iPhone Dev: UIWebView baseUrl to resources in Documents folder not App bundle - iphone

Greetings! Can anyone please kindly assist me finding a way around the following:
load an html into a UIWebView using loadHTMLString and include(using baseURL) the resources such as the CSS, image files from folders within user's Documents directory - and not from the MainBundle of the application.
I have seen tutorials on how to use baseURL to load within the application bundle/MainBundle which is straightforward but not with resources from the iPhone's Documents directories.
The structure of my documents folder is as follows:
dirX
|---> file.xml
|---> dirCSS
|---> style.css
I can retrieve the full path to the dir X(Users/......./dir X). However, when passing that path to the UIWebView's baseURL such that
[webView loadHTMLString:fileXMLString baseURL:pathToDirX]
... webView does not recognize the resources(eg style.css within dirCSS) as href'ed within the fileXMLString
<link href="dirCSS/style.css" rel="stylesheet" />
So currently my application can successfully load the html string but does not load the stylesheet as the link to the CSS within the html string are relative - eg. css/style.css
Any help is very much appreciated :)

After some googling I have finally found a fitting solution for the question I posed. Hopefully this would help those who face the same problem.
The trick is with the formatting of the string path when creating an NSURL object for baseURL of a UIWebView. Although usually I use the typical "Users/...../dir/file" in most cases, loading using UIWebView's loadHTMLString:baseURL needs a different approach.
As described in http://dblog.com.au/iphone-development/loading-local-files-into-uiwebview/, where I got the solution, string path to the resources just needs to have slashes to be replaced with double-slashes and spaces with %20:
NSString *imagePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath];
imagePath = [imagePath stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:#"/" withString:#"//"];
imagePath = [imagePath stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:#" " withString:#"%20"];
NSString *HTMLData = #"
<h1>Hello this is a test</h1>
<img src="sample.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="100" />";
[webView loadHTMLString:HTMLData baseURL:
[NSURL URLWithString:
[NSString stringWithFormat:#"file:/%#//",imagePath]
]];
Do take note of the replacing of the strings and also the:
[NSString stringWithFormat:#"file:/%#//",imagePath]
Although the example code above is retrieving the path to the mainBundle of the application, it can also work in other folders, ie Documents(and its subfolders) as I did in mine.
Kind regards,
oonoo
PS Thanks again Nic for the reply :)

To get the path to the document directory:
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains( NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask ,YES );
NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *path = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"index.xml"];
[webView loadRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:path]]]
The easiest way to have everything working, is to simply load your index.html from the document directory instead of loading a string. Otherwise set the baseUrl to the document directory.

// call this method and set the directory , Currently it is cache directory . If you want document directory then change NSCacheDirectory to NSDocumentDirectory
-(NSString*)getBasePath
{
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSCachesDirectory,
NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSMutableString *cacheDirectory = [NSMutableString stringWithString:[paths objectAtIndex:0]];
[cacheDirectory appendString:#"/"];
NSRange renge= NSMakeRange(0, cacheDirectory.length);
[cacheDirectory replaceOccurrencesOfString:#"/" withString:#"//" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:renge];
renge= NSMakeRange(0, cacheDirectory.length);
[cacheDirectory replaceOccurrencesOfString:#" " withString:#"%20" options:NSCaseInsensitiveSearch range:renge];
[cacheDirectory insertString:#"file://" atIndex:0];
//file:////Users//hb//Library//Application%20Support//iPhone%20Simulator//6.0//Applications//3A141D33-390A-4DD2-8825-7DDC07D29894//Library//Caches//
return cacheDirectory;
}

Related

UIWebView's baseURL set to NSDocumentDirectory?

