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I need a way to ship a few paragraphs of text to an iOS app. This would be for a recipe or journal app. If the user is only typing in a few sentences, they can do that directly in the app. But for several paragraphs, they would want to do it on their computer then send the text to the app.

Or even if they are copying a recipe from the web (on their desktop). They need a way to paste that data into the app.

Without creating a website or some other component the app needs to depend on, what is a way to get lots of text into the app?

For Mac users, they can use the Notes app via iCloud. Then copy/paste from Notes into the app. I don't think Windows users have this option. However, this does create a disjointed experience.

Is there some way to tie into iCloud for shipping text over to the app so both Windows and Mac users have the same experience?

4thSpace
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2 Answers2

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You can import Text-Files via iTunes for Example and access these files from your app. Another way is using iCloud in your app. This will present a folder in iCloud Drive with the name of your app. Windows user can use the iCloud web interface to upload files.

And the easiest was is probably copy and paste from email sent to self.

OliverD
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  • For iCloud Drive, how do they get the text into it? Mac=TextEdit and Windows=Notepad? From there, how does the app read any of that? I guess if it is .txt, I can search for that file type from the app? – 4thSpace Feb 26 '15 at 15:03
  • Via iCloud Drive. There is a folder for every application that can access your iCloud Account. For example ... I am a Photomatix user on iOS and the app stores my files (and settings I think) and on iCloud drive I can see these files in a folder "Photomatix" – OliverD Feb 27 '15 at 06:20
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I can think of a few options:

  1. Let users import text files into the app.
  2. Implement a web server in your app. Serve an HTML page with a text view the user can type into. Then the user can connect to your app from any web browser on the same network (such as a user's home WiFi) and type into the web form on their computer. Look for CocoaHTTPServer on github.
rmaddy
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