)using ICloud this can be achieved If two application are using common/public space.
Related
My understanding is that because of sandboxing, it isn't possible to view any text file (ie config file) associated with an iOS app using another app. Something quite simple with Android. Am I mistaken?
I am trying to implement a text config file with a Unity iOS app that gets loaded and parsed once when the application boots.
This config file would also be able to be edited and saved manually on that actual iOS device.
(addendum)
In Unity there is PersistentDataPath which resolves to /var/mobile/Container/Data/Application/foo/Documents
Is there an iOS supported file explorer app that will allow me view and edit files in this location (without jailbreaking)?
Use can check iOS App Groups. It allows multiple apps access to shared containers and allow interprocess communication. There is no so much documentation about this, but maybe that's what you're looking for. At least you can share NSUserDefaults between the apps.
NSUserDefaults it's a most simple way to save any (not big) configurations for your app. For manual editing: if your app on the device signed with developer certificate, you can connect through any iOS supported file explorer app and edit it. But after release, from App Store, your app installed in restricted/private path, so it's not possible, if only you don't have a jailbreak.
Initial configuration you can put into your app bundle, and at the first run just copy them to NSUserDefaults.
Short answer: There are utilities such as iExplorer - https://macroplant.com - that allow "file manager" type access. However...
Long answer: If your app requires users to buy (or get) other software to modify configuration files, the chances of Apple approving it are slim to none.
The appropriate thing to do is to provide a User Interface in your own app which allows the user to modify / update the settings.
How can I find out programmatically all the files present in iOS device and list them out to user? Also I need to download the file in my local application database?
How this can be achieved with Objective-C.
You cannot access all files in an iOS device outside the sandbox of the app. But there are other ways you can achieve this. What you can do is:
Access all the files in Gallery using UIImagePickerController.
Access all the user files in network- Dropbox/Google drive/iCloud. They all have separate public APIs that can be downloaded and used to download/upload files in network.
In this way, you can access most of the user files and use the same in your application.
Simple answer : you can't (on a non-jailbroken device).
Each app is launched is in own sandbox and can't interact with the others apps, expect using API provided by Apple for app-communication (ex: extension)
You should look at that Apple guide about App Sandboxing, which is valid for OSX and iOS apps.
The main difference between these two OS, as quoted directly from the doc :
iOS Note: Because it is not for user documents, an OS X container
differs from an iOS container—which, in iOS, is the one and only
location for user documents. In addition, an iOS container contains
the app itself. This is not so in OS X.
You cannot access all the files outside the app sandbox. But, if they are available at some shared location(network), you can use third party libraries to access them. For eg.
1. For iCloud- iOS provides inbuilt framework of UIDocument
2. For dropbox- DropBoxAPI is available
3. For Google drive- there is a separate library to access files in the drive.
Hope this helps :)
I've seen this which pulls the app from the internet and this which is what I'm looking for, but I'm not publishing to the app store.
So is there a way to do the following:
Go into app bundles on the device and extract the icons for those apps using official and/or unofficial APIs ?
As #Gavin specified: Jailbreaking is not an option for this particular case.
Apps are sandboxed on iOS, so even if you're not submitting to the app store, your app is still prevented from accessing files outside your sandbox, which includes the files of other apps on the device.
Now if you wanted to jailbreak your device, you could access files outside of the sandbox. But you didn't state that you were willing to do that, so I am assuming this is out of the question for you.
Are separate apps able to share the same binary in a form like a DLL? I know its possible to compile static libraries but I wouldn't count these as the same as a DLL (i.e. a dll is one copy of a binary shared by multiple apps, whereas static libraries are separately included by any using app).
Is each app totally separate from each other, are there any IPC or file sharing mechanisms available for differing apps to communicate and share data?
Is it possible for an app to create a new process in addition to a new thread (I guess not)?
You can't share executable files between applications. Apple requires that all apps function standalone. However you can use a UIDocumentInteractionController to get another program to deal with files you don't understand, and a 'quick view' may be available. That's how Mail works, for example.
Programs from the same vendor can share the keychain and, I think, iCloud storage as of iOS 5, but can't share storage on disk. As they can declare supported file types, UIDocumentInteractionController can be used to push temporary access to a file from one app to another. A custom URL scheme can be used in a similar way to pass fragments of data if that helps.
As a general rule, only one user process may be active at once in iOS - e.g. background processing is essentially event based. So you can't create a second process for yourself.
You can do this if you are developing for a jailbroken phone. Not
otherwise.On jailbroken phones, you can create .dylibs or shared libraries that can be
loaded via the DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES environment var (much like on
MacOS)
Apps are sandboxed. However, there are some ways of communicating between apps. You can use
(a) customURL scheme (also mentioned by Tommy above)
(if any) associated with an app to launch an app and send some
parameters to the launching app
(b) If you control communicating
apps, then you can use Message ports (CFMessagePortCreateRemote)
(c) If you control communicating apps, you could use Darwin
NOtification center for distributed apps.
Of course the expectation for (b) and (c) is that the
communicating apps are all running. On iOS since there is only one foreground
process, you'd have to have the other as a background app and that's
restricted to certain kinds of apps on the iOS platform.
Basically, no to all of the above, unless you're targeting jailbroken phones and are bypassing Apple's App Store. If you jailbreak, I believe you have similar options to those you have in Mac OS X.
There are two apps installed on iPhone (myApp and competitorApp).competitorApp is saving user settings with using NSUserDefaults. I know all keys (value forKey) which using competitorApp. Is it possible to get values in myApp from competitorApp?
In the iOS App Programming Guide, in the Security section you can read:
For security reasons, iOS places each app (including its preferences
and data) in a sandbox at install time. A sandbox is a set of
fine-grained controls that limit the app’s access to files,
preferences, network resources, hardware, and so on. As part of the
sandboxing process, the system installs each app in its own sandbox
directory, which acts as the home for the app and its data.
That means that if you're not interested in jailbreaking, what you want to do is not possible.
No. Apps cannot access each other's user defaults, nor look inside each other's file system sandboxes. This is security working as designed.
Jailbreak.. Better solution to save userdefaults values on some server and then download it in another app. Not possible otherwise