iOS - iPhone application documents "No such directory"?

Question

I'm trying to use the method seen in the solution here to delete all the files in the iPhone documents directory for the application I'm writing. I've made some minor changes to the code in the solution in order to pass in the string location of the documents directory. My version of the code is the following:

NSString *directory = [[[[NSFileManager defaultManager] URLsForDirectory:NSDocumentDirectory inDomains:NSUserDomainMask] lastObject] absoluteString];
NSLog(@"%@", directory);
NSError *error = nil;
NSArray *directoryContents = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] contentsOfDirectoryAtPath:directory error:&error];
if (error == nil) {
    for (NSString *path in directoryContents) {
        NSString *fullPath = [directory stringByAppendingPathComponent:path];
        BOOL removeSuccess = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] removeItemAtPath:fullPath error:&error];
        if (!removeSuccess) {
            // Error handling
        }
    }
} else {
    // Error handling
    NSLog(@"%@", error);
}

When I attempt to run this however, the setting of directoryContents fails due to what's being passed being interpreted as a non-existent directory. Specifically, the two NSLog() statements I have put in the code returns the following:

2013-04-22 11:48:22.628 iphone-ipcamera[389:907] file://localhost/var/mobile/Applications/AB039CDA-412B-435A-90C2-8FBAADFE6B1E/Documents/

2013-04-22 11:48:22.650 iphone-ipcamera[389:907] Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 "The operation couldn’t be completed. (Cocoa error 260.)" UserInfo=0x1d5232c0 {NSUnderlyingError=0x1d54c420 "The operation couldn’t be completed. No such file or directory", NSFilePath=file://localhost/var/mobile/Applications/AB039CDA-412B-435A-90C2-8FBAADFE6B1E/Documents/, NSUserStringVariant=(

    Folder

)}

As far as I can see the path being printed to the NSLog looks correct so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Can anyone point out to me where my mistake is? Thank you much!

Answer 1

Your code to get the value of directory isn't quite right. You want:

NSURL *directoryURL = [[[NSFileManager defaultManager] URLsForDirectory:NSDocumentDirectory inDomains:NSUserDomainMask] lastObject];
NSString *directory = [directoryURL path];

Calling absoluteString on NSURL gives you a file URL. You don't want a file URL, you want the file URL converted to a file path. This is what the path method does.

Another way is:

NSString *directory = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) lastObject];