Unity3D file explorer on Microsoft Hololens? - unity3d

My goal is to read a XLSX file and use this to generate objects in Unity3D. However this app is for a hololens. It is possible to let the game ask the user to select a file which it should import (at runtime)? like how a regular windows forms app opens an explorer window and lets you browse for a file.
so, just to clarify, what i DONT want is to import the XLSX file as an asset before building the app (because the game shouldn't be limited to just use that file!).
Let me know if the question isn't detailed enough, I'll try to specify it more if needed.

Unity itself doesn't have any way to implement a filebrowser on runtime however people have made their own versions of a filebrowser which you could use. Something like the ImprovedFileBrowser by Daniel Brauer. Which was inspired by a Filebrowser made by AngryAnt
Note: The ImprovedFileBrowser uses the ImprovedSelectionList which you will also need to get it to work.

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Import .ai (illustrator file) in Unity and display them

I want to load an illustrator file in my game. Unity should recognize different layers, colors, and forms, and layers with text and display them in a 2d canvas.
The goal is that the players can click on different forms and that unity recognize them as individual forms. Do you know any unity asset or a way to make this possible?
For example when you import an image like this as an illustrator file -> https://www.mandala-bilder.de/mandala/erwachsenemandalas/mandala-ideen-erwachsene.pdf
I thought about an SVG file but then I canĀ“t use the different layers.
Illustrator has a proprietary file format, it has no publicly available documentation for newer versions. While you can dig out old specifications (this is why some programs only support AI files saved in ancient versions) http://www.idea2ic.com/File_Formats/Adobe%20Illustrator%20File%20Format.pdf I do not think you can just go in and start supporting a 2021 variant without requesting (and motivating) the spec from Adobe. They might also want to charge you for it.
SVG on the other hand is free and it's spec is public so there is much widely spread support. also SVG supports groups which can get your around the need for layers
Vector Express is a free conversion API you should be able to use. (requires a network connection, though)
https://github.com/smidyo/vectorexpress-api
You should be able to POST a request (https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Networking.UnityWebRequest.Post.html) to this endpoint, with the raw AI file as the body:
POST https://vector.express/api/v2/public/convert/ai/gs/pdf/psd2svg/svg/
This will return a JSON object with a link to an SVG file that you can then download and display.

How to get attachment's (NSItemProvider) file path in Swift 'Share App Extension'?

