I have an sandboxed OS X app that is capable to open files through Finder services and the "Open with…" option from contextual menus. I have made another sandboxed app that should send compatible files to the first app.
How can I perform an "Open with" action programmatically? I could use a service interaction too. Is that even possible? I guess I could register an URL Scheme in my first app but I'd prefer not having to release an update if everything can be done on sender app
Thx
If you just want to open a normal file, then take a look at
[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openFile:#"/path/to/file" withApplication:#"YourApp"];
You can find it here in the documentation.
Related
I am working on a project where I need to call methods on an existing application (my own) and use some of its functionality. For e.g. my application ThunderBolt runs on Mac OS X 10.10. It also provides a dictionary of events that can be called externally through Apple Script or some other way that I don't know yet.
My question is what are the different (and better) ways of interacting with an application programmatically on Mac OSX? If I use something like the following code in Apple Script Editor:
tell application "ThunderBolt"
set open_file to (choose file with prompt "Choose the file you wish to parse")
set theContents to read open_file as data
set retPict to (image convert theContents)
end tell
then it is going to launch ThunderBolt with a splash screen and then call "image convert". This can be done via NSAppleScript but still it would launch the application and call methods/events on it.
Is it possible to somehow create an instance of (or get a pointer to) one of the class inside the application and use that? Something similar to COM or automation on a Windows system?
If you're working on OS X 10.10, you might consider taking a look at JavaScript for Automation (JXA).
With it you can apparently build methods into your app that can be invoked from client scripts written in JS (although I'm not yet familiar with the particulars of how to handle implementation of such a thing on the app side). But many of the apps that ship as part of OS X Yosemite have such APIs built in (e.g. iTunes and Finder).
Here's a great tutorial on JXA written by Alex Guyot: http://www.macstories.net/tutorials/getting-started-with-javascript-for-automation-on-yosemite/
The JXA-Cookbook repo also appears to be a nice resource: https://github.com/dtinth/JXA-Cookbook/wiki
Here's a brief example - this script makes iTunes go back one track. Try it while iTunes is playing (by putting the text into Script Editor, with the language option set to JavaScript, and hitting the Run button):
iTunes = Application('iTunes')
state = iTunes.playerState()
// Console msgs show up in the Messages tab of the bottom view:
console.log("playerState: " + state)
iTunes.backTrack()
Alternatively, you can place the code into a .js file and run it on the command line:
$ osascript itunes-backTrack.js
playerState: playing
The way you specify the 'tell application' is the best way, in my opinion.
What do you do with your app that needs to be called? Maybe some of the functionalities can be done with Applescript? It would simplify things a lot.
I have a desktop application running on OS X and Windows. I'd like users to be able to buy iTunes content from within the app, and I'd like to earn via the affiliate program.
Is this allowed, and if so, how do I do it? The documentation states:
The use of the affiliate program inside apps is perfectly acceptable
and in fact encouraged behavior for app developers.
but it's not clear if this only applies to iOS apps, or desktop apps, too. Furthermore, I don't know how to pull it of in practice: It seems I am supposed to open a certain URL*. I believe on iOS, this is intercepted, and the user is taken to the App Store. On OS X (or Windows), it seems that this would flash a browser window before opening iTunes, which I'd like to avoid. I'd like to directly open iTunes with the purchase option. Or do I have to embed a browser frame in my app and use some kind of web interface?
*) There is some redirecting, and I can improve the user experience with 'short links', or by handling the redirection manually in the background, but in the end there is always an openURL call.
www.apple.com/itunes/affiliates/
the program applies to most content types, links can be on a website or within an app. essentially anywhere a iTunes store is: Mac: iTunes and Mac App Store. and on iOS: app store, itunes store and iBookstore. and Win: Itunes Store.
I have developed a mac application without using sandbox.
now i want to send it to the mac appSore, i buy my certificate, all is good.
I read this: Apple doc and in xcode i set the user selected file,music folder... to read/write access.
My application let the user chose from a folder any type of file, do some treatment and let the user chose where to save the new file.
To chose files, user can open folder with NSOpenPanel or with the open with functionality or drag-and-drop files.
Also the application can delete files.
I dont know if there's other things to do to sandbox the application (or a tool to test if it is sandboxed)
I come from ios this is why i'm asking :)
You can look in the Console when the application is running to view if sandboxd or pboxd logs messages referring to your application.
