What's the best way to find the user's Documents directory on an iPhone?

Question

I'm reading Erica Sadun's iPhone Developer's Cookbook, and ran into a question.

She says in the book that the way to find the user's Documents directory is with the code:

[NSHomeDirectory() stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"Documents"];

but that seems slightly brittle, and dissimiliar to the normal Mac way of doing it, which would be:

NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentsDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);

Are there any particular reasons to use one over the other?

Nival

typo: NSDocumentsDirectory ==> NSDocumentDirectory – Overlay

Answer 1

Objc:

NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES)

Swift:

var paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSSearchPathDirectory.DocumentDirectory, NSSearchPathDomainMask.UserDomainMask, true)

You'll want the first element of the returned array.

Danuloff

Cool, that's what I'll use, but why it and not the other way? – Nival

You can use the other way, but if an upgrade to the OS changes the default structure, this answer is guaranteed to still work with the new layout while the first way will either fail or start re-creating legacy directories. – Decolorize

Answer 2

Here is the code that I use in my framework.

NSArray *paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES);
NSString *documentsDirectory = [paths objectAtIndex:0];

Viscountess

Since Xcode 5, you should use [paths firstObject] instead of [paths objectAtIndex:0]. – Pelagic

Or "NSString *documentsDirectory = paths[0];" – Overlay

Or paths.firstObject since it's a property. – Grandaunt

Answer 3

You should consider using the FileManager methods which return URLs, which are the preferred format.

let documentsURL = FileManager.default.urls(for: .documentDirectory, in: .userDomainMask).first

This method is intended to locate known and common directories in the system.

An array of URL objects identifying the requested directories. The directories are ordered according to the order of the domain mask constants, with items in the user domain first and items in the system domain last.

Gropius

That is right. Our knowledge should be upgraded that in iOS we should use NSURL, rather than NSString (for path) to represent local file. – Donar

Answer 4

I use this

NSString *documentPath = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) lastObject];
NSString *zipLocalPath = [documentPath stringByAppendingString:fileName];

Dinger

Answer 5

In swift v3, I used the following snippet

var paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(FileManager.SearchPathDirectory.documentDirectory, FileManager.SearchPathDomainMask.userDomainMask, true)

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