So I'm pretty lost with this one and really new to epub files. I've done a bit of searching but can't seem to put everything together in my head.
My app uses DropBox's Chooser API to get a file from a user's DropBox folder. In this case, I want to open up a .epub file. So when the user chooses a file, the DropBox API gives me back an NSURL object to that file. For example:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/1/view/e8bmxpkree6nc67/The%20Art%20of%20War.epub
And now, I've tried a couple different tools to try to read this file. Originally, I tried using KFEpubKit. But when I called:
epubURL; // The url from DropBox (shown above)
NSURL *documentsURL = [[[NSFileManager defaultManager] URLsForDirectory:NSDocumentDirectory inDomains:NSUserDomainMask] lastObject];
self.epubController = [[KFEpubController alloc] initWithEpubURL:epubURL andDestinationFolder:documentsURL];
self.epubController.delegate = self;
[self.epubController openAsynchronous:YES]
I would get back an error that the file couldn't be unzipped. The error reads as:
Epub Error: Error Domain=KFEpubKitErrorDomain Code=1 "Could not extract epub file." UserInfo=0x170275400 {NSLocalizedDescription=Could not extract epub file.}
I looked into the code and narrowed down the problem a little bit. The KFEpubKit uses the SSZipArchive utility to unzip files. And from this point on, I'm a bit stuck. The [SSZipArchive unzipFileAtPath: toDestination:] call seems to be failing when used with the epubURL.path. I'm not sure if this has something to do with the fact that my file is a .epub extension and not a .zip extension. Or maybe there's some stuff to do after getting the URL from DropBox and before giving it to the KFEpubKit tool?
In the end, I'm expecting to have to display the text of the book with a UIWebView. But I'm just not sure how to handle this .epub file. What should I do with the file from Dropbox? Any help is much appreciated.
A quick glance indicates that that SSZipArchive wants a local file URL, not a remote HTTP URL. Try downloading the file first (NSData with contents of URL, then write to some temp file) then create a file URL that points to the temp file, and send that into the KFEpubController:
// Download the file from dropbox
epubURL; // The url from DropBox (shown above)
NSData * epubData = [NSData dataWithContentsOfURL:epubURL];
NSString * tempPath = [NSTemporaryDirectory() stringByAddingPathComponent:@"temp.epub"];
[epubData writeToFile:tempPath atomically:YES];
NSURL *tempURL = [NSURL URLWithString:tempPath];
NSURL *documentsURL = [[[NSFileManager defaultManager] URLsForDirectory:NSDocumentDirectory inDomains:NSUserDomainMask] lastObject];
self.epubController = [[KFEpubController alloc] initWithEpubURL:tempURL andDestinationFolder:documentsURL];
// etc.
(Coding from memory.) All normal caveats apply here-- you'll want to do proper progress/error handling on the download, get rid of the temp file, etc, etc.