Displaying ppt, doc, and xls in UIWebView doesn't work but pdf does

Question

It looks like a few people on stackoverflow get this to work but their code isn't posted. I'm using

[web loadData:data MIMEType:MIMEType textEncodingName:@"UTF-8" baseURL:nil];

where MIMEType is:

• @"application/vnd.ms-powerpoint"
• @"application/vnd.ms-word"
• @"application/vnd.ms-excel"

(BTW, I've seen DOC files use mimetype @"application/msword" but the "vnd" version seems more appropriate. I tried both just in case.)

I verified that my 'data' is correct. PDF and TXT files work. When the UIWebView displays PPT, DOC, or XLS files, it's blank. I put NSLOG statements in my UIWebViewDelegate calls.

  shouldStartLoadWithRequest:<NSMutableURLRequest about:blank> navType:5
  webViewDidStartLoad:
  didFailLoadWithError:Error Domain=NSURLErrorDomain Code=100 UserInfo=0x122503a0 "Operation could not be completed. (NSURLErrorDomain error 100.)"
  didFailLoadWithError:Error Domain=WebKitErrorDomain Code=102 UserInfo=0x12253840 "Frame load interrupted"

so obviously the load is failing, but why? If I change my mimetype to @"text/plain" for a PPT file, the UIWebView loads fine and displays unprintable characters, as expected. That's telling me the 'data' passed to loadData: is ok.

Meaning my mimetypes are bad?

And just to make sure my PPT, DOC, and XLS files are indeed ok to display, I created a simple html file with anchor tags to the files. When the html file is displayed in Safari on the iPhone, clicking on the files displays correctly in Safari.

I tried to research the error code displayed in didFailLoadWithError (100) but all the documented error codes are negative and greater than 1000 (as seen in NSURLError.h).

-(void)webView:(UIWebView *)webView didFailLoadWithError:(NSError *)error { NSLog(@"didFailLoadWithError:%@", error); }

Answer 1

Have you tried using the following documented method?:

-(void)loadDocument:(NSString*)documentName inView:(UIWebView*)webView
{
    NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:documentName ofType:nil];
    NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];
    NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
    [webView loadRequest:request];
}

// Calling -loadDocument:inView:

[self loadDocument:@"mydocument.rtfd.zip" inView:self.myWebview];

It works for these in iPhone OS 2.2.1: Excel (.xls) Keynote (.key.zip) Numbers (.numbers.zip) Pages (.pages.zip) PDF (.pdf) Powerpoint (.ppt) Word (.doc)

iPhone OS 3.0 supports these additional document types: Rich Text Format (.rtf) Rich Text Format Directory (.rtfd.zip) Keynote '09 (.key) Numbers '09 (.numbers) Pages '09 (.pages)

Answer 2

The only way i found to read an Office object (tested with .doc or .xls) is to save the NSData object in a temp file, then read it.

-(void)openFileUsingExtension:(NSString*)extension {
    NSString *path = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@temp.%@",NSTemporaryDirectory(),extension];
    NSLog(@"%@",path);

    if ([objectFromNSData writeToFile:path atomically:YES]) {
        NSLog(@"written");

        NSURL *url = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];
        NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
        [self.webview loadRequest:request];
        self.webview.scalesPageToFit = YES;
        self.webview.delegate = self;
        [self.view addSubview:self.webview]; 
    }
}

then you can remove the file inside the UIWebViewDelegate method:

- (void)webViewDidFinishLoad:(UIWebView *)webView{
    NSString *path = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%@temp.%@",NSTemporaryDirectory(),extension];
    [[NSFileManager defaultManager] removeItemAtPath:path error:nil];
}

Answer 3

UIWebView *webView = [[UIWebView alloc]initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.0, 0.0, 1000, 760)];
[webView setScalesPageToFit:YES];
webView.backgroundColor=[UIColor clearColor];
NSString *ppt = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"test" ofType:@"ppt"];
NSURL *pptURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:ppt];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:pptURL];
[webView loadRequest:request];
[self.view addSubview:webView];
[webView release];

Answer 4

Did you try this on the device or in the simulator only?

I find that I cannot get UIWebView to display .doc and .pages documents in the simulator (but can display .txt and .pdf ones), but both file types load and display just fine on both the iPad and iPhone devices.

Bug in simulator?

Gregor, Sweden

Answer 5

After searching thru, the solution I found was because when we import xls into Xcode by drag and drop the xls file into Project->Supporting Files, we need to specific the 'Add to targets:' , we need to tick the project to add