Re: Talking to other apps - again
I'm surprised IPC still sucks so badly. I haven't used XPC, but I thought it was a general-purpose solution for messaging between apps, not just for communicating with your app's own helper processes. I was just doing some reading about it actually to see what it’s all about. If you get down to the xpc manpages (after all there’s a C-API down there somewhere) it is a generic IPC solution with the one caveat that you can’t register a dynamic listener, seems that only launchd is allowed to do that, for security reasons (and you can tell if something was started from /Library/LaunchDaemons or not). So basically you can talk to services listed in the LaunchAgents/Daemons list or you can connect to services in your own bundle which will be started for you. The proposed way to have two apps talk to each other is have them each register with such a running XPC service, under I guess some well-known name. Then app B queries the XPC service for app A’s XPC service it just registered and talks to it that way. What I don’t quite get about that is what kind XPC service you need? I would expect that if you bundled it inside each app, even under the exact same name and UUID and bundle ID etc, then XPC is going to launch a per-app version of the service, which would be useless, unless there’s a way to tell XPC please just make one and share it in some way which is secure. Otherwise you need to install a real one in LaunchAgents so it’s per-user. That then means I guess that anyone could technically talk to it and start shouting at your app and it would be a pain to install it too. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps - again
On 6 Aug 2014, at 12:30, Roland King r...@rols.org wrote: What happened to the suggestions of using a domain socket or a directory both apps can read to do this? One thing at a time. This might be Step 3 or 4. First I have to investigate Step 1 (maybe a dead end) and Step 2. Kind regards, Gerriet. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps - again
On 6 Aug 2014, at 12:30, Roland King r...@rols.org wrote: On 6 Aug 2014, at 1:06 pm, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: Step 1: Use XPC. Is there some other way to make this work? Or should I just forget about XPC? I’d forget about XPC, it’s not for sending data between two primary apps, it’s for offloading tasks to helper apps. Yes, I finally did come to the same conclusion. NSXPCListener can get an NSXPCListenerEndpoint, which is an endpoint object that may be sent over an existing connection. And NSXPCConnection has initWithListenerEndpoint: which Initializes an NSXPCConnection object to connect to an NSXPCListener object in another process, identified by an NSXPCListenerEndpoint object. Might this be a way to make it work (no idea how to get the NSXPCListenerEndpoint from B to A yet). The documentation for NSXPCListenerEndpoint is somewhat terse. But it does NSSecureCoding. In order to get the endpoint from B to A you need a connection, so you have a chicken and egg problem. I thought: take the endpoint of B, archive it, put it on a pasteboard and let A read it. (Not for real, just for testing). But I got told:This class may only be encoded by an NSXPCCoder. This was the final straw. So: no more about XPC. Kind regards, Gerriet. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps - again
On 6 Aug 2014, at 12:46, Jens Alfke j...@mooseyard.com wrote:
On Aug 5, 2014, at 10:06 PM, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de
wrote:
Scripting Bridge SBObject has a sendEvent:id:parameters:. Not sure I want to
use this.
It seems like your best bet, actually.
You are right. I just gave up on using raw Apple Events.
The typical route is that you implement scriptability in the target app,
including the terminology file that describes what commands and objects it
handles,
App B got an sdef already. B, by the way, is NOT document based.
Apple Script Editor can do:
tell application B
get version
end tell
Now the app delegate, called BeDelegate, has a property
@property (readonly) NSString *babbel;
implemented as:
- (NSString *)babbel { return @Bibbel; }
But how to write an apple script to get this magic Bibbel-string? And how to
write the sdef to make this possible?
And what else does my BeDelegate has to implement?
You see, I am absolutely clueless.
Kind regards,
Gerriet.
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Re: Talking to other apps - again
AppleScript can be a royal PITA with the syntax differences. You might want to
read up on ASOC, AppleScript Objective-C. Shane Stanley has written a load on
that (books too) and there is an ASOC dev mailing list that he frequents.
Mailing list:
ASObjC applescriptobjc-...@lists.apple.com
URL:
http://www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/apps/
By the way, if you do want to check out XPC, there is a good tutorial on
objc.io here:
http://www.objc.io/issue-14/xpc.html
Good luck,
Alex Zavatone
On Aug 6, 2014, at 10:41 AM, Gerriet M. Denkmann wrote:
On 6 Aug 2014, at 12:46, Jens Alfke j...@mooseyard.com wrote:
On Aug 5, 2014, at 10:06 PM, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de
wrote:
Scripting Bridge SBObject has a sendEvent:id:parameters:. Not sure I want
to use this.
