Is iOS developer able to view file system?

Question

I wonder if developer has some sort of ways to be able to view file system on iOS device like iFile but without jailbreak the device? Need it for devlopement purpose.

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Answer 1

If you set a UIFileSharingEnabled key in your plist as true, then you will be able to use iTunes on your Mac to view the file system inside your app's sandboxed Documents directory without additional coding. This won't help if you want to view your Caches directory or look outside your app's sandbox.

Answer 2

For device: use the desktop-application iPhone-Explorer it reads the filesystem via USB (It can read and write the entire user-designated zone (applications, music, photos, videos, notes, etc.), but not the entire system unless you jailbreak and install afc2add)

for iPhoneSimulator (like Liz mentioned): ~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/5.0/Applications

Answer 3

When your iOS device is connected to your computer and correctly provisioned for development, you can use Xcode 4 to download files for your own projects, and not only the files in the Documents directory.

Refer to this other answer: How to download app data in Xcode 4.2

Answer 4

Yeah you can access the filesystem. You are limited to your own application sandbox only however. And you cannot make changes to the app bundle, everything you download as part of the app, this cannot be changed (for security reasons because every app is signed). But you can store files in your app's Documents folder.

Have a look at this lecture, explains everything you need to know:

http://www.stanford.edu/class/cs193p/cgi-bin/drupal/system/files/lectures/09_Data.pdf

Answer 5

itools is a little tool that works around apples efforts to protect the iPhone. it therefor might infringe with some of apples policies but does the job

Answer 6

Yes lms is correct. Apple has limited the file access to just the app itself's (Document directory). So there is no other way of accessing it. I faced this issue in one of my projects and I started developing the full file accessing system. All operations are supported like iFile. You can do everything similarly as iFile app visually.

https://github.com/CianApple/FileSystem

I have posted the project on github for public. Feel free to use it. It might help you with your issue.