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Let say that we have a file named 'a.txt' saved in goodreader app. Can we read this file from pythonista without importing it? Using "Dropbox file picker" is th only way I figured out to import a file to pythonista...

It depends on whether goodreader supports a Share Sheet in a real way.

Does GoodReader have the "share" button? If so, try clicking it, then "Run Pythonista Script". Then, click on Scratchpad and type

import appex
print appex.get_attachments()

then press play. If goodreader actually supports sharing, then you will see a file of the form /private/..... you should be able to then use

text=open(appex.get_attachments()[0]).read()
open('a.txt','w').write(text)

then it should be there in pythonista when you return to the app. This of course can all be put into a script that you add to your app extension list of saved scripts to avoid some of the tedium.

Yes, GoodReader opens a share sheet when you tap "Open in ...".

@JonB, if you want to copy a file, use shutil.copy. Much shorter than manually opening the two files (and you don't risk any accidental bytes-to-text conversions for binary files).

The reason you cannot read from another app (without jailbreak) is that all apps in iOS are sandboxed, and cannot access much content outside of their own app bundle.

In this case, appex delivers neither a file handle nor a file name but instead delivers the contents of the file as a str.

https://github.com/cclauss/Ten-lines-or-less/blob/master/appex_local_copy.py should give you a local copy.

@ccc Really?

>>> import appex
>>> appex.get_attachments()
[u"/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/E2D89A6E-FD16-4428-BAC4-2E01276796E6/Documents/What's new in GoodReader 4.11.pdf", u"/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/E2D89A6E-FD16-4428-BAC4-2E01276796E6/Documents/What's new in GoodReader 4.11.pdf"]

(Don't ask me why the same path is listed twice though.)

i suspect for textfiles, goodreader returns the path as one attachment, and the url as another. I noticed this when safari does a Save As (in my case, i was saving a png, and i got the file contents on one, and file path in another. My script just uses get url, and urllib.urlretrieve, which seems to work both for private pathnames and internet urls. .

This makes a little more sense... but only a little.

>>> import appex
>>> import json
>>> print(json.dumps(appex.get_input(), indent=4))
[
    {
        "attachments": [
            {
                "com.adobe.pdf": "/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/E2D89A6E-FD16-4428-BAC4-2E01276796E6/Documents/What's new in GoodReader 4.11.pdf", 
                "public.file-url": "/var/mobile/Containers/Data/Application/E2D89A6E-FD16-4428-BAC4-2E01276796E6/Documents/What's new in GoodReader 4.11.pdf"
            }
        ]
    }
]

My mistake... I was reading a file shared from Editor, not from GoodReader.

import appex, shutil

if appex.is_running_extension():
    file_path = appex.get_file_path()
    if file_path:
        shutil.copy(file_path, '.')

To the original question - it would be cool if there was a way to open a file from a document provider in another app. Sort of as described in this blog post, where 1Writer is using the document provider from Working Copy to open a file in-place (i.e. without making a new copy):

http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/2016/01/15/using-working-copy-with-1writer-on-ipad-pro/

Thank you very much every body fir all of your grat suggestion...they are really a great help.

Or see Save Attachment