I'm building an app that has projects. A project can have many files in it which are pointed to from a project file. Theses files are copied to the projects folder so I know where they will be but as far as I know in WinJS you can only get access to files the user directly give access to. The user will select the project file, I'll be able to read it but I'll have no way to access the projects files. I do know I can do something like package the project up as a single file and then extract the individual files in my apps local file system but doing so is sub-optimal to me and I'd prefer to do the folder based structure if I can.
I'm not entirely sure I get it, but I'll give it a shot. In a Windows Store app, you do have access to more than just what the user directly gives access to. If you want to pick a file from anywhere on the computer (our from other apps through the FilePicker contract) then, yes, the user has to pick them, but you app has full access to the isolated storage and if it declares access to the user's documents library and the user allows it, then you have access (to your declared file types) in there as well.
I think the choice of going to isolated storage versus the user's document library comes down to whether or not the user would expect to have the project files outside of your app. Might they email a project to a friend? Might they manipulate the project with another app? Might they want to back the project up? If so, then use their documents library. If not, then the data is more application data than user data and could be stored in the local app storage.
Hope that answers the question. If not, then please clarify.
Related
I am developing a Win8 Store app which allows users to download different types of files from an online learning platform and store them locally. I am also considering the function to help users organize these downloaded files by placing them in different folders (based on course name and etc.).
I was using Documents Library previously. But for every type of file that the user could download, I need to add a file type association, which does not make a lot of sense since my app would be able to open such files. So which local storage should my app use?
Many thanks in advance.
Kaizhi
The access to storage by Windows Store apps is quite restrictive, especially the DocumentsLibrary.
As you have noticed, you need to declare a file type association for every file type you want to read from or write to the DocumentsLibrary. This means your app need to handle file activations for these types in a meaningful way, which your app probably should not do.
But even if you jump through this hoop, there is another one that is not documented on the MSDN page of the DocumentsLibrary, but "hidden" in a lengthy page about app capability declarations: According to the current rules, you are not allowed to use the DocumentsLibrary for anything but offline access to SkyDrive! Bummer...
So what's left?
You can use SkyDrive or another cloud storage to put files in a well known place (which might or might not be somewhere on the hard disk). This is probably both overkill and undesirable in your case.
Or you save the files in the local app storage, provide your own in-app file browser and open the files with their default app. Seems viable to me.
Or, maybe, you can do something with share contracts or other contracts. I don't know much about these yet, but I doubt that they are helpful in your situation.
And that's it...
(Based on my current experience. No guaranty for correctness or completeness)
I'm a little bit confused over the various types of storage that is available to Windows Store Apps.
Let's say I had a notepad app, where users can view, create, and edit notes. What storage type would I use for storing the notes? Local storage? Write the notes out to files in the user's Documents folder? Also, what if I wanted to sync a user's notes via the cloud? I understand that Roaming Data has a rather low size limit.
Almost all the options you mention are possible for a notepad application. Except the roaming data option, that only allows you to store 100KB of data.
I will try to sum up the options that you have and add a few more:
Localstorage
You can easily add these files to localstorage, you can store it in file format or serialize your object and store that one. Very easy to implement. Con is that only your app can access these files.
Documents folder
Also an option. Made easy by use of different filepickers. For example the FileOpenPicker or the FileSavePicker. Files can be stored in the format you like and can be accessed by other apps or through the file explorer.
Roaming data
No option for files due too the limited space
Skydrive API
If you want to store files in the Cloud and access them anywhere you could consider the skydrive api. Also note that if you use the filepickers you also have the option to save/load these files to skydrive. (Although in that case the user chooses where to store the file.)
Windows Azure Mobile Services
Another option if you want to store data in the cloud. Gives you the ability to store your data in a table/tables. Very easy to implement. More info about mobile services can be found here
SQL Lite
If you need a local database to store your data than SQLLite can be an option. Tim Heuer has wrote a nice blogpost about how to use SQLLite in your windows 8 app. You can find it here
Hopefully this clears up things a bit and gives you some ideas about what to choose for your app?
In an app like this (a notepad style app), the logical place to store you files in in the user's documents folder. That way they are accessible to the user from other apps as well as the current one. There is, of course, the option to roll your own methods to upload the data to SkyDrive as well, but you really shouldn't rely on this as being your only data source - what if the user is offline?