It seems like your best bet, actually.
You are right. I just gave up on using raw Apple Events.
The typical route is that you implement scriptability in the target app,
including the terminology file that describes what commands and objects it
handles,
App B got an sdef already. B, by the way, is NOT document based.
Apple Script Editor can do:
tell application B
get version
end tell
Now the app delegate, called BeDelegate, has a property
@property (readonly) NSString *babbel;
implemented as:
- (NSString *)babbel { return @Bibbel; }
But how to write an apple script to get this magic Bibbel-string? And how to
write the sdef to make this possible?
And what else does my BeDelegate has to implement?
You see, I am absolutely clueless.
Kind regards,
Gerriet.
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Re: Talking to other apps - again
On 6 Aug 2014, at 22:05, Alex Zavatone z...@mac.com wrote: By the way, if you do want to check out XPC, there is a good tutorial on objc.io here: http://www.objc.io/issue-14/xpc.html Very interesting. Thanks for the link! A quote: Let’s say we have two apps, and we would like them to be able to communicate with each other over XPC. Each app doesn’t know what the other app is. But they both know about a (shared) launch agent. Both apps can connect to the launch agent. App A creates a so-called anonymous listener that it listens on, and sends a so-called endpoint to that anonymous listener over XPC to the launch agent. App B then retrieves that endpoint over XPC from the launch agent. At this point, App B can connect directly to the anonymous listener, i.e. App A. So XPC can be used for two apps to talk after all. It only is rather more complicated than I thought. Kind regards, Gerriet. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps - again
Which is what I outlined some hours ago in a post on this thread. On 6 Aug 2014, at 11:43 pm, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: On 6 Aug 2014, at 22:05, Alex Zavatone z...@mac.com wrote: By the way, if you do want to check out XPC, there is a good tutorial on objc.io here: http://www.objc.io/issue-14/xpc.html Very interesting. Thanks for the link! A quote: Let’s say we have two apps, and we would like them to be able to communicate with each other over XPC. Each app doesn’t know what the other app is. But they both know about a (shared) launch agent. Both apps can connect to the launch agent. App A creates a so-called anonymous listener that it listens on, and sends a so-called endpoint to that anonymous listener over XPC to the launch agent. App B then retrieves that endpoint over XPC from the launch agent. At this point, App B can connect directly to the anonymous listener, i.e. App A. So XPC can be used for two apps to talk after all. It only is rather more complicated than I thought. Kind regards, Gerriet. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps - again
On 7 Aug 2014, at 12:41 am, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: Apple Script Editor can do: tell application B get version end tell And so can your app. Add AppleScriptObjC.framework to your target, and add this to main.m: [[NSBundle mainBundle] loadAppleScriptObjectiveCScripts]; Add a new file (choose Empty) to the project, call it SomeName.applescript, and in it add: script SomeName property parent : class NSObject on appVersion() tell application B set theVers to version end tell return theVers end appVersion end script Now add an informal protocol to your calling class that includes: - (NSString *)appVersion And you can call it something like: NSString *version = [NSClassFromString(@SomeName) appVersion]; There are a few things to watch: you should only pass objects, and the bridge only converts NSStrings/text, NSNumbers/reals/integers, NSArrays/lists and NSDictionaries/records. And if you pass variables to the script, it needs to coerce them to their AppleScript equivalents. For one or two commands, ScriptingBridge might be easier. But for more complex stuff, ASObjC avoids the whole hassle of building and maintaining the app header file, and can do some stuff more efficiently than SBApplication et al can. -- Shane Stanley sstan...@myriad-com.com.au www.macosxautomation.com/applescript/apps/ ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps - again
On 6 Aug 2014, at 1:06 pm, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: Step 1: Use XPC. Is there some other way to make this work? Or should I just forget about XPC? I’d forget about XPC, it’s not for sending data between two primary apps, it’s for offloading tasks to helper apps. NSXPCListener can get an NSXPCListenerEndpoint, which is an endpoint object that may be sent over an existing connection. And NSXPCConnection has initWithListenerEndpoint: which Initializes an NSXPCConnection object to connect to an NSXPCListener object in another process, identified by an NSXPCListenerEndpoint object. Might this be a way to make it work (no idea how to get the NSXPCListenerEndpoint from B to A yet). The documentation for NSXPCListenerEndpoint is somewhat terse. But it does NSSecureCoding. In order to get the endpoint from B to A you need a connection, so you have a chicken and egg problem. There’s some discussion I’ve seen about creating a helper service which exists just to pass the connection from one app to the other but the last time I read that discussion it seemed fraught with pain. Step 2: Use Apple Events. Know nothing about Apple Events. What happened to the suggestions of using a domain socket or a directory both apps can read to do this? Gerriet. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/rols%40rols.org This email sent to r...@rols.org ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps - again