The format is: sandboxd[53037] ([53035]): AppName(53035)
I don't know if there are other processes who may log sandbox violation, but you can see them, if they are referring to your application.
Apps in OS X that can open files to launch their respective applications often let the user choose the app that'll open the file. An example is the Finder.
I am still unclear about what's the best solution to implement this. The challenges are performance and showing the app's icon.
First, to get the list of apps, I found only LSCopyApplicationURLsForURL().
The major difficulty for me now is to get the app icons. All I have is the URLs (paths) to the apps. The only way I know of to get the icons would be to create a CFBundle object and then read the app's plist to get the icon data. But that appears to invole lots of disk access, and I could imagine it'll be quite inefficient if the app is located on a remote file server.
I believe that there's also a cached database about the apps, which includes icons and display names (without extension), and such. But where is the API for that?
Note: The app is Carbon based, but I can make use of Cocoa (NS...) functions if necessary. Also, Support for 10.5, even 10.4, would be appreciated.
Alright. I solved it eventually.
I now use the Carbon function GetIconRefFromFileInfo(), which still works in Lion, though it's marked deprecated/obsolete.
I had also tried to use QLThumbnailImageCreate(), but that didn't get me any results, oddly. No idea what I did wrong.
For Cocoa apps, [[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] iconForFile:path] can be used (thanks to C. Grunenberg of DevonTechnologies for this tip, where it's used with EasyFind).
I'm searching for a solution to do File icon overlays (icon badging) (like Dropbox does it on mac) with cocoa on Mac.
Does anyone knows a way to do this?
I've searched the Xcode docs and looked into scpplugins source code which is kind of old carbon code.
A litte bit late, but maybe will be help someone.
I solved same problem with class NSWorkspace (see setIcon:forFile:options)
Basic idea:
Try to get preview of file with QLThumbnailImageCreate (if not NULL you will get thumbnail icon)
If you didn't get thumbnail, then get default OS X icon for file (NSWorkspace iconForFile)
Combine thumbnail (or default icon) with your badge
Set new icon to the file (NSWorkspace setIcon:forFile:options)
Since the Finder was reworked in Snow Leopard, the older Carbon methods will no longer work. The route I've taken to be able to badge icons in Finder involves writing a custom bundle which then needs to be injected into the Finder.
Look into Wolf Rentzsch's mach_inject (https://github.com/rentzsch/mach_star/tree/master/mach_inject) to be able to inject a custom bundle to a Cocoa application.
Use class-dump to be able to get a look into the header files of a Cocoa application (such as the Finder in Snow Leopard and Lion) to get an idea of what you will need to override in your own bundle.
I know this is an old question.
In recent time there is a library that implement this functionality: https://github.com/liferay/liferay-nativity.
NSDockTile makes this very simple:
NSDockTile *dockTile = [NSApp dockTile];
[dockTile setBadgeLabel:#"33"];
You can use the following two methods to have icon overlay over the folders/files.
You can use -setIcon:forFile:options: method on NSWorkspace if you want to change the icon of a file or folder in Mac OS X.
However after you apply icon overlay using this method, overlay exits even though you moved that file/folder outside. This may not be the exact solution.
Instead use the Finder Sync Extension target (File - New - Target - Finder Sync Extension) inside your app.
Once you created the extension, your application doesn't have direct communication with this target. In order to activate, use AppleScript command (I don't think there is a better alternative for this.)
To activate
NSString *pluginPath = [[[NSBundle mainBundle] builtInPlugInsPath] stringByAppendingPathComponent:#"yourextension.appex"];
NSString *pluginkitString = [NSString stringWithFormat:#"pluginkit -e use -a \"%#\"", pluginPath];
system([pluginkitString cStringUsingEncoding:NSUTF8StringEncoding]);
Once target activated, there are couple of ways were our application can communicate with that extension. Few of them are:
Using NSDistributedNotificationCenter. This class provides a way to send notifications to objects in other tasks(like the extension here).
Other way is to use:
[[NSUserDefaults alloc] initWithSuiteName:#"teamid.com.company.test"];
Both your application and the target should have common group identifier(i.e "teamid.com.company.test").
For this enable "App Groups" under Target - Capabilities - App Groups and give the identifier like the above (i.e"teamid.com.company.test") were teamid is the id that you will get it from your apple developer portal. Do the same steps for your Extension target as well.
Before to conclude, be sure that extension is activated or not. To check that go to System Preference - Extensions - Your App Finder.
This is the global point were user can enable/disable icon overlay for your application.