NSData WriteToFile Fails while saving a photo from gallery through Share Extension

Question

I am Writing an app which has share extension to save selected photo to my app' local storage from iphone photo gallery. NSData WriteToFile returns YES but I couldn't find the stored file into the directory in of which I gave path while writing. So, in short NSData WriteToFile fails to save a photo at given path.

Below is my code.

   - (IBAction)acceptButtonTapped:(id)sender
{
    __block UIImage *photo;
    for (NSExtensionItem *item in self.extensionContext.inputItems)
    {
        for (NSItemProvider *itemProvider in item.attachments)
        {
            if ([itemProvider hasItemConformingToTypeIdentifier:(NSString *)kUTTypeImage])
            {
                [itemProvider loadItemForTypeIdentifier:(NSString *)kUTTypeImage options:nil completionHandler:^(UIImage *image, NSError *error) {
                    if(image)
                    {
                        dispatch_async(dispatch_get_main_queue(), ^{
                            photo = image;

                            NSDateFormatter *formatter = [[NSDateFormatter alloc] init];

                            [formatter setDateFormat:@"yyyy_MM_dd_hh_mm_ss"];

                            NSString *fileName;

                            fileName = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@.jpeg",[formatter stringFromDate:[NSDate date]]];

                            dataPath = [dataPath stringByAppendingPathComponent:fileName];
                            NSData * imageData = [NSData dataWithData:UIImageJPEGRepresentation(image, 1.0)];
                            BOOL isdone = [imageData writeToFile:dataPath atomically:NO];
                            NSLog(@"%u", isdone);
                        });
                    }
                }];
                break;
            }
        }
    }

    [self.extensionContext completeRequestReturningItems:@[] completionHandler:nil];
}

Any Help would be much appreciable.

Thank you.

Answer 1

If you're trying to access the Document directory from the share extension, NO you can't do that. Share extension or other widgets are separate application from their containing app and therefore have their own sandbox. So you will need to use App Groups to share files.

Application groups are primarily targeted for extensions, more specifically, for widgets.

NSFileManager has a method on it containerURLForSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier: where you can pass in the identifier you created when turning on App Groups for your apps

NSURL *containerURL = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] 
           containerURLForSecurityApplicationGroupIdentifier:@"group.com.company.app"];

You can save the files to this location, because you can access the shared application groups from both extension and host app.