iOS: Archive Path containing a date

Question

I needed my archive path file name to contain a date.

However, now that I have that working... I realized that I can't get my archive path since I won't know the date when the application opens.

Is there anyway to look up an archive path as a wildcard meaning:

item.archive.%@ where %@ could be anything (such as a date)?

I'm using NSKeyedArchiver. My file saves -- my problem is getting the file once the application is re-opened since I won't know what the date is.

UPDATE:

In my itemArchivePath function:

NSString *filename = [[NSString alloc] initWithFormat:@"items.archive.%@", date];

return [documentDirectory stringByAppendingPathComponent:filename];

Since I have appended a date to the filename, if I go to call itemArchivePath -- it won't have a date because it won't know what the date is. Is there anyway I can get the item path using a wildcard -- there will only be 1 file saved and I know that the beginning of the path will be items.archive.

Answer 1

This code will allow you to get all the URLs of your archive files:

NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
NSURL *documentDirectory = [fileManager URLsForDirectory:NSDocumentDirectory inDomains:NSUserDomainMask][0];
NSError *error;
NSArray *contents = [fileManager contentsOfDirectoryAtURL:documentDirectory
                               includingPropertiesForKeys:nil
                                                  options:NSDirectoryEnumerationSkipsSubdirectoryDescendants | NSDirectoryEnumerationSkipsPackageDescendants | NSDirectoryEnumerationSkipsHiddenFiles
                                                    error:&error];
if (contents)
{
    NSPredicate *predicate = [NSPredicate predicateWithBlock:^BOOL(id evaluatedObject, NSDictionary *bindings) {
        return [[(NSURL *)evaluatedObject lastPathComponent] hasPrefix:@"items.archive."];
    }];
    contents = [contents filteredArrayUsingPredicate:predicate];
    NSLog(@"Archive items: %@", contents);
}
else
{
    NSLog(@"Failed to get contents:\n%@", error);
}

You could make it more robust by ensuring (in the predicate) that there are files (and not folders) at those URLs, but I'm guessing that might be overkill for your circumstance.

Answer 2

Use NSFileManager to get the paths of all files in your archive folder. Depending on how you archive you'll then have one file name that you can use or a list of files (dates) that you can show to your user.