I'm building an app in Obj-C / Xcode and I'm running into some repetitive tasks. For example if I want to add an image resource to my project I just go through the same identical steps... only difference is the path to the resource.
How can I automate these tasks?
Is there some sort of Xcode macro-recorder like in Photoshop and Excel?
There's definitely no macro recorder, but there are some tools you can use. First, there's Applescript, which is the most likely to be of use for this particular problem. I'm not promising it'll be easy, however. There isn't a rich collection of Applescripts for Xcode that I know of, so you'd need to dig through the Scripting Suite using Script Editor and see what's available.
For text things, there are User Scripts, which you can create from the script menu (it looks like a scroll). You can write perl, python, ruby, or whatever you like to process selected text and turn it into other text.
You can also create text macros (Edit>Insert Text Macro).
Another major repetitive task is setting up your initial project. For that you can create new project templates to be set up as you like them. I have most of a walkthrough of that written up, and should have something posted on Cocoaphony this week or early next as part of my Building the Build System series.
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I'm creating a RN app that is meant to be some kind of wrapper. It should have multiple targets (like in Xcode) and all its content (images, text, etc.) should be target dependent. Unfortunately, I cannot find any useful informations about how to achieve this without opening Xcode or Android Studio project and create those targets manually (like here). Is there any other solutions for this?
I was still struggling with described problem but I finally found a solution. It's not easy, needs writing a bit of boilerplate code and looks more like a workaround but I hope it will help someone in the future. What I did is I have completed my wrapper app with the resources for one of my targets so I can have visual effect. In the project's root directory I've created a folder with subfolders for each target. Inside each I have put files (images, source code files, other assets) that are target-dependent. Then I've created bash script that takes one argument - target's name. Based on it, it replaces all the target-dependent files from target's subfolder to the original file's destination in the project structure. In this proces all meta-data informations are also replaced so after firing .sh file I can build the app and upload it to both stores. It's really time consuming to create all these apps separately and publish them and it's maybe not the best solution, but at least it works!
On android, you can edit build.gradle files, java or properties, without having to launch Android Studio (which simply uses Gradle)
You can build different type flavours by only changing app/build.gradle
On iOS, that's another story. Project file (.pbxproj) is a mess,and other Workspace/Scheme files are not easy to read or script. So XCode is the way to Go.
I tried to have dynamic target & Info.plist, there are tools to script that like PlistBuddy
in the end, I saw there are many ways to launch a React Native app for developpers. Some prefer the command line, and only VSCode.
Others want to play with native IDE.
By the way, native IDEs are VERY useful.
e.g. : you want to fine-tune your application performance, using XCode view hierarchy debugger or android Studio Layout Inspector (and be sure you don't use to many views), or use any other performance tools these IDEs offer...
In the end, I used react-native-config along with multiple almost similar configs (Info.plist < target < Scheme for each), here's a post giving an overview of the setup.
I am writing an app using applescriptobjc in xcode, and while making the archive I see the source code is still inside the package, is there a way to hide it or transform it completely to binary code?
Thanks
I may be a year late to the discussion but I asked the same question around the same time as you did last year and hope that the answer I got will satisfy your own question. Here is an extract answer from
my own question:
When you save the AppleScript file you have the option of checking "Run Only" - in that case the script is compiled into a new form that can be run exactly as the original script, but it is not meant for further editing/development.
It doesn't mean that the run-only file is complete protected or non-readable, but parts of your code, comments, etc. are not included or not easily readable.
If you want to do more you'll need a code obfuscator if you still want to use AppleScript - however I'm not sure if one exists on the market, or you need to develop your own.
As you can see, a simple way to do this is:
Open your final AppDelegate.applescript file in Script Editor on the mac.
Select: File > Export...
2.1. Don't change the file name but override the archive file
2.2. BEFORE SAVING: Choose Run-only checkbox from the save options but leave the File Format as Script
Now your file cannot be opened in plain text as it is set to Run-only. Please remember that it is not a 100% read-proof solution, but works great for small projects (provided you are not rushing the final export and don't forget to perform the above mentioned steps before handing it over to the customer).
I hope you can make the most of this answer and still deem it useful. Let me know how you get on or whether you have any more questions. Perhaps you have since found a far better solution (or just an alternative), if so, I am still looking for the next best thing in source code protection.
