I'm working on an iOS game. I have access to mac, xcode, etc. The issue is that my artists and designers do not. I would like to give them an ipa and have them able to unzip, modify assets, and then rebuild and test the ipa without have to use a mac or xcode. The ipa doesn't need to be installable on any iOS device other than their test device. Is this possible?
I read a little bit about codesign that comes with xcode, but that appears to only run on a mac - are there alternatives? It looks like Marmalade (and maybe UDK) provides this functionality (resigning on a pc) to their users, but I don't want to use those engines.
Ultimately I am simply looking for a way for an artist or designer to test out their changes without requiring them to rebuild the ipa from xcode or a mac - any ideas? Is there a system for allowing artists or designers to add files to an iDevice that an app can access to self patch it's assets?
The best solution I could come up with was to use Dropbox's iOS API as a patch interface to download files into the document folder. Then whenever I go to load a file from my installed folders, I first check to see if the new asset exists within the patch folder and if so I use that file instead. A fairly basic concept that appears to be working surprisingly well for iOS devices.
Related
My goal is to allow my app user write and read files created by my app. For example, write and then allow the user to email a .CSV file of data, or a .GPX file of location data. And on the other end, import a file back into my application.
I have successfully deployed an Android version of my app (Plant List GPS) which uses Flutter plugin path_provider 1.6.10. On Android, I successfully use external directories, but this external directories solution is not available/allowed for iOS. I find on iOS I can create subfolders and write to the getApplicationDocumentsDirectory, but when I try to find/read that file from a file picker solution, it cannot be seen. I understand this is proper behavior to protect sensitive app files in this folder location.
I also understand that iOS has the concept of an app Sandbox and appreciate its objectives. I'm not trying to defeat it, but find a way to access/use it in my Flutter app. I have played around in writing test data files to various places on the iOS file system using the iPhone 11 simulator on my MacBook, but can not get any file to appear in the phone "Find on my phone" dialog.
Any help in solution approach or technique is appreciated.
I think you need to add both the keys into info.plist, and then files from your app directory will be visible on Files app!
LSSupportsOpeningDocumentsInPlace
UIFileSharingEnabled
I am working on a library with a very verbose logger module that, on iOS, writes xml logs to NSDocumentDirectory in a consistent file tree. I want to come up with a way for the user of this library to easily access these logs.
I know it is simple to programatically retrieve files from this directory, but is it possible to access this directory on an iOS physical device in any way from outside Xcode to retrieve these logs? I feel like I have seen it somewhere before, something in the manner of extracting the .ipa file and going into the package contents, but I could be wrong.
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This (Browse the files created on a device by the IOS application I'm developing, on workstation?) is how to do it with Xcode on a device, but I have to assume that there is some way we can create that gets the logs off of a device for a user.
is it possible to access this directory on an iOS physical device in any way from outside Xcode to retrieve these logs?
It is possible to expose the Documents directory by enabling iTunes file sharing. When file sharing is enabled through this method, the contents of Documents directory would be visible to the user in iTunes, which can also be exported. The documents would also be visible for export through some third party desktop apps like iExplorer.
Here is the link to Apple documentation. You may also refer this thread to understand how this is done.
If you're using a simulator (apparently your task doesn't seem to need te real device) you are in luck.
You should go to a folder similar to this one:
/Users/[YOUR_USER_NAME]/Library/Developer/CoreSimulator/Devices/[RANDOM_HASH_YOU_SHOULD_DISCOVER]/data/Containers/Data/Application/[RANDOM_HASH_2_YOU_SHOULD_ALSO_DISCOVER]
Once there, with finder, you'll get the "documents" folder of the simulator and the app you're trying to retrieve your logs from.
You might say: I don't know which 2 RANDOM_HASHES should I go to.
Yes, you're right. If you have MANY simulators installed and or being used, it might be tricky to discover which one is the one you're trying to debug.
The same thing with your APP, your app will live in another RANDOM_HASH folder, and you should browse them, one by one, and then discover your documents folder.
Someone needed to solve this "mess" and created a Xcode Alcatraz Extension that leads you to the exact live simulator and APP you're debugging in any given moment, and then you don't need to guess which 2 random_hash paths you need to navigate to.
If Xcode + Alcartaz plugin extension manager is somewhat out of your reach, you might need to google it. It's not a difficult process.
PS: That magical Alcatraz Extension is named "XCodeWay" (in case you are brave enough to install Alcatraz onto your copy of XCode).
EDIT: Useful link to get Alcatraz: http://alcatraz.io/ Follow its easy instructions and you're done.
EDIT2: If Xcode cannot be used, then the last question in this other thread might come in handy: Browse the files created on a device by the IOS application I'm developing, on workstation?
(Still, an external application in your users machine will be needed )
As a developer doing many operations with files in my own apps' sandboxes (An app's subfolder environment such as Documents folder etc.) on the device, I found it extremely useful to be able to browse my app folder to see if my code was writing things to the correct places etc. I always used to use iExplorer for this & it was vital. To my horror, I came to do the same browsing today, only to find that you can no longer look inside the app's folders with tools like iExplorer. Some research tells me that as of iOS 8.3, Apple have placed restrictions which stop these tools from doing the great job they did.
Is there a work-around now at the iOS9 stage or even any tools that still manage to do it? This was so essential as a dev.
I'm assuming you mean a physical device, not the Simulator. In that case, you could open the Devices window (Xcode > Window > Devices) and then select the relevant device on the left.
In the Installed Apps section, select your app, and then click the gear icon which will give you a menu to Show, Download or Replace Container...
Now, it's available FileBrowser to browse the content of an app folder (in its sandbox).
For the project I work on, we have to set up performance metrics. The way we do it is that the simulator writes CSV files to a known location. We then retrieve theses files and make graphs out of it. Piece of cake.
We also have these tests running on the device. In that case, the files are created in the Documents directory.
While I can retrieve these files via the organizer, I'd be much more interested in automating that.
How can I retrieve files from an iPhone app via the command line rather than the organizer?
You can actually access the content of your app from your computer, using https://github.com/phonegap/ios-deploy (originally https://github.com/ghughes/fruitstrap) .
It's as simple as :
./ios-deploy --download=/Documents --bundle_id com.mycompany.myapp -2 dest_dir
You can do much more, like listing the content of the app, debug using lldb etc.
You can use iFuse, as part of libimobiledevice
You can not access the documents folder on your iOS device from your computer without itunes.
I run an webserver within my app so i can download the files via http. For zero configuration setup i use Apples Bonjour.
look here:
https://github.com/robbiehanson/CocoaHTTPServer
https://developer.apple.com/bonjour/
I have an iPad app that downloads PDF and audio files. I though these might be in the .ipa file (I used this thread ipad - extract images from application?) but I didn't see anything there.
Is there some way to find where these might be stored on a Mac (after syncing)?
Normally in many apps the media files will be downloaded to documents directory of app, which is inside the sandbox for the app. Simply telling when you instal a app OS will create a sand box, and all the data will be inside this sand box and only that particular app will have access to this data. So you will not be able to copy data.
Hope this answers your question.
The IPA is an application only. Once it is installed on your iPad, it becomes a "package". It does contain the data within that package with some apps that store locally. There is no Apple supported way to get to this data directly. Think of it like this. The IPA is kind of like a blueprint for a program. Like a blueprint for a shelf, I could build the shelf but the books wouldn't be stored in the blueprint. Only the shelf. When you install the app, the iPad builds your "shelf".