Let's say I'm writing a eBook reader for Windows Phone 7. Now the first thing that the user will need to do is add some books to his device, and since I don't offer a online book store or similar service, the only option is file transfer from his PC to the phone. Is he able to do this, how? Then how do I access this file. Can this file be placed in Isolated Storage of my app? I was searching around and didn't find any solution, in fact I believe that similar scenario is currently impossible but I just wanted to hear your toughs on the problem and probably some workaround ideas.
+1
A:
Would you not be able to download the ebooks using some kind of webservice/http?
(Obviously you'll need a website, somewhere for this)
Dave
2010-10-20 15:50:16
Downloading the books from a website/webservice is the obvious solution here, but I'm afraid that this will complicate the process for the end user, because it will be two steps process and will need a registration.
Petar Slavov
2010-10-20 19:50:29
Dave
2010-10-20 21:57:13
I think this is a good model if you are providing the book material. If the user is providing the material and you want a way to get it onto the phone then yes, this has the added effort of maintaing storage on behalf of the user uploading to your service and downloading to their phone. The account management side of it potentially could be resolved fairly simply. There's a number of approaches for tackling that. You could just do it based on their email address and a password for example. Much like unregistered stack overflow users.
Mick N
2010-10-21 00:06:00
You can also do what Dave said re regos by using the device id or anonymous user id.
Mick N
2010-10-21 01:29:09
+2
A:
I haven't seen any way to add files from the desktop the phone is connected to. However, you can build your own software for the desktop that uses a WCF service and allows connections from the phone. The phone can download files from the desktop WCF service. See a similar concept here, you can implement the concept discussed in the post the other way round.
HTH, indyfromoz
indyfromoz
2010-10-20 18:56:58
This is one of the things that I'm thinking about, but it also has some drawbacks, it will need a second install on the desktop which should be downloaded separately and since I'm a .net developer, it will definitely need .Net framework. There are probably also some security restrictions that I don't know about.
Petar Slavov
2010-10-20 19:57:26
I was also wondering how similar problems are solved on the iPhone?
Petar Slavov
2010-10-20 19:58:18
I am using an application called GoodReader on my iPad (also available on the iPhone). It is used to copy PDFs and other media to the iPad through iTunes. iTunes provides applications with the ability to copy data from the desktop to the device, I do not think Zune allows that. If you can't scope for copying files from desktop software or not have any form connectivity with an online service, I am not sure how else you can copy eBooks to the Windows Phone.
indyfromoz
2010-10-20 20:20:17
Hi Petar, I'd have suggested a similar approach. Rather than create a competing answer with much the same info, I'll build on the good base already started here by Indy. Here's a link to a file upload/download client implemented in WCF that I tried out during CTP. It may need a little work to migrate to RTM as there were a few breaking changes. Alternatively, you could just get some ideas from the source in combination with Joel's blog post. Here's the link: http://rongchaua.net/blog/windows-phone-phone-pc-connector-through-wcf-service/
Mick N
2010-10-21 00:02:05