On Aug 5, 2014, at 10:06 PM, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: Scripting Bridge SBObject has a sendEvent:id:parameters:. Not sure I want to use this. It seems like your best bet, actually. The typical route is that you implement scriptability in the target app, including the terminology file that describes what commands and objects it handles, and then you can have the scripting bridge tool generate a header for that app, which declares a subclass of SBApplication that has methods corresponding to the app's scriptable commands. But under the hood, those methods just turn into calls to sendEvent:id:parameters. I'm surprised IPC still sucks so badly. I haven't used XPC, but I thought it was a general-purpose solution for messaging between apps, not just for communicating with your app's own helper processes. —Jens ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On 2014 Aug 03, at 23:54, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: NSPerformService (which also has the feel of not being well-loved), XPC, or what else? Yes. Start by looking at XPC. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
Why would you not use NSNotificationCenter for this? On 4 Aug 2014, at 15:51, Jerry Krinock je...@ieee.org wrote: On 2014 Aug 03, at 23:54, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: NSPerformService (which also has the feel of not being well-loved), XPC, or what else? Yes. Start by looking at XPC. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/45rpmlists%40googlemail.com This email sent to 45rpmli...@googlemail.com ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On Aug 4, 2014, at 7:55 AM, Pax 45rpmli...@googlemail.com wrote: Why would you not use NSNotificationCenter for this? Because that doesn’t do IPC. And NSDistributedNotificationCenter is severely restricted in sandboxed apps. --Kyle Sluder ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On Aug 3, 2014, at 11:54 PM, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: My app wants to talk to some app-friend. Like sending a string and getting another string back. Or something slightly more complicated. AppleEvents is the traditional mechanism for inter-app messaging. —Jens ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
When you say app-friend, what do you mean? Another application? An XPC service? Some other kind of service? If your App is sandboxed and the service is not an xpc service embedded in your application then I think your pretty much out of luck. Kevin On 4 Aug 2014, at 07:54, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: My app wants to talk to some app-friend. Like sending a string and getting another string back. Or something slightly more complicated. In the good old days I would have used Distributed Objects, but this seems to be no longer the fashion. Xcode 6 does not provide any documentation about this (or I can't find it). So, what to do? NSPerformService (which also has the feel of not being well-loved), XPC, or what else? Gerriet. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/ktam%40yvs.eu.com This email sent to k...@yvs.eu.com ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On 4 Aug 2014, at 22:57, Kevin Meaney k...@yvs.eu.com wrote: When you say app-friend, what do you mean? Another application? An XPC service? Some other kind of service? I mean two apps, which are both written (and thus can be modified) by me. I really should have mentioned this in my original post. Sorry about this. If your App is sandboxed and the service is not an xpc service embedded in your application then I think your pretty much out of luck. Kevin On 4 Aug 2014, at 07:54, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: My app wants to talk to some app-friend. Like sending a string and getting another string back. Or something slightly more complicated. In the good old days I would have used Distributed Objects, but this seems to be no longer the fashion. Xcode 6 does not provide any documentation about this (or I can't find it). So, what to do? NSPerformService (which also has the feel of not being well-loved), XPC, or what else? Gerriet. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On Aug 4, 2014, at 11:23 AM, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: I mean two apps, which are both written (and thus can be modified) by me. I really should have mentioned this in my original post. Sorry about this. Showing my age here, but as an old UNIX troll, and assuming the apps are not sandboxed, I'd just use domain sockets. https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man4/unix.4.html -- Scott Ribe scott_r...