I have seemingly a lot of text that i need to get into my iphone app. It's not nearly as much as a book or anything but it would take quite some time to type it all out in xcode, and I'm sure thats not the best way. I read you can import an xml file or maybe a .txt, could someone please point me in the best direction, and maybe a tutorial or something to help me get started?
Thanks!
You can bundle any file you want with your application as a resource. Just include it as part of your project, and then you can load it in your app as an NSString* or NSData*, whichever your prefer/whichever is most appropriate to your data type.
You can also transform the data however your would like, and write some new file that contains the transformed information, and then grab the new file and package that one with the app so that the transformation step no longer needs to be run. For instance, maybe you want to parse your text data and prepopulate a Core Data model with it. You could write the code that does this, grab the .sqlite database file that is generated, and then package the database file in the deployed version of your app so that everyone starts out with an already-populated data model. If that happens to be your use-case here.
What you mean by get text into my iphone app? Do you want to show the text in your application? If yes, why don't you just use the this NSString method:
+ (id)stringWithContentsOfFile:(NSString *)path
encoding:(NSStringEncoding)enc
error:(NSError **)error
If your text needs to be formatted, I would recommend you to use webview to load formatted html files.
Related
any recommendations for saving four strings into an own file format that is read by the application and can be shared?
In my app, you will be able to enter some text in some boxes and the app shows a view with an background image and those strings. Now, I am already able to save this as a picture, but I actually want to save it to an own file format so that you can save different files that can be modified afterwards as well or even exchanged via email and opened from another iphone with the app.
Now, I wrote the code for accessing the documents folder of the app, as well as saving and deleting. Thing is, i dont know how to store those strings in a file (perhaps in a xml?) and read them easily afterwards from my application.
For the exchanging part, I found that link which would be a nice feature indeed: http://iosdevelopertips.com/cocoa/launching-your-own-application-via-a-custom-url-scheme.html
Parsing xml seems not that difficult (never done it before): http://ipad.about.com/od/iPad-App-Dev/a/How-To-Parse-Xml-Files-In-Xcode-Objective-C.htm
If it's only a small bit of infomation then the easiest way to store your data in a file would be using a plist - there's a good tutorial here - http://www.icodeblog.com/2009/02/14/loading-data-from-plist-files/
In addition to the plist, you could also do the following approaches:
1) simplest - open a file in your documents directory, write the 4 strings (using whatever delimiter/end of string marker is useful - carriage return?) and overwrite them each time through. (i.e. it's your file, you can format it how you like)
2) mildly harder - use Apple's NSArchive to pack and unpack the strings.
3) possible overkill - store them directly in a SQLite database
4) major overkill - store them in CoreData.
Of course, the "overkill" options also provide you with extra features which may be of use if your app functionality extends beyond what you've outlined.
By sharing, I would think that simple copy and paste might be enough, but there's also sending it via email, or tripping another app's URL scheme to make it open it and sending the strings as part of the URL. You'd have to know that the other app would be able to interpret your strings as part of the URL, so you might have to write it yourself.
Okay guys I found that very nice method in the NSString documentation:
–writeToFile:atomically:encoding:error:
I think I am gonna separate my strings by /n and save them to a .txt. When I am gonna read the file afterwards, i am getting the string, divide it to substrings. That will do it, I guess.
One last question: Is it possible to replace the content of my file so that I won't need to create a new file every time i want to change something?
Thanks!
I want to store textfield values in pdf file i.e I need to export form values to pdf file just for back up purpose as I cant completely rely on app database so how can I achieve this. Can somebody help me pls. Or can we export data in excel file.
I cant completely rely on app database
Millions of apps rely on Databases! what about XML storage?
XML will be easy to store, easy to retrieve values.
I believe you're looking for xlslib
Good Luck.
I save XML file in Resources folder in xcode. And I parse it when application launches and use it for a default data set. I don't see any problem with this but people are talking about CoreData to handle a default data set. Can I just still use XML file for a default data? what is the disadvantage of using XML for default data set?
I'd say you're fine using an XML file, assuming that the data is small and you're not modifying it a lot. I use a CSV file for a couple of my apps and that's worked fine for me.
With that said, here are better answers to a similar question: Plist vs SQLite vs Core Data for a rss reader type application?
I'm using an NSXMLParser to read data out of a XML, but how can I make my iPhone App storing data into this specific XML.
The case is that I want to create an app to display available dates and one that administrates this dates, whether they are available or not (I'm using an UISwitch to handle this).
Thanks for your answers,
btype.
If you have small amount of data, you can save them in a plist.
See Property List Programming Guide
There's a github project that let's you create XML DOM objects. You can save your XML to your documents folder on the phone.
https://github.com/arashpayan/apxml/
I am developing an app which parses an Xml or RSS feeds of a magazine..The thing is I have to include an offline capability,ie save the previous results which were displayed in each cell(similar to the New York times app) and then display the saved ones when there is no network connection..
Please help me with the codewise explanation using Core data as I was suggested to use it for this particular task.
Will be of great help for me..
Looking forward for your replies
Regards and Thanks
Arun
You probably want to start here.
OH Boy... CoreData.
Good bye 3-4 days of learning how this works. You wont regret learning about core data but there is a LOT.
#OhioDude has a great link. You can also.
1. Xcode > file > New Project. Select Navigation Based App, make sure the coredata checkbox is checked. Viola you have a project with all the core data templates.
2. There is other sample code on Apples website.
One of the tricky and cool things about core data is that you if you deploy a new version you have to write a template of how you app is to roll the data into the new structure.
During dev as I am changing the DB structure, I seem to get errors, so I just do a build>clean. And rename the string for the DB file to something new.
Good luck. Otherwise NSUserDefaults will be fine.
Or just learn about PLIST's you can simply serialize a NSDictionarly object into a PLIST and save it to the disk in a few lines of code. SUPER easy and no stuffing around with CoreData.