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Possible Duplicate:
How do I launch iBooks e-reader programmatically on iPad?

I'm creating an application for a client. The iPad will be pre-loaded with a ebook that we will be creating ourselves. This ebook will not be available in the bookstore, but will be preloaded via itunes.

  • Is it possible to open the iBooks application from my application, via some URL schema?
  • Is it then possible to link directly to our pre-loaded book from our application?

Any info would be appreciated.

Cheers

Niall

Community
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Niall Mccormack
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  • No this isn't a duplicate - I wanted to open a specific pre-loaded ebook / pdf, not one that has been bought via the iBookStore. – Niall Mccormack Apr 27 '12 at 10:22

5 Answers5

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iBooks registers the itms-books: and itms-bookss: URL schemes. One would hope that passing an ISBN as the url would launch the correct book in the store, but I am not sure if it does.

Caleb Hearth
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  • You have to pass a URL -- See http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2594321/how-to-launch-ibooks-e-reader-programmatically-on-ipad/2596002#2596002 as well as http://handleopenurl.com/scheme/ibooks – StuFF mc May 17 '12 at 20:13
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It seems as if there's a solution for native apps here: http://andycodes.tumblr.com/post/738375724/ios4-sdk-opening-pdfs-in-ibooks

We have a similar issue, and working on implementing solution above. We currently have hacky version that linked from shared dropbox folder to open in browser, and then asked user to select "Open in iBooks" (as described here): http://support.apple.com/kb/ht4227

Does the trick, and prevents us from having to preload on 200 iPads but lots of room for user error.

Daniel Sullivan
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Here's a list of url schemes in iPhone OS. Looks like you're out of luck of iBooks.

Benedict Cohen
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You could start a mini-webserver with your application and open a URI like itms-books://localhost:1234/my.epub

sorin
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In short, no. iBooks won't be able to load anything that comes in your application's bundle.

dwery
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