Alternative UIActivityViewController save dialog for Mac Catalyst or solution for UIDocumentPickerViewController throwing error code 260

Question

I am looking for an alternative export menu other then UIActivityViewController for a Mac Catalyst app. While this works, the user can not choose where they want to save the file (the file is a JSON file of all the items in a list) and I would like the user to be able to choose the directory they want to save the JSON to. I have tried the following code but it gives the error "Error Domain=NSCocoaErrorDomain Code=260 'The file 'name.json' couldn’t be opened because there is no such file'" when you try to save a file.

The Code:

let fileManager = FileManager.default

do {
    let fileURL2 = fileManager.temporaryDirectory.appendingPathComponent("\(detailedList.lname!).json")

    // Write the data out into the file
    try jsonData.write(to: fileURL2)

    // Present the save controller. We've set it to `exportToService` in order
    // to export the data -- OLD COMMENT
    let controller = UIDocumentPickerViewController(url: fileURL2, in: UIDocumentPickerMode.exportToService)
    present(controller, animated: true) {
        // Once we're done, delete the temporary file
        try? fileManager.removeItem(at: fileURL2)
    }
} catch {
    print("error creating file")
}

I have tried Googling other ways or ways to get this to work but I cannot find anything that will work on Mac Catalyst. I know you can do this because I have seen other apps and examples do it but nothing works for me. So what would be a possible alternative way of doing this or a solution to this code?

Answer 1

The problem is that you are removing the file you wish to save before the user has a chance to choose where they want to save it.

The completion handler where you call try? fileManager.removeItem(at: fileURL2) is called as soon as the document picker is displayed.

The proper solution is to delete the file in the UIDocumentPickerDelegate methods, not when the picker is presented.