My image editing app is saving some important data in the documents directory. In a tutorial I was reading this:
iTunes will then display anything you
save to the Documents directory in
your app to the user, when they go to
the “Apps” page in iTunes and scroll
to the bottom:
I have a subfolder called userImages and it would be clever to restrict file sharing only to that folder and not to everything in documents. Otherwise the user would accidently (or on purpose) mess around with files that the app depends on to work properly. This would be bad.
Is there a way to restrict it to a subdirectory in documents?
No, what you should do instead is store anything you do not want users seeing in the "Library" directory for the app. Check here for a list of places you can store data:
How can I get a writable path on the iPhone?
Related
iTunes file sharing works by exposing all the files in /Documents
But I would want to explicitly exclude certain files. Is this possible?
UPDATED:
Specifically, one of my ad network SDK is storing a mraid.js in Documents.
If you don't want a file shared, don't store it in the Documents folder. Use the Application Support folder for example.
Another option is that iTunes won't show any files or folders from the Documents folder that start with a dot. You could rename the files you don't want to share with a dot or put them in a subfolder whose name begins with a dot.
Try looking at This Question. Also, depending on what you are storing, you can try using the NSUserDefaults instead.
There is no way to exclude files from File Sharing.
The files you need to share should be put under Documents directory and the files which you don't want to share should be kept in other directories. It'll solve the issue.
I want to save multipel photos in my application, so that application run in background.
So what is the main difference between saving photos in doc dir or temp path.
And suggest me which is best way to save photos
Document Dir
Temp Folder
NSUserDefaults
Thanks in advance
Here is a reference: File System Programming Guide.
Temp folder:
Use this directory to write temporary files that do not need to
persist between launches of your app. Your app should remove files
from this directory when it determines they are no longer needed. (The
system may also purge lingering files from this directory when your
app is not running.)
Documents folder:
Use this directory to store critical user documents and app data
files. Critical data is any data that cannot be recreated by your app,
such as user-generated content.
Usually, I put files in temporary folder only when I cache something and I don't care if these files will be deleted. If I want to be sure these files should live long life, I put them to documents folder.
The main difference is the path: <sandbox>/Documents or <sandbox>/tmp.
Some more differences:
The Documents directory can be accessed via iTunes if your app has file sharing enabled.
The contents of the tmp directory is volatile, the OS is free to purge it in order to save space.
About NSUserDefaults: that's something completely different, it's a mechanism which stores app-specific configuration data in property lists, I can't imagine how and/or why you would use it for storing images.
Here is a situation I have a data file in document directory which is being updated in the application every now and then. So I want to save it to my desktop using iTunes. But I don't want that the file should be uploaded back to my application. i.e. I want that user can download the file but can not upload any.
I was thinking to have the data file on some other location like Library and put a button on application settings saying "Prepare backup" that will copy that data file in Document directory, from where user can download it. If user uploads any thing it won't make any difference as my current file is in Library directory.
This is just a thought,
can anyone suggest me other way or the above way is good to go?
Edit: I just need that after the successful export user can view the data file (may be later) without support of the application.
You can't.
But what you can do is check (using an timer every 10 seconds) if a new file is added to the documents directory and then delete it programmatically.
But this ofcourse doesn't disable the replacement of files.
I want to allow users add files to the application document folder, so I used the iTunes file sharing. The problem is they can only add single files with a flat structure. I want to drag and drop whole folder (even with sub folders) and keep the structure.
Questions I have:
is it possible with iTunes file sharing?
if not, is there an open source project that helps me with writing a pc side app that talks to the iPhone side app and pushes the files into it?
No you can't add Folder's/sub folders, iTunes will show just the files in the documents root. I think the only way to do that is to add it as zip file and you extract it in your app.
Maybe CocoaHTTPServer will help you.
My iPhone app uses a sqlite3 database for storing the data that it generates. This data needs to persist, and I need to make sure the user cannot damage it. I also want to allow the user to export data as text/csv files, these would be shared through iTunes. I plan to put the database in the Library folder, write the CSV files to the Doucments folder, and turn on UIFileSharingEnabled.
Is there anyway I can stop the user from adding files to my apps Documents directory through iTunes?
If not, it is acceptable practice to have my app delete any files that it did not create?
Is there anyway I can stop the user from adding files to my apps Documents directory through iTunes?
No
If not, it is acceptable practice to have my app delete any files that it did not create?
Of course not. Why do you want to do this anyway? If you use the documents directory for exporting only, simply ignore anything that's inside.