Is it possible to set the baseURL of a UIWebView to NSDocumentDirectory? If yes, how does one do that?
What I'm trying to do is to display some downloaded images locally in the /img src=""/ tag.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions.
You could try to do what this person did: UIWebView: Absolute path for images in app documents folder
Basically, it uses the document directory path for the image source, and not simply img src="image_name"
To load your local file inside webview do the following
NSString *imagePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath];
imagePath = [imagePath stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:#"/" withString:#"//"];
imagePath = [imagePath stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:#" " withString:#"%20"];
NSString *HTMLData = #"
<img src="YOUR_IMAGE.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="100" />";
[webView loadHTMLString:HTMLData baseURL:[NSURL URLWithString: [NSString stringWithFormat:#"file:/%#//",imagePath]]];
This should load YOUR_IMAGE.jpg inside the UIWebView
read more from
http://dblog.com.au/iphone-development/loading-local-files-into-uiwebview/

What does loadHTMLString:baseURL:

I new to iOS programming and tried to figure out what loadHTMLString:baseURL: really does, but I can't find a satisfying explanation. The site of Apple just says:
Sets the main page content and base URL.
Can someone please explain this in a more detailed way to me?
I am pretty certain that the baseURL is used just like in regular web pages to properly load ressources that are referenced using relative links. Now the question is, how to set that base URL to a particular folder in the app directory.
This is how mainly content is loaded in a webView. either from a local html file or through a url.
//this is to load local html file. Read the file & give the file contents to webview.
[webView loadHTMLString:someHTMLstring baseURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#""]];
//if webview loads content through a url then
[webView loadRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://google.com"]]]
- (void) loadHTMLString:(NSString *)string baseURL:(nullable NSURL *)baseURL;
is used to load local HTML file, parameter string means content of html file, if your HTML file contains some href tag with relative path, you should set the parameter baseUrl with the base address of the HTML file, or set it nil.
NSString *cachePath = [self cachePath];
NSString *indexHTMLPath = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#/index.html", cachePath];
if ([self fileIsExsit:indexHTMLPath]) {
NSString *htmlCont = [NSString stringWithContentsOfFile:indexHTMLPath
encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding
error:nil];
NSURL *baseURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:cachePath];
[self.webView loadHTMLString:htmlCont baseURL:baseURL];
}
- (NSString *)cachePath
{
NSArray* cachePath = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSCachesDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
return [cachePath[0] stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"movie"];
}

Saving a file to a user's device where the webview can see it

I have a hybrid (Objective C + HTML) application and I would like to be able to periodically save a remote file (images and css) to a user's device but in such a way that it can be loaded by a browser within a webview instance in the same application.
I don't think it's possible to save files to the resource bundle itself (though in the simulator you can), so I assume I would have to save the file somewhere else. But I'm not sure what path to use where the HTML document could still access it.
Basically, I'd like to do something like this:
NSURL* url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"http://myserver.com/August.png"];
NSString* filePath = #"[?????]/MonthlyImage.png";
NSData* data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:url];
if (data)
{
NSError* error;
if ([data writeToFile:filePath options:NSDataWritingAtomic error:&error])
{
NSLog(#"Wrote");
}
if (error != nil)
{
NSLog(#"ERROR: %#", [error description]);
}
}
Then in my webview, I'd like to be able to load the image like this:
<img src="[??????]/MonthlyImage.png" />
What values can I use in place of the ?????? that will work? Is it even possible?
Saving to the bundle is not allowed because it is not allowed to modify the app binary.
You could try and store the file in the documents folder, then retrieve it from there. The important point, to make it work, is specifying also a baseURL when creating the UIWebVIew.
You can retrieve the documents directory in this way:
NSString *documentsDirectory = nil;
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory,
NSUserDomainMask, YES);
if ([paths count] > 0) {
documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
}
Then you store there your file, and when you want to load it in your UIWebView, execute:
[_label loadHTMLString:htmlString baseURL:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:documentsDirectory]];
Now, <img src="MonthlyImage.png" /> will look for the png in your documents directory.

