Saving data using the RAW file

In the previous section, you learned about the Document directories. Now, in this section we will explore this in more detail. You will learn about saving RAW files in our application's document directory.

Getting ready

We will use the preceding project for this section as well. So, open the project and follow the next section.

How to do it...

Perform the following steps to write data into your Documents directory:

1. Now, we will create a .txt file in our folder (which we created in the document directory). Customize the code in viewDidLoad: as follows:

   dataPath = [[NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) firstObject] stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"myfile.txt"];
   NSLog(@"%@", dataPath);

   The preceding code will create a .txt file of name myfile.txt.

2. To write something into the file, add the following code:

   NSError *error;
   NSString *stringToWrite = @"1\n2\n3\n4";
   dataPath = [[NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) firstObject] stringByAppendingPathComponent:@"myfile.txt"];
   [stringToWrite writeToFile:dataPath atomically:YES encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:&error];

   The writeToFile method is used to write data in our file.

3. Now, to read the data from the file, there's the stringWithContentsOfFile method. So add the following method inside the code:

   NSString *str = [NSString stringWithContentsOfFile:dataPath encoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding error:&error];
   NSLog(@"%@", str);

4. To see the mayflies.txt file in the Documents directory, go to the GoToFolder finder and paste dataPath from the console. It will take you to mayflies.txt. The final file should look something like the following screenshot:
   
5. In the screenshot, you can see the two files have been created. As per our code, we have created myfile.txt and myfile.pdf. We have also created MyFolder in the same Documents folder of the app.