How do I read a pdf file in my iCloud Drive Desktop folder from within an iOS Swift app?

Question

I have a simple iOS app running on an iPhone 12 Pro simulator with the task of reading a pdf file saved in my Desktop folder on my iCloud Drive. I can see the file on my macBook Pro and on my iPhone 12 Pro (real and simulator devices). But when I run the app on the simulator I cannot fetch the contents of the pdf file into the app.

Here is my Swift code in View Controller.swift;

import UIKit

class ViewController: UIViewController {

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()
        
        
        guard let fileURL = FileManager.default.url(forUbiquityContainerIdentifier: nil)?.appendingPathComponent("Desktop").appendingPathComponent("samplePIL1436").appendingPathExtension("pdf") else { print("Got here 1."); return }
        
        print(fileURL)
        
        guard let pdfFileData = try? Data(contentsOf: fileURL) else { print("Got here 2.");return }
        
        print(pdfFileData[0])
        
    }


}

I have added iCloud capabilities in the Signing & Capabilities tab of Xcode. And I have done all the necessary steps in my Apple Developer account regarding app ID, provisioning profile, certificate, etc.

I have also added the necessary dictionaries to the info.plist file.

Answer 1

I used UIDocumentPickerViewController to pick a pdf file and load it into my app.