Remap UIWebView root URL to [[NSBundle mainBundle] bundleURL]

I've got some HTML and some images in my iPhone app, arranged something like:
html/
foo.html
images/
bar.png
I can get bar.png to appear in my UIWebView a couple of different ways -- either loading foo.html from an NSUrl, and walking back up the directory tree from the html directory:
<img src="../images/bar.png"/>
or by loading foo.html into a string, using loadHtmlString, and using [[NSBundle mainBundle] bundleURL] as the baseURL:
<img src="images/bar.png"/>
Both of these are kind of clumsy, though -- in the first case, if I move HTML files around I have to rejigger all the relative paths, and in the second case, I have to ignore the actual path structure of the HTML files.
What I'd like to make work is this --
<img src="/images/bar.png"/>
-- treating the bundleURL as the root of the "site". Is there any way to make this work, or am I doomed to have that translated into file:///images/bar.png and have the file not found?
Only way I can see for you to do this would be to embed a web server in your app. Matt Gallagher has a blog post on this you could start from. Alternatively, CocoaHTTPServer and Mongoose could be dropped into your project.
If I'm not mistaken, you have some files in your project bundle that you want to load in your web view. You can do it simply with these few lines of code:
NSString *imagePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"bar" ofType:#"png"];
NSURL *imageURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:imagePath];
I'm assuming that you have a text/html file containing the pattern for your web view. You'll need to add the image as an object there (src="%#"...) and then add the imageURL to the pattern:
NSString *path = [[NSString alloc]initWithString:[[NSBundle mainBundle]pathForResource:#"htmlPattern" ofType:#"html"]];
NSError *error;
NSString *pattern = [[NSString alloc]initWithContentsOfFile:path
encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding
error:&error];
htmlPage = [[NSString alloc]initWithFormat:pattern,
imageURL;
webView = [[UIWebView alloc] initWithFrame:WEBVIEW_FRAME];
[webView loadHTMLString:htmlPage baseURL:[NSURL URLWithString:path]];
[webView loadRequest:[NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:pattern]]];

