I want to make "Open in.." function in my iOS application.
Is there any way to check if any app on this device is associated with file extension that i want to share?
If there are no apps on current device to open file with such an extension than UIDocumentInteractionController will not be displayed after clicking on "Open in.." button, but i want not to show this button in such case.
So the question is: how to check if any app on device can open some file with specific extension?
Update:
For example UIDocumentInteractionController has NSArray property icons.
It contains images of all aplications that can open the file with my extension. But if there are no applications it contans image of empty application.
So i can't check it using docInteractionController.icons.count == 0 for example. I am looking for other tricks.'
Thanks, in advance.
Although UIDocumentInteractionController does not offer a way to discover in advance whether there are any applications that can handle a document, -presentOpenInMenuFromRect: will return a flag indicating whether there were any applications that could open a document. This requires you to have already set up and presented the controller, which is not optimal.
There is a workaround for this, a little hacky but is functional: Before you invoke the "real" interaction controller, create a dummy one using a dummy document, and present it from the rect of the window's bounds. This guarantees that it will "appear" offscreen, so your user won't see it. At that point, you have the flag returned from -present, and you can immediately dismiss the dummy controller, and the proceed to show your UI appropriately.
On OSX, you can get a list of application bundle identifiers capable of handling a specific content type using LSCopyAllRoleHandlersForContentType. But on iOS, I don't think there is such a way.
If I find, I'll edit my answer.
Considering you are looking for other tricks, you can check if that one image in the icons array is the generic document icon.
If it is then you know that there is no app associated to handle that file type. But this approach will be OS version dependent as generic file icon may change.
From the official documentation:
To declare its support for file types, your app must include the
CFBundleDocumentTypes key in its Info.plistproperty list file. (See
“Core Foundation Keys”.) The system adds this information to a
registry that other apps can access through a document interaction
controller.
To me this indicates that the registry can only be accessed through UIDocumentInteractionController and so no, you would not be able to know in advance if there are any available apps for the file format (which would be totally in line with Apple's philosophy of not letting apps interact directly with each other).
UPDATE:
as you said the icons property contains an image even with no applications present. I checked and all the other methods and properties of the controller do not give an hint about the apps that may open the current file format.
You said in case that no app can open the specified file format there is an "image of empty application". Maybe you can extract that icon and when the array icons only has one image check if the extracted image and the icon are the same?
Related
The Xcode docs, explain that the CFBundleURLIconFile key contains the name of the icon image file (minus the extension) to be used for displaying URLs of this type.
My remaining questions are:
What icon image should I use? Like, if the URL type is for another app, should I use that app's app icon?
What size(s)? If many sizes, how do I name them so that the sizes are used correctly?
Where is it displayed? I'm wondering for an iPhone app.
Apple does not specify this specifically, but my interpretation is that it should be an Icon representing the application which should/will open/handle URLs of this type.
On OS X, the normal approach would be to use an Icon File (.icns). I suspect you should try that on your iOS app. If that doesn't work, duplicate the naming scheme of the the standard app icon files.
Try viewing a PDF in Safari on iOS. If you have iBooks, it should show a button saying "Open in iBooks" and shows an icon next to it. This icon is the icon you would be setting.
I hope this is thorough enough to answer your questions. If not, please explain what needs clarification.
I am trying to create MAC application.
My input is --> Source Code Folder of an existing iPhone Application.
Using my application I want to insert an extra screen in the existing application. The extra screen will be always the first screen.
Since I want to Automate this, I have written a MAC application which browses through the Source code folder and replaces the first screen of app with my extra screen. This is working perfectly for Single View Application where I get the AppDelegate class name from the main.m file ( by parsing UIApplicationMain(argc,argv,MyAppDelegate,nil) ) line.
The application fails when the third argument is 'nil' in some of the applications (which may depend on the implementer or type of project).
Is it possible to make my application generic for all kind of applications?
Regards,
Nirav
Looks like you would only have to search (recursively) the folder for all .h files, and then detect the name of the class that implements UIApplicationDelegate. There should not usually have more than one, and would work with the defaults templates I guess.
My app is registered for certain file types, images + pdf etc, following the guidelines
provided by Apple. My app does show up("open in" option) when pdf files are encountered
in mobile-safari, but it is not the case with image files. In the default "Photos"
app provided by apple, the "open in" option does not show up. Probably this is because
it is implemented without using the document interaction controller. But is there any
way to make my app appear in the UIActionSheet button, which appears at the bottom left
corner ?
I do not want to use the UIImagePickerController for choosing the saved images.
the only thing you can do is add this key-value pair to your info.plist file. iPhone saves pictures in ".JPG", so that's what you should put as the file type.
