Question

I’m developing an application for use by our employees for ticket tracking on the go. Our tickets have attachments stored with them on occasion, of various file types.

Many of them are text files or images of bugs in our software, which are essential to the ticket when checking out the ticket on the go

in Javascript, how can I get the web browser to prompt the user with a ‘what would you like to open this file with?’ dialog? much like the following:

I don’t even know if this is possible through Javascript, but if so it would really help us out a lot

I am aware that we can display images in Javascript directly, but we would much rather defer the file off to the device and let it handle opening it with the correct program (in case the file type is not an image)

Oh, and we are using Sencha Touch for the application, in case that offers any features of this sort (though I couldn’t find any in the docs)

Answer 1

To open with the app:

• Choose the Info-plist file
• Right click on plist file
• Open as… and select Source Code
• Paste this xml code below somewhere in the file (for the example I will place it below the bundle name)

<key>CFBundleDocumentTypes</key>
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
        <string>supportedExtensions</string>
        <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
        <string>Viewer</string>
        <key>LSHandlerRank</key>
        <string>Alternate</string>
        <key>LSIsAppleDefaultForType</key>
        <true/>
        <key>LSItemContentTypes</key>
        <array>
            <string>public.comma-separated-values-text</string>
        </array>
    </dict>
</array>

• Go to the app delegate file and implement the following function:

-(BOOL) application:(UIApplication *)application openURL:(NSURL *)url sourceApplication:(NSString *)sourceApplication annotation:(id)annotation
{
    // this url contain the -> your file url
}

Just remember: the handling of the memory of your app is upbto you. The file will be copied into your Application Document Directory space. You will need to manage it. If you no longer need the file, your application will need to delete it.

Reading the File in JS:

Implement the following in your javascript:

window.requestFileSystem(LocalFileSystem.PERSISTENT, 0, gotFS, fail);

function gotFS(fileSystem) {
    fileSystem.root.getFile("exportBHC.csv", {create: true}, gotFileEntry, fail);
}

function gotFileEntry(fileEntry) {
    fileEntry.file(gotFile, fail);
}

function gotFile(file){
    readAsText(file);
}

function readAsText(file) {
    var reader = new FileReader();

    reader.onloadend = function(evt) {
        var sqlQuery = {};
        var results = evt.target.result;
}