Question

EDIT: So far, the best I’ve been able to come up with is a pop-up to ask the user to disable iCloud sync, along with moving all the data to the Documents directory so it won’t get wiped: In iOS5, is it possible to detect if a user has an app set to back up?

I develop offline mapping application for iPhone/iPad.

We used to store all of the data (many gigs potentially) in the Caches directory.

As of iOS5, the files in the Caches directory can be randomly deleted when the user’s hard drive starts getting full.

How can I store local data, without the data being synced to iCloud, iTunes, and without it being randomly deleted? My local data is a large directory tree with many small data files, in thousands of subdirectories.

I moved our directory tree from the library cache directory to a data.nosync directory in the documents directory, because we had read this might be a solution. However, the data in the nosync folder is still being backed up to iCloud.

Here is now I create the directory:

NSString* noSyncDirectory() {
  static NSString *directory = nil;
  if (!directory) {
    directory = [[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@/%@",
                  documentsDirectory(), @"data.nosync"] retain];
    [Constants createDirectoryIfNeeded:directory];
  }
  return directory;
}

Answer 1

From: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#qa/qa1719/_index.html

You can use the following method to set the “do not back up” extended attribute. Whenever you create a file or folder that should not be backed up, write the data to the file and then call this method, passing in a URL to the file.

#include <sys/xattr.h>
- (BOOL)addSkipBackupAttributeToItemAtURL:(NSURL *)URL
{
    const char* filePath = [[URL path] fileSystemRepresentation];

    const char* attrName = "com.apple.MobileBackup";
    u_int8_t attrValue = 1;

    int result = setxattr(filePath, attrName, &attrValue, sizeof(attrValue), 0, 0);
    return result == 0;
}

More information can be found: https://developer.apple.com/icloud/documentation/data-storage/

Further note: While the developer documentation incorrectly implies (“These files will not be purged and will not be included in the user’s iCloud or iTunes backup.”) that the do-not-backup flag doubles as a do-not-purge flag that is not the case. Simply leaving files in the Caches Directory and flagging them do-not-backup will not prevent their wipe.