IOS - load local file in order

Question

I have a list of image in Document folder of app.And I want to load images in order of date created. How can I do that ?

Answer 1

This code will enumerate all files in your documents directory in the order they were created:

See comments in the code to understand what is going on.

NSFileManager *fm = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
NSString *doc = [NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains(NSDocumentDirectory, NSUserDomainMask, YES) objectAtIndex:0];
NSError *err;
// Get all files with their creation date
NSArray *files = [fm contentsOfDirectoryAtURL:[[NSURL alloc] initFileURLWithPath:doc isDirectory:YES]
    includingPropertiesForKeys:[NSArray arrayWithObject:NSURLCreationDateKey]
    options:0
    error:&err];
// Using file's URL as the key, store creation date as the value
NSMutableDictionary *urlWithDate = [NSMutableDictionary dictionaryWithCapacity:files.count];
for (NSURL *f in files) {
    NSDate *creationDate;
    if ([f getResourceValue:&creationDate forKey:NSURLCreationDateKey error:&err]) {
        [urlWithDate setObject:creationDate forKey:f];
    }
}
// Sort the dictionary on the value, which is the creation key
for (NSURL *f in [urlWithDate keysSortedByValueUsingComparator:^NSComparisonResult(id obj1, id obj2) {
    return [obj1 compare:obj2];
}]) {
    // Check if the file is an image. Load if it is an image, otherwise skip.
    NSLog(@"%@", f);
}

Answer 2

I would take a look: Getting a list of files in a directory with a glob

Specifically the NSFileManager. You can look at attributes of the file. From there you can most likely do a sort using NSPredicate.