How to store the data to the iPhone app - objective-c

Question

We developed the iphone app which will be used by employees of the diff. organizations (actually we have not made it enterprise app , instead we are going to put this app on app store for the charge) , So whats we want is whenever the person will install the app, and the app will open first time , one pop up will come over there asking for the enter URL (which will be the URL points to the server of that persons organization) , So going through code logic , what i want is when we will come to the login page in the view did load i want to check whether the URL is already stored in the app or not, if its not stored then i will give that pop up asking for enter URL, and if its stored then simply i will allow him to enter the login details.
My problem is how should i store that URL and where should i store that URL and How should i check whether that is already stored or not. I tried to store that URL with... Where the urlfield.text is the URL i am going to store.
NSError *error;
// For error information
// Create file manager
fileMgr = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
// Point to Document directory
documentsDirectory = [NSHomeDirectory()
stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"Documents"];
fileExists = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:filePath];
// File we want to create in the documents directory
// Result is: /Documents/file1.txt
filePath = [documentsDirectory
stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"file1.txt"];
str=urlField.text;
// Write the file
[str writeToFile:filePath atomically:YES
encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:&error];
// Show contents of Documents directory
NSLog(#"Documents directory: %#",
[fileMgr contentsOfDirectoryAtPath:documentsDirectory error:&error]);
and i am checking whether its there or not using..
// fileExists is a BOOL variable
fileExists = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] fileExistsAtPath:filePath];
NSLog(#"Boolean value:=%d",fileExists);
if ( fileExists == 0 )
{
.......
........
}
but each time i runs the app it returns the '0' (means the BOOL variable fileExists) .
please some one will tell me the way to accomplish my task, I am end up with trying all the sides with this logic.

Answer 1

i use the NSUserDefaults for this.
first upon for checking that whether the user is opening the app first time i check the value for the first object of NSUserDefault like
//defaults is a object of NSUserDefault
NSString *URLEntered =[defaults objectForKey:#"URLISENTERED"];
if (!URLEntered) {
[defaults setValue:#"0" forKey:#"URLISENTERED"];
}
the URLEntered returns null at first time, so i set the value 0 for Key URLISENTERED
and i allowed users to enter the URL of there organizations server,
within that i set the valu for key URLISENTERED as a 1 , like
[defaults setValue:#"1" forKey:#"URLISENTERED"];
and at the same time i take one more object of NSUserDefault to store the URL of the server and stored that like
// defaultURL is the object of NSUserDefault, and main URL is the URL of server user entered
[defaultURL setValue:mainURL forKey:#"mainURL"];
so next when the user again logins to the app the value of
[defaults objectForKey:#"URLISENTERED"]
is 1 as we set and that time i navigated user to login screen directly , and have fetched the value of mainURL using
mainURL=[defaultURL objectForKey:#"mainURL"];
and used this URL for further use.

Answer 2

As I understand your problem your can use NSUserDefault or plist
Using plist:
NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];
NSString *path = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"plist.plist"];
NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
if (![fileManager fileExistsAtPath: path])
{
path = [documentsDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent: [NSString stringWithFormat: #"plist.plist"] ];
}
NSMutableDictionary *data;
NSString *userURL ;
if ([fileManager fileExistsAtPath: path])
{
data = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile: path];
//To retrieve the data from the plist
NSMutableDictionary *savedURL= [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] initWithContentsOfFile: path];
userURL = [savedURL objectForKey:#"USER_URL"];
NSLog(#"%#",userURL);
// present login detail or more stuff with userURL
}
else
{
userURL = // prompt for user to enter URL
data = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
[data setObject:[NSNumber numberWithInt:value] forKey:#"USER_URL"];
[data writeToFile: path atomically:YES];
}
Using NSUserDefault:
NSUserDefaults *defaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];
NSString *userURL = [defaults objectForKey:#"USER_URL"];
if(userURL) {
NSLog(#"%#",userURL);
//present login detail or more stuff with userURL
}
else {
userURL = // prompt for userURL
[defaults setObject:userURL forKey:#"USER_URL"];
}

Answer 3

Actually if you want to check URL on client . you can accomplish this task using sqlite database.