How can I open a file out of memory in a UIDocumentInteractionController?

Question

We are not allowed to store the files persistent but allow the customer to decide himself if he want to save it in a different app/send it somewhere. Sounds like a job for UIDocumentInteractionController but without the persistence part.

Inside of the docs Apple states:

"[…]you can use a document interaction controller with a file that was synced to your app’s Documents/Shared directory."

Is it possible to open a file directly without storing it as a file inside of a UIDocumentInteractionController?

We already have the PDF / Image as Data. Is there a way to encode Data to an URL and use that to open a Interaction controller?

Answer 1

This cannot be done, you can only share local resources.

What you could do is to save the file in a temp folder and the access it. Below is the code of how you can achieve this. Checkout the comments for description:

import UIKit

class ViewController: UIViewController {
    let sharingController = UIDocumentInteractionController()
    override func viewDidAppear(_ animated: Bool) {
        super.viewDidAppear(animated)
        if let pdfURL = Bundle.main.url(forResource: "yourPDF", withExtension: "pdf") {
            do {
                let pdfData = try Data(contentsOf: pdfURL)
                // create a destination url to save your pdf data
                let destURL = FileManager.default.temporaryDirectory.appendingPathComponent("tempFile.pdf")
                // write your pdf data to the destinastion url
                do {
                    try pdfData.write(to: destURL)
                    // share your url using UIDocumentInteractionController
                    shareURL(url: destURL)
                } catch {
                    print(error)
                }
            } catch {
                print(error)
            }
        }
        
    }
    func shareURL(url: URL){
        sharingController.url = url
        sharingController.uti = "public.data, public.content"
        sharingController.name = url.lastPathComponent
        sharingController.presentOptionsMenu(from: view.frame, in: view, animated: true)
    }
}

There is also no need to delete the file since it´s in the temporary directory.