ubiquitousDocumentsDirectoryURL repeated crash

[BobDG]

I don't have these crashes on my device but many users complain and I can see in TestFlight that there are many crashes, all this one:

*** -[NSFileManager createDirectoryAtURL:withIntermediateDirectories:attributes:error:]: URL is nil
SafeNotes -[iCloud ubiquitousDocumentsDirectoryURL] in iCloud.m on Line 158

Can I fix this in my own code? Or is this a bug in the framework?

[Sam-Spencer]

I'll take a look at this and see what's going on. It looks like a bug from an older version has surfaced again. Ensure that your documents directory has been created in the iCloud App Sandbox.

[BobDG]

Hi Sam, thanks for your answer. What do you mean exactly? Do I have to manually create the document before I save it with this framework? I already perform this check before using your framework:

NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
NSURL *ubiquityURL = [fileManager URLForUbiquityContainerIdentifier:nil];
if (ubiquityURL) {
    // ....
}

Is this enough or should I check something else as well?

[Sam-Spencer]

Could you provide a little more information so that I can try to reproduce the issue? Is it happening on the first launch (eg. the first time iCloud is being setup with the app), or on a subsequent launch? What iCDS method is being called that triggers this?

[BobDG]

Hi Sam,

What I see in iCloud and e-mails from angry users is it definitely keeps happening every time they launch the App, they can't use the App at all. From what I see in TestFlight:
APPNAME 0x000be025 -[iCloud ubiquitousDocumentsDirectoryURL] in iCloud.m on Line 158
APPNAME 0x000befcd -[iCloud saveAndCloseDocumentWithName:withContent:completion:] in iCloud.m on Line 283

Thanks for looking into this!

[Sam-Spencer]

Hi @BobDG Could you please confirm that this is still an issue with the latest commit to the feature branch? Also, I apologize for taking way too long to get back to you.

[BobDG]

Hi Sam,
No problem, I'm busy as well.
I'm actually not sure about whether the crashes are fixed now. In the end I had to set iCloud Sync default to 'Off' due to the many crashes. I'm a bit hesitant to set it to 'On' again by default. So I can't really give you a good answer but I'll try to investigate it and re-open this ticket if problems still arise, for now I'll believe you fixed it ;)

[Sam-Spencer]

@BobDG The latest update (version 7.4) definitely fixes this issue. I recommend taking a look at it and implementing the new setupiCloudDocumentSyncWithUbiquityContainer: method.

[BobDG]

@Sam-Spencer Thanks! I think the podspec also needs to be updated to 7.4 still? Currently when running pod update it stays on 7.3...

[Sam-Spencer]

@BobDG Yes, that is correct, the pod spec is now out of date. Sorry for the inconvenience. I'll update this when I get a chance later today. Happy coding!

[BobDG]

@Sam-Spencer Thanks a lot for the update and all your work, greatly appreciated, will try to implement the update now :)

[BobDG]

@Sam-Spencer Sorry, ran into another issue. The podspec file is updated but it seems that you haven't pushed the new podspec file to cocoapods itself using the 'trunk push' call. Is that correct? Cocoapods only has your 7.3 version.

[Sam-Spencer]

@BobDG Yes, it seems that Cocoa Pods has completely changed since I last used it... Unfortunately, I no longer know how to push up changes in the pod spec. Last time I did this I just pushed some changes up to a GitHub repo and it worked. What needs to be done now? Could you provide some kind of instruction for this? Thanks!!

[BobDG]

Hey Sam,

Yeah they switched from Pull Request to something way more easy :) You can now immediately update your pods without them needing to approve a pull request.
Instructions are very easy:

• Open terminal
• Navigate with 'cd' to the folder containing the .podspec file
• type the following to validate your podspec file: pod spec lint
• type the following to update your pod: pod trunk push (drag .podspec file here from Finder)

Let me know if it all worked out! :)

[Sam-Spencer]

@BobDG Done and done! Thanks for pointers, much appreciated! I hope 7.4.1 works out for you!!