iOS: filesharing without iTunes?

Question

I develop an enterprise application for iOS and the user should be able to add files from the desktop to the application.

I implemented this using filesharing, which works great.

Now this company wants to get rid of iTunes from their machines (which is quite understandable, iTunes is a very invasive process).

The question is, is it still possible to somehow use filesharing without iTunes? maybe with another application?

Or what other way is there to send files to the app (preferrably without the need of an internet connection)

//edit: must work on windows 7 and must not require to install iTunes (there are some other tools that allow access to the iPad filesystem, but they go through drivers installed by iTunes)

Answer 1

You could exchange data via the local wireless network (a connection to the internet is not required, just the iOS device and the Windows computer need to be on the same network).

---

One option:

You can then create a simple TCP/IP connection over sockets between an iOS app and a Windows application and exchange the data you want.

However you probably need to implement a suitable simple Windows application to do this.

---

An other, maybe simpler, solution:

You could start a webserver in your iOS-App and show it's IP on the screen. By entering this IP in a browser on the desktop computer you can access websites on the iOS device, which can make documents available for download or receive uploads.

For how to do this, have a look at this question.

Answer 2

There are a number of ways to achieve this, ranging from trivial to sophisticated.

Your question says that you would prefer to avoid an internet connection. Simple solutions may require it - if you want to abstract the difficult parts, you're going to have to let somebody do the dirty work, and that's probably going to be someone(thing) on the internet. Midrange solutions may require a network but not internet connection. A sophisticated solution could probably be whatever you want - but one thing I would say, is that trying to tap into the USB connector is either going to result in a hacktastic or very complicated solution to implement.

One method would be to integrate a third party framework that basically does what your looking for. Look at the Dropbox development kit, for example - allowing Windows (or any platform) users to drop files on their desktops into a shared dropbox, and this can then be read by an iOS application which includes the iOS drobox API.

Another method would be to setup a simple WebDAV server in your office. Host it on a windows box, or a cheap linux box. Give users desktop's access to the share via whatever protocol you want (eg, Windows File Sharing). Then you'd implement a WebDAV client in your app (eg, WTClient) to pull files.

Finally, you could build your own transmission system. A sophisticated example might involve Bonjour and TCP/IP, a simpler-but-custom solution may involve a simple JSON web service running off a local (or remote) server.