Question

The DropBox app lets you view a document in another app by selecting the Open In option.

We are building a document management app and need to be able to view the Word/Excel docs like Dropbox does, in another app.

Where in the SDK do I look so that I can pass a document to another app to open in that one?

Ian

Answer 1

You’ll need to use the UIDocumentInteractionController class.

It’s available in UIKit, so you don’t need a particular framework for this.

You instantiate this class, using an URL to the file you want to pass to another application, which is able to handle the file type:

UIDocumentInteractionController * controller;

controller = [ UIDocumentInteractionController interactionControllerWithURL: someFileURL ];

Then, you can present it:

[ controller presentOpenInMenuFromRect: someRect inView: someView animated: YES ];

Note that, on iPad, you’ll need to retain the controller, otherwise it will be deallocated, making your application crash.

This method returns a BOOL value. NO is returned if no application for the file type
was found. In such a case, you may display an alert.