iOS => Sharing PDF with GMail or WhatsApp does not work...

Hey there,

i am trying to share a pdf as base64 with Gmail and WhatsApp. Sharing with the “normal” iOS Mail App works just fine, but sharing with WhatsApp & Gmail fails. On Gmail the shared pdf is some kind of weird data with this structure => 123456.dat When sharing to WhatsApp i have several problems.

1. When title & message of share options is empty i get an error something like: “This object cannot be sent. Please choose another object.”
2. If i add title & message i can only share the title & message text without the pdf file

Here is my code:

RNFetchBlob.config({ fileCache: true })
    .fetch("GET", fileUrl)
    // the image or pdf is now dowloaded to device's storage
    .then(resp => {
        filePath = resp.path();
        return resp.readFile("base64");
    })
    .then(async base64Data => {
        // here's base64 encoded image or pdf
        // type = application/pdf or image/png
        base64Data = `data:${type};base64,` + base64Data;

        let options = {
            type: type,
            message: "",
            title: "",
            // url: type === MIME_TYPE_PDF ? filePath : base64Data
            url: base64Data
        };

        await Share.open(options);

        // remove the image or pdf from device's storage
        fs.unlink(filePath);
    });

I also tried to share the temp file path instead of the base64 but unfortunatley the file path which is downloaded didn’t have the pdf ending 😄 Anyways… it has to work somehow as it works with the iOS Mail App…

[jgcmarins]

Great! @BigPun86 could you send a PR updating README? Thanks.

[BigPun86]

This issue might be more related to the fetch-blob. Never mind, this is how i fixed it. I actually extended the config options for the RNFetchBlob.config and added a clear path with filename to it. For Android i just left the old code sharing via base64. Now WhatsApp sharing works perfectly and sharing with Gmail has a extension. I set the pdf extension when filetype is application/pdf else i simply use .png which works for any kind of images shared.

static shareWithIOS(fileUrl, type) {
  let filePath = null;
  let file_url_length = fileUrl.length;
  const configOptions = {
    fileCache: true,
    path:
      DIRS.DocumentDir + (type === 'application/pdf' ? '/SomeFileName.pdf' : '/SomeFileName.png') // no difference when using jpeg / jpg / png /
  };
  RNFetchBlob.config(configOptions)
    .fetch('GET', fileUrl)
    .then(async resp => {
      filePath = resp.path();
      let options = {
        type: type,
        url: filePath // (Platform.OS === 'android' ? 'file://' + filePath)
      };
      await Share.open(options);
      // remove the image or pdf from device's storage
      await RNFS.unlink(filePath);
    });
}
static shareWithAndroid(fileUrl, type) {
  let filePath = null;
  let file_url_length = fileUrl.length;
  const configOptions = { fileCache: true };
  RNFetchBlob.config(configOptions)
    .fetch('GET', fileUrl)
    .then(resp => {
      filePath = resp.path();
      return resp.readFile('base64');
    })
    .then(async base64Data => {
      base64Data = `data:${type};base64,` + base64Data;
      await Share.open({ url: base64Data });
      // remove the image or pdf from device's storage
      await RNFS.unlink(filePath);
    });
}