Note: I am very new to Swift programming (2 days only) and I am working on this piece of code as part of an ElectronJS project. So please don't mind my ignorance regarding the basics of the language. Thanks.
I have created a Swift app containing a Share App Extension.
Requirements:
The Share App Extension should be able to send the absolute file path of the shared files to the container app, i.e. If the user selects a file (abc.txt) from Desktop in Finder and Shares to my Application, then the Share App Extension should be able to get the file path as
/users/userName/Desktop/abc.txt
What I am struggling with here is how to get the file path of the files shared with the Share App Extension. What is the way to get file path of the attachments in NSExtensionItem that is available to the Share App Extension or is it available from some other object ?
(I am able to successfully use App Groups to share data between Share App Extension and the Application)
In the final project, the Share App Extension becomes a part of an ElectronJS project as mentioned earlier.
Is there a standard way to share the aforementioned information (file path of the attachments) from the Share App Extension to the main/renderer processes of the Electron application.
I am sharing the solutions below. Please bear in mind that these might not be the best possible solutions and I am open to suggestions.
Solution to Point #1:
Briefing: The user selects files from Finder to be shared via the Share App Extension of the application which is registered with the OS if the extension context of the selection matches to that of the Share App Extension. Upon doing so, the Share App Extension receives the extension context alongwith NSExtensionItem. The NSExtensionItem object contains the NSItemProvider object which is the object you'd get for all the files (attachments) shared via the Share App Extension.
Now, for each item type that you receive via the Share App Extension, after looking for the data that your function recognizes via hasItemConforminToTypeIdentifier(_:), you can use UTI (Uniform Type Identifier) to identify its data.
Remedy: Here, the crucial part is to understand that one should be treating their input files as firstly being of the type: kUTTypeURL. Then, in the completionHandler for the loadItem method of the NSItemProvider object one would get NSURL which is basically the file path I was looking for.
Solution to Point #2:
Briefing: The Share App Extension has the luxury of being written in Swift but the main app in our project does not ! The main application is written in ElectronJS which is far far far far from being integratable with Swift ! Except for the fact that the application written in ElectronJS has the ability to be packaged in the form of a dmg application, there is very little integratability between ElectronJS and Swift as far as the language and framework intertwining is concerned.
Premise:
So, the premise is to be able to share the filepaths extracted earlier to be passed from the Share App Extension (written in Swift) to the main application (written in ElectronJS). Now, if the main application was a Cocoa application, things would have been much easier. If both of them belong to the same App group, then using the Swift APIs they could have read/written synchronously to the Shared Memory. However, the problem arises as those APIs are not available in ElectronJS. One remedy can be to run the Swift code in a sandboxed environment within the ElectronJS application using nodeJS libraries. However, a sandboxed environment presents its own nuances in data sharing. So, I have kept this approach on hold for now.
So, the approach that I have chosen right now is to use App Data Directory to share this intermediary information. The Share App Extension would be writing the filepath information in the App Data directory of the application and the ElectronJS application would use nodeJs APIs to access this information. Keep in mind that this is a very primitive approach and requires menial efforts but the requirements for this particular case doesn't need stringent security measures anyhow.
However, I am positively looking for a better way to solve Problem #2.

Scratch 3.0 taking in a byte array for loading

I have been working on a project that is implementing Scratch 3.0 for a learning tool for children. We are going to be hosting it on an azure web application. We have hit a bit of a wall though and we aren't really sure how to get past it. The issue that we are having is that we are trying to have a user click on a project that they want to load into the Scratch 3.0 GUI and have a new page open where the user can then play/edit the project. However, Scratch 3.0 does not seem to have a functionality to do that yet. They have a loading feature that allows a file to be directly uploaded from the users computer though.
Is there anyway to change the function so that it would read a project from a byte array that would be sent from another web page?
Thanks in advance for the help!

Creating walkthrough dynamically in unity3d

I want to using the Unity3d framework for a project in which I have create a walkthrough. But the client want it to be dynamic.
We would be getting the final fbx file from 3DMax which when added to a particular folder a walkthrough should be created automatically. I went through the help files on Unity3D site but did not find any documentation as to how use the Unity3D framework programmatically.
Can anyone please let me know how can it be done? Even if link is provided for the resource it would help us.
Unity 3D has a built in way to load models at runtime, but this should be done using a Resources folder (Resources.Load()) or using a Asset Bundles (AssetBundle.Load()) as described here: http://docs.unity3d.com/Documentation/Manual/LoadingResourcesatRuntime.html
These two methods are performed inside the Unity editor and your need is load any arbitrary 3D model file at runtime, for this case you will need a plugin. The only one that I know is ObjReader.

Is there a way to programmatically download a web page, for offline viewing, using WebKit?

What I'd like to be able to do is download any web page, and be able to view it offline.
It seems like html WebKit views cannot be converted to PDFs (on the Mac, you could 'print' a PDF, but that isn't possible on iPhone?).
So, the only way is to save the actual resources - save the html, the step thru each image, css, js file and save it locally. Then maybe alter the urls within the code so they point to the right place...etc ...etc...
Is there a standard way to do this?
Or, is there an open source project (in any programming lang) which does this kind of thing?
There's an excellent webkit html to pdf converter appropriately called wkhtmltopdf. Given the reources available on the iphone and its toolkits, I think it'd be easy to compile a version for the i-Phone ('think' being the operative word). We've managed to use the tool in a Windows, Linux and Solaris environment with absolutely no bugs. Here's the link:
http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/