Question

I have an nascent iPad application, which stores “documents” internally on the device in the file system as a series of distinct files in a folder.

I’d like to try incorporating an import/export function through iTunes, using the features for OS 3.2 for this. I want to put all the document pieces that I keep internally into one container file for export.

So, smart folks of Stack Overflow: What’s the simplest solution that will put a file hierarchy (or could be flat list in a pinch) into one file? There will not in theory need to be manipulation of the “archive”/container outside the app– so random access isn’t super important here, although it would be a bonus of course.

A tar file type thing springs to mind immediately. Roll my own? Any other thoughts or gotchas? (And if anyone can point me to code that reads/writes from a tar file, I’m all ears.)

Thanks!

Update: Made community wiki, since there’s no single right answer here.

Answer 1

Try libarchive which is a friendly licensed, BSD derived (easier for iPhone OS) library for handling archive files.