Downloading a file from url and saving to resources on iPhone

Question

Is it possible to download a file (i.e. an sqlite database file) from the Internet into your iPhone application programmatically for later use within the application?

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Answer 1

You need to expand the path with stringByAppendingPathComponent

NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *writableDBPath = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"bookdb.sql"];

Answer 2

This can be useful for you.

NSString *stringURL = @"http://www.somewhere.com/thefile.png";
NSURL  *url = [NSURL URLWithString:stringURL];
NSData *urlData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:url];
if ( urlData )
{
  NSArray       *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
  NSString  *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];  

  NSString  *filePath = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/%@", documentsDirectory,@"filename.png"];
  [urlData writeToFile:filePath automically:YES];
}

Note that this is a writeToFile method is synchronous, so it will halt/block your UI.

Answer 3

What is fileData? How is it defined and initialized?

  fileData = [NSMutableData data];

should be somewhere after:

NSURLConnection *conn = [NSURLConnection connectionWithRequest:req delegate:self];

You have to initialize fileData and retain it per memory management rules.

Try it with my answer. It Works!

Answer 4

Try this code in a method and execute,

NSURL *url=[NSURL URLWithString:@"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki"];

NSData *dbFile = [[NSData alloc] initWithContentsOfURL:url];   

NSString *resourceDocPath = [[NSString alloc] initWithString:[[[[NSBundle mainBundle]  resourcePath] stringByDeletingLastPathComponent]stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"Documents"]];

NSString *filePath = [resourceDocPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"Text_file.txt"];  

[dbFile writeToFile:filePath atomically:YES];