Docx support in UIWebview(iOS)?

Question

I have checked the official links for doc support, and it's clear that docx is not supported in UIWebview,

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/qa/qa1630/_index.html

But, I also found out that some guys were able to open docx files in UIWebview,

Cannot open docx file through webbrowser in app using OpenIn functionality, Why doc and docx losing style information in iOS?, How to open Microsoft Office documents in iPhone

Also, afaik, iOS safari browser is built upon UIWebview and I am able to open docx files from internet in the browser. But when I download a docx from my test server (I have cross checked the downloaded docx by importing it from simulator and it opens perfectly on my mac), I am unable to view it in UIWebview.

I am confused, Is docx Supported or not? Or it seems that docx has further variety of formats out which some are supported?

Here is my loading code,

NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:urlPath];
[webViewForDocsView loadRequest:request];

Answer 1

Don't know why but using the URL scheme to load docx didn't worked,(below code didn't worked)

 NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:urlPath];
[webViewForDocsView loadRequest:request];

Instead loading the file in memory(using NSData) and loading the data with MIME type worked(the below code worked like charm!)

NSString *path = [urlFileInView path];
NSData *data = [[NSFileManager defaultManager] contentsAtPath:path];


webViewForDocsView.delegate = self;
[webViewForDocsView loadData:data MIMEType:@"application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document" textEncodingName:@"UTF-8" baseURL:nil];

Answer 2

Yes UIWebView supports the docx. Just tried loading a docx file from bundle and it seems working fine(in this example named "DOC1.docx")::

NSString *path = [[NSBundle mainBundle] pathForResource:@"DOC1" ofType:@"docx"];
NSURL *targetURL = [NSURL fileURLWithPath:path];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:targetURL];
[mywebView loadRequest:request];

and If you are trying to display a docx file residing on a server somewhere, you can simply load it to your web view directly:

NSURL *targetURL = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://www.central.wa.edu.au/Current_Students/JobsCareersandLeavingCentral/Documents/Resume%20Template.docx"];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:targetURL];
[mywebView loadRequest:request];

Answer 3

Using UIWebView to display select document types

As per the Apple documentation, docx isn't supported by UIWebView and is deprecated.

To open docx in app use UIDocumentInteractionController.

DispatchQueue.main.async {
      let docOpener = UIDocumentInteractionController.init(url: fileURL)
      docOpener.delegate = self
      docOpener.presentPreview(animated: true)
}