iOS 11 - Dropbox app not handling NSURLs from UIActivityItemProvider objects

Danny_H11

Hi

 

My iOS apps allow users to interact with their data objects and share them in several different ways via UIActivityItemProvider objects in a UIActivityViewController. These include text strings for SMS, email and social sharing; XML and tab delimited text for spreadsheet applications; and NSURLs for “Open In” functionality and uploading to Dropbox and iCloud.

 

In iOS 11, I’ve noticed that whenever a user taps the “Copy to Dropbox” icon provided by iOS, the file is never processed by the Dropbox app. My UIActivityItemProvider object create the NSURL as expected, but the Dropbox app never uploads it. If the user chooses “Save to Files”, and selects “Dropbox”, the file is uploaded as expected.

 

Also, in other areas of my apps, I allow users to create a PDF. In those instances, I use a UIDocumentInteractionController which also provides an NSURL of the file. If a user chooses “Copy to Dropbox” in those situations, all is well and the file is correctly handled by the Dropbox app.

 

So it seems that the Dropbox app is ignoring NSURLs supplied via a UIActivityViewController but correctly processing NSURLs supplied via a UIDocumentInteractionController.

 

How can I regain the former NSURL functionality that Dropbox used to provide with a UIActivityViewContoller? Or, is this a bug in the current Dropbox app?

 

Thanks

Danny

Danny_H11

You can close this question...I discovered either the problem, my own bug or a workaround - not sure which. I do not think this ever was a Dropbox issue. I'm familiar with the calls made to UIApplication for incoming files. Due to the nature of the solution, I don't think the file was being ignored by Dropbox, but was probably never even passed to it by iOS to begin with.

My fix...

In my code, I have different custom objects that respond to the UIActivityItemSource protocol. I supply them to varying UIActivityViewControllers across my app. These objects are init'ed with a placeholder item which, according to Apple's docs, can be empty - as long as it is the same class I plan to supply later when the user chooses an action. I return that placeholder item when asked by the UIActivityViewController according to the UIActivityItemSource protocol.

Assuming the name was unmimportant, I used to create these objects with a placeholder file URL as following.

DHDatabaseExportActivityItemSource *p = [[[DHDatabaseExportActivityItemSource alloc] initWithPlaceholderItem:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:@"something"]] autorelease];

That worked fine, until recently - probably after recompiling with iOS 11. But, updating the fake name to include an extension of the type I plan to supply later solves the issue, e.g. “Something.sqlite”. Now the file is successfully passed to the Dropbox App. Just to be safe, I go ahead and prepare the real name I plan on using, e.g.

DHDatabaseExportActivityItemSource *p = [[[DHDatabaseExportActivityItemSource alloc] initWithPlaceholderItem:[NSURL fileURLWithPath:@“My Database.sqlite"]] autorelease];

So - sorry to waste time. I don't really think this is Dropbox's fault. But, perhaps a future googler will get some help by reading this, since something, somewhere has definitely changed.

Kind regards,
Danny