Here's a crazy question...The client wants a web application to be available on the ipad when not connected to the internet. My first thought was that it would be a great opportunity to use the offline app feature of HTML5, except that the entire web app (including all the media) is 3GB, and apparently all of it must be available. This exceeds the 5MB limit of the app cache. The website does not necessarily have to rely on any dynamic server side code. It can be straight HTML files. Does anyone know if it would be possible to manually copy the entire website onto the ipad and from there easily launch it in a browser? I was not able to do this, but I have to believe there's a way. Any other approaches to this problem that you can think of? Thank you.
I had a similar problem and here's what I found that worked (using an iPad and a PC):
Download (on the PC) the program HTTrack to the PC. This program can create an offline mirror of a website and has all sorts of options for what gets included.
Run HTTrack on the PC and create a folder for your website.
Install (on the iPad) the free App "Documents 5" by Readdle.
Connect Documents 5 to some sort of cloud based storage (I used by Google drive account, but I'm sure Drop Box would work also)
Zip the entire offline website folder mirrored using HTTrack and upload the zip file to cloud storage (Google drive)
Click on the zip file in Documents 5. It should be downloaded to the iPad
Click on the downloaded zip file in Documents 5. It should be automatically extracted.
Now open the extracted folder and click on index.html. This is your website offline.
I don't know if there is a way to move the index link to the home screen...
There are several apps that can be used for storing files on the iPad and viewing them in an embedded browser. I use GoodReader, but this might be overkill for your purpose.
I've been able to view them using FileApp (after transferring via DropBox), but it's far less than ideal.
Use hightail.com, you can link a website as a space, it will actually convert the website to preview image, then can be access on iPad as webpage in browser, no need to copy file to iPad or install any software.
Related
I have an app that downloads files from a web server. Our customer wants the ability to edit those files on their mobile devices and upload the edited version to our servers. Is this possible in iOS? I have figured out how to allow users to view the files in external apps, but I don't see a way to bring back their changes if the file was modified as it seems to copy the file into the other app's space, so my app is left with the unaltered version.
iOS has a sandbox mechanism, so for sure you can not modify any file in another app.
The only way to transfer data from different app is using sharing.
This is a sample project I wrote for implement sharing on iOS, check it:
Sample for sharing on iOS
Hope it can help you.
I want to be able to access folders and files via my app, the problem is, when i want to access files on the desktop, i have to run it from a server or at least to emulate one using a program like xampp.
I know PhoneGap has it's own API to access files, but i need to make the app work on desktop too, and i don't mind it to be as normal offline website ( via index.html, not an exe ), but i still need to solve the security issues, i can't tell clients to run it from a server...
The big idea after it, is that i need the app to check for new files in the server, if there are any, to download them.
Also, i want the app to be able to access those downloaded files when it is offline as well.
I guess using only phonegap in ios will solve this, but i still need it to work on windows desktop as well.
PhoneGap released PhoneGap Desktop
http://phonegap.com/blog/2014/12/11/phonegap-desktop-app-beta/
I think this is what you are looking for!
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".
I have a simple survey iPad app. The data is saved in a TSV (tab separated file). I'm looking for an easy way to export this TSV file to a computer (without emailing it, if possible, and without doing it through iTunes).
App data on iOS is not directly accessible from a connected computer. It's not like you can mount the iPad's flash drive directly on a computer, navigate to the app's data directory, and copy the file to the computer. You have to have something with rights to access the data.
Some options are:
email or otherwise 'share' the data from within the iPad app.
Make the app's data accessible via iTunes
Turn the app into an FTP client or server
Dropbox integration (There was some problem where Apple was rejecting apps that did this, but i don't know the current state)
Have a look at IExplorer. It's a great little program / app that let's you access your iPad's file system from your computer. You can just drag and drop any file from your iPad to your computer.