Launch msoffice document viewer from custom iOS app

Question

I am designing an app that shall download MS Office documents (PowerPoint, Word) from a server and launch a viewer like Documents to Go.

Is it possible to download a PowerPoint from a server in HTTP, save it on the iPad drive and pass the URL of the document to a PowerPoint viewer while launching it from my custom app? I know I can launch an app through a custom URL scheme, but do you know of a viewer that can be called by an URL scheme with the location of the file to display passed in parameter?

Answer 1

Yes, you can download the .ppt , word file and save that in your application bundle. and you could open the Docs with UIWebView .

Using UIWebView to display select document types

Answer 2

Rather than launching the app directly through a url, providing users the option to open your documents in another app would be the compatible/future-proof way to go. For that, you can use a UIDocumentInteractionController. More details on that can be found in this SO question:

Adding "Open In..." option to iOS app