I'm developing an AIR app for iPad, and I found that when I uninstall the app, the documents directory data gets erased, is there a way to keep this data even when I delete the app or this behavior is regulated by iOS and there is nothing I can do about it?.
Thanks.
No you cant
From The iOS Environment
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.
So you delete the application all the content regarding that particular app gets deleted.
as soon app get uninstalled the document directory folder also get deleted with that. Although you will not able to access that folder from other apps so there is no need to keep that.
Related
I just installed iOS 11 beta and I noticed that Offload App, By offloading app what will be remove Shared Directory or User Default or remove both or other than this ?
Looking for suggestions.
Thanks
Offloading lets you ”offload” the bundle (.ipa) for your app to save disk space. It will delete the ipa file (which contains your libraries and resources) and store only Documents and Data that includes shared data, UserDefaults etc..
Once we offload the app, what remains is the app icon of it with a small download pip on it to indicate that it has been offloaded .
Just by simple tapping on it, the app will get downloaded from the store and the saved Documents and Data will be integrated to the downloaded app, instead of an empty directory as it normally would with a fresh install.
This is a really great feature by Apple especially for devices with just 16GB storage. As you can see offloading the Prisma app saves me 44MB which is great. And even more, iOS can automatically offloads unused apps for us.
There is no official document(technical) available for offloading apps till the date but as the description(in setting app) says that your documents and data will be saved then I think it will save user defaults , document directories and core data - I mean all kind of data that can be stored!
It will save Shared Directory & User Defaults. Everything else will be deleted.
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.
Can iOS users access an app's Application Support folder? How safe is this folder?
I'm facing a dilemma between these two options:
Decrypt content (classified as Intellectual Property) and save it in app's Application Support folder in advance when app is installed to get better viewing speeds later;
Keep it encrypted and safe but sacrifice speed.
How safe is the app's Application Support folder? App by the way is coded in Objective C.
No folder is "safe". There are simple apps that let users extract the contents of their device backups made with iTunes. This means that it's trivial to see any file stored by any app on their device.
And there are countless ways to browse an iOS device's files if the iOS device is jailbroken.
So really there is no "safe" folder you can choose to really hide content from a user if the user has the slightest technical ability.
Same for any files bundled in an app. A user can unzip the ipa of any app they've ever installed on any of their iOS devices. All of the ipas are stored on their computer when they backup their device via iTunes.
We have created a new project with the same app ID, but this is designated a different folder in isolated storage. Why is this?
file:///Users/houman/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/FBFFFF1E-B5C8-4541-AB4B-ED1657D43EB9/data/Containers/Data/Application/EB3A549F-1604-4E5C-8FBE-3076A3D581E5/Documents/
file:///Users/houman/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/FBFFFF1E-B5C8-4541-AB4B-ED1657D43EB9/data/Containers/Data/Application/22E1E792-1F4F-4F05-B7D9-F61AD3624EE9/Documents/
Even though the apps share the same ID.
Since they don’t share the same location, no core data migration can take place.
Any advice please?
Update:
We have two apps in the AppStore and would like to combine the functionality. Hence the idea is to use the appID of the other app to push a new release from a separate project. We have the appID and right certificates, but the isolated storage seems to depend on something else than just appid. Without that a migration of existing data to the new system won't be possible. Alternatively we could copy and paste all files into the other project and go through lots of pain. That might make it possible.
I have seen this on my end - I believe (and could be wrong) that each simulator you run in gets its own folder on the disk. If you switch for iPhone 5 to iPhone 6s for example you may end up with a different folder.
I always actually (when running in the simulator) print out the on-disk location so that I can take a look at the sqlite file if i need to and recently (as of xcode7) i've noticed this directory change between runs - however in my case i tracked it down to changing simulator versions.
Mainly for security reasons. Every iOS application is placed in an application sandbox.
This not only refer to an application's sandbox directory in the file system, granting security by limiting the access to user data stored on the device, system services, and hardware.
I want to turn on 'Data Protection' in my app. Also, I wanted to check whether it is working with existing apps since I did not use it initially. To test this I used developer provisioning profile. First I installed the previous app (DataProtection is off) in my pass code enabled device and made sure that user's documents are available in the Documents folder. Then I turned on Data Protection in my provisioning profile and rebuilt the app using that new profile. Then I installed it on top of the previous app. Then I locked the device and downloaded the app sandbox using Xcode and noticed that I can access sandbox without any problem. I did it several times, but sandbox is still accessible.
Then I deleted the app and freshly installed the app that I had Data Protection turned on. Then I downloaded the app sandbox and I noticed that all folders in the sandbox including Documents folder are empty.
That means Data protection working only on freshly installed app. Am I doing anything wrong? I want to turn on Data Protection on my existing apps as well. How can I achieve this?
Since I didn't get enough attention to this question I posted it to apple developer forum. What they suggest was after enabling data protection If We are going to update the app (without deleting old app) we should explicitly set data protection for all files including old ones.
So what I did was loop through my document folder and set data protection attribute to all my old files.
Also I set data protection attributes in all places where I create new files. That solves my problem.
So the bottom line is If you are going to enable data protection in your old app better to do it explicitly.