Correct way to load image into UIWebView from NSData object

I have downloaded a gif image into an NSData object (I've checked the contents of the NSData object and it's definitely populated). Now I want to load that image into my UIWebView. I've tried the following:
[webView loadData:imageData MIMEType:#"image/gif" textEncodingName:nil baseURL:nil];
but I get a blank UIWebView. Loading the image from the same URL directly works fine:
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:[NSURL URLWithString:imageUrl]];
[imageView loadRequest:request];
Do I need to set the textEncodingName to something, or am I doing something else wrong?
I want to load the image manually so I can report progress to the user, but it's an animated gif, so when it's done I want to show it in a UIWebView.
Edit: Perhaps I need to wrap my image in HTML somehow? Is there a way to do this without having to save it to disk?
I tested the code with PNG ("image/png"), JPG ("image/jpeg") and GIF ("image/gif"), and it works as expected:
[webView loadData:imageData MIMEType:imageMIMEType textEncodingName:nil baseURL:nil];
Now, what's wrong with your app?
the imageData is not a well-formed image data. Try opening the file with a web browser or an image editor to check it.
the MIME type is incorrect. Look at the first bytes of the data to determine the actual file type.
webView is not connected in IB, is nil, is hidden, is covered with another view, is off screen, has a CGRectZero frame, etc.
I did not really try to load image to UIWebView but a google search gives me. I think your image string must have a good path and looks like a URL
NSString *imagePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath];
imagePath = [imagePath stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:#"/" withString:#"//"];
imagePath = [imagePath stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:#" " withString:#"%20"];
NSString *HTMLData = #"
<h1>Hello this is a test</h1>
<img src="sample.jpg" alt="" width="100" height="100" />";
[webView loadHTMLString:HTMLData baseURL:[NSURL URLWithString: [NSString stringWithFormat:#"file:/%#//",imagePath]]];
You can see more details here : Loading local files to UIWebView
UIImage *screenshot= [UIImage imageAtPath:
[[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:#"MfLogo_aboutus" ofType:#"png"]];
NSData *myData = UIImagePNGRepresentation(screenshot);
[vc addAttachmentData:myData mimeType:#"image/png" fileName:#"logo.png"];
You can load urlImage into webview which is not saved locally as shown below code
NSString *str = #"";
str = [str stringByAppendingString:#"http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:7agzdcFyZ715EM:http://files.walerian.info/Funny/Animals/funny-pictures-firefox-file-transfer-is-complete.jpg"];
NSData *data = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:[NSURL URLWithString:str]];
[webView loadData:data MIMEType:#"application/jpg" textEncodingName:#"UTF-8" baseURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://google.com"]];
I had the same problem and I found somewhere else that you have to provide a value in the baseURL parameter. I also had encoding set:
textEncodingName:#"UTF-8" baseURL:[NSURL URLWithString:#"http://localhost/"]];
When I had nil in the baseURL parameter it would not load. By putting something that's basically irrelevant in there the MS docs all worked.
You may want to try assigning a delegate to the webview and implementing the method:
- (void)webView:(UIWebView *)webView didFailLoadWithError:(NSError *)error
To see more specifically what error you're getting. If it doesn't get called, implement the method:
- (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView
as well, just to make sure something is happening, otherwise there might be an issue with UIWebView (assuming you haven't returned NO from webView:shouldStartLoadWithRequest:navigationType:)
To expand on Ed Marty's comment:
The HTML command to put in a base 64 image is:
<img src="data:image/png;base64,##PUT THE BASE64 DATA HERE###" />
I have a category (I'm not sure where it came from, not me...) available on my website that converts NSData to it's Base64 string representation.
Header
Implementation
Easy enough to do, assuming 'imageData' is the NSData variable containing your image:
[imageData base64Encoding] into the above string.
try this code
// 1) Get: Get string from “outline.plist” in the “DrillDownSave”-codesample.
savedUrlString = [item objectForKey: #"itemUrl"];
// 2) Set: The url in string-format, excluding the html-appendix.
NSString *tempUrlString = savedUrlString;
// 3) Set: Format a url-string correctly. The html-file is located locally.
NSString *htmlFile = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:tempUrlString ofType:#”html”];
// 4) Set: Set an “NSData”-object of the url-sting.
NSData *htmlData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:htmlFile];
// 5. Gets the path to the main bundle root folder
NSString *imagePath = [[NSBundle mainBundle] resourcePath];
// 6. Need to be double-slashes to work correctly with UIWebView, so change all “/” to “//”
imagePath = [imagePath stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:#"/" withString:#"//"];
// 7. Also need to replace all spaces with “%20″
imagePath = [imagePath stringByReplacingOccurrencesOfString:#" " withString:#"%20"];
// Load: Loads the local html-page.
[webView loadData:htmlData MIMEType:#"text/html" textEncodingName:#"UTF-8" baseURL:[NSURL URLWithString:[NSString stringWithFormat:#"file:/%#//",imagePath]]];
Here's an alternative method:
Save the image you downloaded into your documents folder.
Then get that image's url. Then write a simple html file
using that image url in the IMG SRC tag.
NSLog(#"url=%#", fileURL); // fileURL is the image url in doc folder of your app
//get the documents directory:
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains
(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
//make a file name to write the data to using the documents directory:
NSString *fileName = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"%#/toOpen.html",
documentsDirectory];
//create simple html file and format the url into the IMG SRC tag
NSString *content = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"<html><body><img src=%#></body></html>",fileURL];
//save content to the documents directory
[content writeToFile:fileName
atomically:NO
encoding:NSStringEncodingConversionAllowLossy
error:nil]; // now we have a HTML file in our doc
// open the HTML file we wrote in the webview
NSString *filePath = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"life.html"];
NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:filePath];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
[yourWebView loadRequest:request];
NSString *pathForFile = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource: #"fireballscopy" ofType: #"gif"];
NSData *dataOfGif = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile: pathForFile];
[Web_View loadData:dataOfGif MIMEType:#"image/gif" textEncodingName:nil baseURL:nil];