In Xcode 9.2. (and maybe earlier versions) you can find under Build Settings the item OSACompile and can choose to compile to an executable only directly from Xcode.
My friends are losing points in their computer science classes because their submission graders decompress and read zip files, which are obfuscated by a bunch of Apple metadata crap generated from zipping a file through the right-click contextual menu in Finder.
I've written a bash script to zip only unhidden files from a specific directory, and I've added a contextual menu service through Automator so this script can be run from right clicking a file.
The problem is I don't want to manually copy over all this stuff and make Automations on each computer my friends use. I'd like to leverage make or some similar utility to make an executable that will add the bash file and automator menu service to any computer the executable is opened from.
I'm lightly familiar with make (more familiar with rake), but I can't find out how to package the automator service and install it on their machine through an executable.
You'll want to package your automator application and script(s) into an Installer Package (.pkg). The best way to achieve this is to understand some general concepts, the commands to build one, and by checking out some tutorials or other relevant information.
I recommend for creating your first Installer Package using a utility
such as Packages (open-source and free), which has excellent
documentation, and is less complicated than using the command
line tools. Basically it puts a nice gui around the Apple tools which
are somewhat nonintutive by themselves.
Building Installer Packages is not the easiest thing to do your first time, and it might take a bit of patience to finally get it right. Once you've successfully created one you should have a good grasp on what is involved in putting them together along with the concept behind it all. At the very least, this information hopefully points you in the right direction regarding your question, and/or gives you a better idea of how to accomplish what you want to do.
I recently automated the creation of Powerpoint Presentations in a site I'm making. I found the Office Interop libraries extremely simple to use.
Office isn't built for this kind of thing in a webserver environment, so I'm looking at creating the Powerpoints using Open Office XML, only it's so extremely complex. For example I downloaded some code to create a blank presentation with some text. This code was around 300 lines! Using the Office Interop libraries I could do the same thing in just a couple of lines of code.
I don't have time, nor do I want to attempt to learn how to interact with the Open Office XML libraries, so I'm hoping someone has made a wrapper for the Open Office XML libraries. So far all my searching has only given me one result, Aspose Slides for .NET. This looks really hopeful, but it also looks rather expensive
Has anyone ever used a decent wrapper or alternative before?
If you are looking at automating the creation of Powerpoint presentation files, I'd say you continue with OpenXML, there's nothing better than it. Everything else is either paid or don't offer entire gamut of functionality that Open XML can provide.
If you find creating a blank file tedious, you could save an empty file somewhere and use that as a template for performing further operations on it.
The only thing close to a wrapper for PowerPoint I've found is the Open XML PowerTools. It includes a PresentationBuilder class which can be used for some specific tasks like combining slides from multiple PowerPoint documents into a new document. Although its pretty limited in its functionality you could extend the class.
However, I've come to the conclusion that there just is not a good wrapper out there so I've had to do what everybody pretty much recommends and that is using the Open XML SDK Productivity Tool and the Reflect code button.
I put together a basic presentation then Reflect Code and put that into a class. Yes its a lot of lines of code and its not the most elegant solution but it does work. Then from there I can extend or modify that class to do the specific things I need to do with each slide. The Productivity Tool is a big help for figuring out the code need to do specific things. I try to keep it simple and just do one or two things at a time, Reflect Code, then look at the code to see what it does.
You could try SoftArtisans PowerPointWriter, it has a template mode that allows you to start with an existing PowerPoint file with a few place holders, and merge your data with your presentation with as little as 5 lines of code.
Disclaimer: I work for SoftArtisans
How can I edit info.plist file of xcode project? I have tried searching a lot but nothing specific.
An info.plist file can be considered 2 ways. One, it's just a specially formatted text file so thinking that way you can manipulate the text directly. Applescript can read text files, manipulate text, and write text files. Two, it's a basic xml file formatted with apple's tags to create a "plist" file. So you could use xml tools on the file as well. System Events has xml tools. There's also a unix command line program called "defaults" that can work on them as well.
So there's several tools. You need to think about what you want to do, how complicated the task is, and then decide which tool will best fit your requirements.
After you figure out those basics, try some things and come back and ask specific questions.