How to save a pdf file to file system (ios/android) with react native which can be accessible outside the app

Question

I am receiving the pdf as base64 encoded string from an api and I want to convert this base64 string to pdf and save it in file system of the device. And this file should be accessible outside the app.

Environment: React Native, Expo

What it the best library that I can use.

Looked at lots of resources online, but confused whether they save in local app storage or outside the app.

Answer 1

If you're using Expo, probably Expo FileSystem. Because it's an expo package, it works really well in testing and will be easy to implement to your project. Here are the docs .

Answer 2

After some research, I found that its easy to work with byte stream instead a base64 string.

And as Finley suggested above, using Expo libraries, Expo File-System, Expo Media-Library, Expo-Sharing can be used together to save the image to device storage which can be accessed from outside app.

In case of IOS, use Expo-Sharing to open sharing options and from there we can save a file to file system.