I'm new at writing code for websites. The website allows users to upload files, such as profile pictures or other pictures. The files are saved in the unix file system and the URLs to find those images are stored in a MySQL database.
It seems like the only way I can let the user upload files is to give write access to anybody using chmod. Otherwise it complains that it doesn't have write permissions. But they shouldn't be able to write whatever they want or overwrite other users stuff. Similarly, to allow users to see images that they have rightful access to, they need read permissions on the file system. But now that means that anybody with the url to that picture can see the image too, correct? That's not what I want.
Is there a solution to this contradiction? Or am I thinking about the problem incorrectly? Thanks for any help.
You need to manage the permissions in your application and not expose arbitrary parts of your local filesystem directly to the clients. Your application should decide what files someone can see or where to write data. You should not trust data (filenames, etc) from your clients...ideally, store files on disk using systematically generated names and store human-readable names in the database.
SunStar9,
Since you are already using a MySQL database to store the URL of the image on the file system, why not just store the image itself as a BLOB (binary large object)?
This is generally a well-accepted design practice for allowing users to upload binary data to a website.
Are you using PHP, Java, Ruby/Rails, or something other to develop your website? Depending on what you are using, there could be file upload/management plugins or modules that will help you develop what you are trying to do if you are certain you want to use the files ystem for storing the image data.
I'm building a Mac OS X application that can be used to create 'projects'. When a user saves a project, they will be saving many resources: image files, text files, sqlite files etc.
I can either create a folder in Documents for each project, and within that folder I can place all the project assets, and just include a single project file that is used to open the project.
I've read about NSBundle which I'd like to use. But I've only read about them in the context of application bundles. Is it possible to use NSBundle in this way? Where the user only sees a single file, and can move it wherever they like.
Does it make sense to do what I'm trying, using NSBundle? Or is there another way to do this?
(I'm fairly new to MacOS X programming)
UPDATE
I believe iPhoto uses this method to store the "iPhoto Library", this is what I'd like to do with my application, is NSBundle what I should be looking into?
Yes, it is possible and was used in quite a few apps in the past. The method is described in this document. Once it's clearly declared in your app's Info.plist, Finder will show the resulting bundle as one file.
However, I can't recommend you to do that. Apple's own Keynote was using the bundle approach in the past, but it no longer uses it any more. Similarly, OmniGraffle (which is a diagramming app on OS X with a long history) used bundles to save projects, but it stopped doing that, too.
The reason is that the bundle is still seen as a directory by the non-Apple email software, or any browser, etc, although the Finder shows it as a file. It would be a mess if a user wants to attach your document in the bundle format to an email s/he is composing in Gmail inside a browser, say. That confused a lot of people.
So, it's possible, but I don't recommend it. One way out is to use the zipped bundle as the user-visible file, and to unzip it when the user opens it into a temporary directory. Then you can use NSBundle and/or NSFileWrapper apis to access files inside it.
Apple's File Wrapper sample seems to be what you want:
http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#samplecode/PersistentDocumentFileWrappers/Introduction/Intro.html
It also demonstrates how to save a Core Data persistent store in the bundle. You can leave that part out if you just want to store resources.
The NSBundle class represents the application bundle, and can be used to access resources within the applicationm but you would you it for application data, not user data.
For each of the resources you mention, there's a way of saving this type, for example, for image files, you could use NSData to save the image data to disk, and for text files you could use the method writeToFile:atomically:encoding:error:.
You may very well want to take a look at Core Data (http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/cocoa/conceptual/CoreData/cdProgrammingGuide.html), a very good framework for managing the user's data model, to see if this would fit your needs.
I've associated a file type with my application via application properties and by implementind the necessary NSApplication delegate methods. Everything seems to work, but ... this confuses the system. How do i make sure that the files are only associated to the copy of the app that is in Applications folder and not the developement version? Because now my PathFinder shows two identical applications in its open with combobox and i don't want that.
You can't. If you have two versions of the same app, the system thinks that both can open the file because, well, they both can. Once an application registers for a particular file type, they system will always report that the app can open that file type. It looks at what the app can do, not where it resides.