iOS 8 - Create SQLite database for App Group

Question

I'm busy creating an iOS 8 Today extension for my app. I want to access my SQLite (not Core Data) database from my extension. After a little search on the web, I found out that I need an App Group. So I created an App Group for my app, named "group.AppName".

With the following code, I create a SQLite database in NSDocumentDirectory. But App Extensions can't access NSDocumentDirectory. That's why I want to save the SQLite database in my App Group.

    NSArray *path = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *docPath = [path objectAtIndex:0];

dbPathString = [docPath stringByAppendingPathComponent: @"dbName.db"];

char *error;

NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];

if(![fileManager fileExistsAtPath:dbPathString])
{
    const char *dbPath = [dbPathString UTF8String];

    if(sqlite3_open(dbPath, &treinAppDB) == SQLITE_OK)
    {
        const char *sql_stat = "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS table (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT, name TEXT, code TEXT, lat TEXT, lon TEXT)";
        sqlite3_exec(appDB, sql_stat, NULL, NULL, &error);
        sqlite3_close(appDB);
    }
}

I can't figure out how I can create this database in my App Group, so I can access the database from my Today extension.

Can anybody help me with this problem? That would be great!

Answer 1

You have to create a database file in the containing app in the app group directory too. So the containing app and the app extension will use the same file path to a database file.

NSString *appGroupId = @"group.YourAPP.extension";

NSURL *appGroupDirectoryPath = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] containerURLForSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier:appGroupId];

NSURL *dataBaseURL = [directory  URLByAppendingPathComponent:@"dbName.db"];

So by this way, you're creating the database file in the containing app and in the app extension you're getting the database file by the same way.