(if it doesn't appear in Photos action sheet, that means that Apple doesn't want it to appear. You'll just have to hope that some day...)
p.s. more information and detailed instructions here:
Registering the File Types Your App Supports
Xcode4 is asking for a huge number of arguments just to make this simple thing possible:
NSString *stringURL = #"twitterriffic://";
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:stringURL];
[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:url];
What are all these properties for? Why an image? Must I repeat the app identifier here? What role to choose if I want anyone to be able to call this URL to open my app? And what are these Additional url type properties for?
I found no Xcode4-related tutorial how to register such an URL scheme with Xcode 4.
Open "Supporting Files" (folder) on left and click the "YourAppName-Info.plist"
Choose a row like "Bundle creator OS Type Code" and mouse over row and click the (+) symbol
This creates a new row and type "URL types"
Click the arror to left and see Item 0 and you'll rename the value in Item 0 to "URL Schemes" as shown
Then edit the field in Item 0 and type in your prototocol; I typed in "goomzee" as shown
Now if I install this app on my simulator, and open Safari and type "goomzee://" in the address bar it will launch my app.
Yup, this stuff isn't straightforward is it ?
I've outlined the steps required to register a custom URL here:
Custom URLs
But, basically the key to it is setting up a "URL Types" value in your .plist file. Here's what it looks like in XCode 5:
In this example, I've registered the MKB prefix, so now, I can use this new type of URLs in hyperlinks on webpages, and emails (if I read an email in the iPad Mail app):
If a user taps on one of these links, my iPad app will start up, and I can access the full URL string, to extract the other parameters from the URL (eg "DocumentNumber=100")
The only gotcha is that I have yet to work out how to test whether a user has an iPad app installed which can recognise a particular prefix.
If they haven't, and they tap on one of these MKB:// links on their iPad, they'll get an ugly error message:
You can continue to register your custom URL by editing your app's info.plist file (as shown in one of your previous questions). The new editor in Xcode 4 is supposed to be a convenience to make it easier to add the entries - all it is doing is making the same info.plist changes that you would do manually. If you want to use the new editor then you only need to fill in the 'Identifier' and the 'URL Schemes' boxes. You don't need an image, icon or additional URL properties.
The other properties (icon etc) are not well documented but seem to be applicable only on Mac OS X and might be used in the Finder's Get Info dialog to display what types of URL a particular app can open. For example, take a look at the Launch Services Programming Guide.
What you change in that editor is also reflected in your project's info plist file. It takes the form of ProjectName-Info.plist. Hopefully that helps.
i am making an app for iphone and for that i am using certain free libraries.My problem is that i want to show their complete license of nearly 4-5 pages in my application bundle so that a user can open settings in iphone and see that licensing page at one time but i am unable to do it.I have read these Specifiers for making an application bundle .
PSGroupSpecifier
PSTitleValueSpecifier
PSTextFieldSpecifier
PSSliderSpecifier
PSToggleSwitchSpecifier
PSMultiValueSpecifier
PSChildPaneSpecifier
but i want to show a page full of text like Settings->General->About->Leagl
just like in iphone through PSChildPaneSpecifier .Please help me how to do this>???
Thanks
You can create the same effect as used by Apple's iWorks apps for the license > section of the settings, without using any custom preference controller. Note this works for iOS 5 on the iPad, I have not tried it elsewhere. Use a PSChildPaneSpecifier for the initial control in the root plist. This points to the name of another plist file which will be the displayed child pane. You do not add .plist to the name within the root.plist file, it is implied. This plist file must be within the settings bundle. Next, use PSGroupSpecifiers in the child pane as the controls. For each paragraph use another PSGroupSpecifier - so the thing will scroll. Only use the Title section of the PSGroupSpecifier. The next gotcha that I found, was that by putting the strings in the plist file, the text was clipped in portrait orientation, so a placeholder string needs to go in the plist file and a StringTable used to point to a strings file. Text read from the strings file is properly kerned and displays without clipping.
The iPhone's "Legal" page is a custom preference controller which you can't use (not even with undocumented methods – you need to write a preference bundle in system locations which AppStore apps can't reach at all).
If you'd like to display the license, show it in the app.
I think you are going to need to use something like a UITextView, just make it non-editable. You can make in unobtrusive in your app but I think that is the only way to have 4-5 pages.
I don't think there is a nice way of displaying this in the preferences bundle. Personally I would either provide a series of url links or bring the preferences into the app itself. There is a good framework on github here that you may be able to modify.