I'm working on an iPad app which is deployed manually from iTunes. The app requires a large amount of data (videos). The data is static, the app is being developed. It is inconvenient to deploy all the data each time the app is deployed.
What are my options to deploy the application itself separately from the data?
Use iOS file sharing to get the files into the Documents directory for your app. The documents directory will be preserved across upgrades as you develop the app, so you only have to copy it once.
If there's a lot of files, you can copy a zip file instead and unpack it on the first run of your app using SSZipArchive.
Another option would be to stick the data on a web server and retrieve it on the first run, again storing it in the Documents directory.
If you want to use any of these approaches in your final deployed app, be sure to make the files so that they're not backed up to iCloud.
Related
Currently i was saving my application data (Media) to the CacheDirectory i.e
/var/mobile/Applications/BEAFC76C-C450-4A3A-9765-A0385A9580F3/Library/Caches
and things were going fine. But recently i got a bug report that the application data has been deleted. When i searched over it, i got this Apple Doc. According to it, DocumentsDirectory should be the ideal place to store the User/Application data.
Put user data in the /Documents/. User data is any
data that cannot be recreated by your app, such as user documents and
other user-generated content.
And Cache should not be used to store the User Data that could not be reproduced by the application.
Put data cache files in the /Library/Caches
directory. Examples of files you should put in this directory include
(but are not limited to) database cache files and downloadable
content, such as that used by magazine, newspaper, and map apps. Your
app should be able to gracefully handle situations where cached data
is deleted by the system to free up disk space.
What should be the ideal place to store it.
EDIT:
I have an application that allows user to store Videos and Photos in the application. For that i used CacheDirectory. But i am getting bug reports that the Data (Videos/Photos) is getting deleted. What conclusion i draw is that the data is being getting delete by the Device itself in order to provide space.
Secondly i also wanna give the iTunes sharing function. So only the particular files has to be stored in the DocumentsDirectory. Some files can never be exposed and some has has to be shared. What should be the ideal way to store the files.
Use Documents (NSDocumentDirectory) for files you wish to share via iTunes.
Use Application Support (NSApplicationSupportDirectory) for files you wish to hide from the user but still be backed up and never deleted by the OS.
Starting iOS 5, Apple says that it's no longer a good thing to save all kind of files in Documents Directory - if you do that, your app will be rejected for sure because this folder is backed up to iTunes & iCloud, unless otherwise specified.
It says that we should save files into Caches or Tmp Directory - these won't be backed up, but it's not a good thing to do because files from these directories can disappear if low memory happens.
So I think the best think to do is to save the important files that you need all the time in your app into Documents Directory and mark them not to be backed up, like this.
Library/Application Support Folder is the folder you should be using.
This directory doesn't always exist, and thus you may need to create it.
You can enable or disable whether you want to backup this data with iTunes or not.
This data is not accessible even if you enable file sharing. Only data that you put in Document directory would be shared with iTunes sharing, so you can still protect your data and get it backed up as well. Apple's documentation
I have a chess app which can load and save chess records (PGN files) via Dropbox. The Dropbox access permission was all folders (which was popular in the old days). Recently, many users are writing to me for their concern of letting a chess app to access all Dropbox folders. So I am going to limit my app to a single app folder, i.e.: inside a Dropbox/Apps/Chess folder.
The question is, what is the proper way for the my app to migrate files from other folders to this Dropbox/Apps/Chess folder? As I will switch Dropbox API key during the process, how can I minimize the trouble for the users.
I have a question regarding how to update local images embedded as content in the application.
My application is built using 30 images stored as "Content" (embedded in the app) for a image gallery that I have to show. Every 2 days the application check server info to see if the images have been changed in the database, in that case then I have to compare files and if any file has changed then I have to download it and update the local image.
I have read the the best way to store images for this kind of porposses is under "Library" folder of the application, but the images that comes with the app are built as "Content" (embedded)...
Any clue on the best way to do that in monotouch?
Thanks.
Resources, like images, that you bundle inside your .app becomes part of your application. Since the application is signed you cannot update (or remove) those files as it would invalidate the signature (there's also file permissions that won't allow this to happen).
note: it can work in the iOS simulator since it does not require (or check) for application signatures, however it won't works for application on devices.
What you can do is:
Bundle default images with your applications;
Download new images (when needed) and install them outside your application (in the appropriate directory);
Have your application checks if there are downloaded images (or if images needs to be downloaded) and fallback to the images that ships with your application;
You can't change any file from your app (they're read-only).
What you can do is to save the files to a read-write directory, and at runtime check if those images are there (and not then use the ones bundled with the app).
I have an app in the app store that uses Core Data to persist much of the data.
The exception is storing images. I store images in subdirectories to the Documents directory and store an NSURL reference to that image in the appropriate object attribute in the core data store.
We have noticed that, when an update makes it to the app store, those images are not found, and thus don't display, using the references stored with the previous version of the app.
Now, I have a suspicion that the problem is that, since we are using development devices for testing, this issue propagates because the Directory in the Applications directory to which the dev app uses differs from the one the App store is creating/using. I have noticed differences between the App store directory for the app in Applications and the one created while debugging versions in Xcode.
As such, the URL stored in core data points to the wrong applications folder.
This is kinda hard to debug, as I cannot download an older app version, once the new version has been released in the store.
So I have a couple questions. Can I guarantee that the Applications subdirectory in which folks who download versions of the same app will be the same, rendering this a non-issue for non-development devices?
Should I be storing relative image url's or strings to represent the location of these resources, or should I be fine with storing what ends up being the absolute urls?
Thanks so much,
Felipe
You should use relative URLs to store references to files. The absolute URL is likely to change after an app update
Files Saved During App Updates
When a user downloads an app update,
iTunes installs the update in a new app directory. It then moves the
user’s data files from the old installation over to the new app
directory before deleting the old installation. Files in the following
directories are guaranteed to be preserved during the update process:
Application_Home/Documents
Application_Home/Library
Although files
in other user directories may also be moved over, you should not rely
on them being present after an update.
https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#DOCUMENTATION/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/PerformanceTuning/PerformanceTuning.html
Thx to the sandbox, the application home is also the user home. So it is possible to use the unix tilde which is a short hand to the user home, i.e. ~/Documents, ~/Library and so on.
Use -[NSString stringByAbbreviatingWithTildeInPath] to turn a full path into a relative ~ path. And reverse it with -[NSString stringByExpandingTildeInPath].
I think what you're looking for is the following:
NSString *appDocumentsPath = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) lastObject];
I have an app that downloads several pdfs and images. It all work perfectly fine, I store information of those files in core data. My problem comes when I send out updates of the app, all the information in core data is transferred to the new version correctly but the files are nowhere to be found.
I guess I can write a routine to run when users update the app and download the files all over again. I just believe there is a better way to go by preserving the files.
Has anybody experience on this?
You could store the files in the Documents dir, there they will be not deleted unless you remove the app from the device.