Add “Open in iBooks” to UIWebView

Question

I am developing a wrapper application for a site. Basically, it opens mobile version of a site in UIWebView. Some links on the site point to PDFs.

When the same site is

Answer 1

(Answered again as my previous answer did not include code. Apologies)

For a solution that fixed my issue I found a great example here.

I have cut and pasted it here incase it helps someone. Full credit to absoluteripple.com

Assuming your class is called ViewController, then in the ViewController.h file:        

    
@interface ViewController : UIViewController 
            {
                UIDocumentInteractionController *docController;
            }

Add the following methods in ViewController.m:         //- set up the UIDocumentInteraction controller and set its delegate to self so we can handle the callback events        

- (UIDocumentInteractionController *) setupControllerWithURL:(NSURL *)fileURL
                                               usingDelegate:(id <UIDocumentInteractionControllerDelegate>)         interactionDelegate {
    
            UIDocumentInteractionController *interactionController =
            [UIDocumentInteractionController interactionControllerWithURL:fileURL];
            interactionController.delegate = interactionDelegate;
    
            return interactionController;
            }

               //- the key instance method here is the presentOptionsMenuFromBarBUttonItem         //- it is assumed here that there is a BarButtonItem called _btnActions        

    

    - (void)showOptionsMenu
            {
                NSURL *fileURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:@"THE_FILE_URL_PATH"];
                docController = [self setupControllerWithURL:fileURL
                                       usingDelegate:self];
                bool didShow = [docController presentOptionsMenuFromBarButtonItem:_btnActions
                                                                 animated:YES];
                if (!didShow) {
                        UIAlertView *alert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@""
                                                            message:@"Sorry. The appropriate apps are not found on this device." 
                                                           delegate:nil
                                                  cancelButtonTitle:@"OK"
                                                  otherButtonTitles: nil];
                        [alert show];
                }
            }

1. Add a method to invoke the above when you want to show the apps that you could send the file to In this example, a UIBarButton is wired up to the following IBActions:    

    - (IBAction)ActionButtonClicked:(id)sender {
            [self showOptionsMenu];}

That is it. When the button is clicked an action sheet will appear (all powered by the Apple's UIDocumentInteractionController class) that shows the apps (if any) that you could send the file to.

You can optionally implement the following delegate methods:

- (void)documentInteractionController:(UIDocumentInteractionController *)controller willBeginSendingToApplication:(NSString *)application

- (void)documentInteractionController:(UIDocumentInteractionController *)controller didEndSendingToApplication:(NSString *)application

- (void)documentInteractionControllerDidDismissOpenInMenu:(UIDocumentInteractionController *)controller

Answer 2

To check if iBooks is installed you can call:

BOOL iBooksInstalled = [[UIApplication sharedApplication] canOpenURL:[NSURL URLWithString:@"ibooks://"]];

You can present a list of of applications (why limit to iBooks only? ;) ) using:

//use the UIDocInteractionController API to get list of devices that support the file type
NSURL *pdfURL = // your pdf link.
UIDocumentInteractionController *docController = [UIDocumentInteractionController interactionControllerWithURL:pdfURL];

//present a drop down list of the apps that support the file type, click an item in the list will open that app while passing in the file.
 [docController presentOpenInMenuFromRect:CGRectZero inView:self.view animated:YES];

Note that this doesn't work on the iOS Simulator unless you made an app that reads PDFs!

If you really want to only give the option to let the PDF to be opened in iBooks, you might want to try appending the file's URL to the @"ibooks://" scheme or the one of the other two schemes that iBooks provide (which work for books in the iBook Store but I'm not sure if it also works for other URLs) which are @"itms-books://" and @"itms-bookss://". You can then do something like:

NSURL *iBooksURLScheme = [NSURL URLWithString:@"ibooks://"];
NSString *fileURLString = // your file URL as *string*
NSURL *finalURL = [iBooksURLScheme URLByAppendingPathComponent:fileURLString];

[[UIApplication sharedApplication] openURL:finalURL];