@elevated-dev.com http://www.elevated-dev.com/ (303) 722-0567 voice ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On 04 Aug 2014, at 08:54, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: My app wants to talk to some app-friend. Like sending a string and getting another string back. Or something slightly more complicated. I don't think there's a good way to do this if you're sandboxed. But as a last-ditch-workaround you could look into abusing NSUserDefaults if it's simple communication of tiny bobs of data. You can have a domain that is shared by two apps from the same manufacturer. Cheers, -- Uli Kusterer The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere... http://www.zathras.de ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On Aug 4, 2014, at 11:47 AM, Uli Kusterer witness.of.teacht...@gmx.net wrote: You can have a domain that is shared by two apps from the same manufacturer. Careful, I've had lots of problems with that--changes to defaults not being saved when you synch, and so forth. -- Scott Ribe scott_r...@elevated-dev.com http://www.elevated-dev.com/ (303) 722-0567 voice ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On Aug 4, 2014, at 10:41 AM, Scott Ribe scott_r...@elevated-dev.com wrote: Showing my age here, but as an old UNIX troll, and assuming the apps are not sandboxed, I'd just use domain sockets. https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man4/unix.4.html I have done this, and it’s surprisingly painful. I’d never do it again. _Using_ the sockets is pretty easy (assuming you enjoy implementing framing protocols). The hard part is that you have to have a pseudo-file, located in the filesystem, to represent a Unix-domain socket. So you have to find a hidden place to create this ‘file’ with a randomly-chosen name (unless you don’t care about DoS attacks), give it the proper permissions, somehow transmit knowledge of that location to the other app, and clean it up when you’re done. Doing this instead of using XPC or AppleEvents is like carving your own wheel out of stone instead of just going to a store and buying one. —Jens ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
If you want to go down the sockets path, there are clear examples on using NSStream, sockets and Bonjour to send info between apps that are on the same Mac. Check out the PictureSharing sample and other NSStream samples that are included in the Xcode help. All I had to do to get this to work was to change the name of the folder that specified the pictures transmitted and pictures directory on lines 163 and 173 in ServerAppDelegate.m file. The project is a 2 app workspace that sends a picture from one app to another on the same Mac. It might be overkill, but it does the trick. Hope this helps, Alex Zavatone On Aug 4, 2014, at 1:41 PM, Scott Ribe wrote: On Aug 4, 2014, at 11:23 AM, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: I mean two apps, which are both written (and thus can be modified) by me. I really should have mentioned this in my original post. Sorry about this. Showing my age here, but as an old UNIX troll, and assuming the apps are not sandboxed, I'd just use domain sockets. https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Darwin/Reference/Manpages/man4/unix.4.html -- Scott Ribe scott_r...@elevated-dev.com http://www.elevated-dev.com/ (303) 722-0567 voice ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/zav%40mac.com This email sent to z...@mac.com ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On Aug 4, 2014, at 11:02 AM, Alex Zavatone z...@mac.com wrote: If you want to go down the sockets path, there are clear examples on using NSStream, sockets and Bonjour to send info between apps that are on the same Mac. Check out the PictureSharing sample and other NSStream samples that are included in the Xcode help. If you do this you’ve created a networked app, whether you need that functionality or not. With that come lots of extra security concerns — do you want anyone in the world to be able to anonymously send you pictures? Are you 100% certain your stream code is robust against bad data and won’t crash or overwrite memory or allow access to arbitrary local files? Also, by using Bonjour you’re now actively advertising your app’s presence to the LAN you’re on, making it very easy for anyone nearby to find and connect to. You can mitigate this by binding your listener socket to only the loopback interface (127.0.0.1) which will prevent external connections. Of course you’re still advertising a service to the LAN that no one else can connect to, which seems pointless, but I don’t think there’s any way to restrict Bonjour services to localhost. —Jens ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On 04.08.2014, at 19:51, Scott Ribe scott_r...@elevated-dev.com wrote: On Aug 4, 2014, at 11:47 AM, Uli Kusterer witness.of.teacht...@gmx.net wrote: You can have a domain that is shared by two apps from the same manufacturer. Careful, I've had lots of problems with that--changes to defaults not being saved when you synch, and so forth. What OS version was that with? It's definitely not easy in the old Prefs mechanism, but it should have improved a lot with the new prefs in 10.9 (or was it already in 10.8?) Well, basically there's now a central prefs server, so those caching issues should be less of a problem. That said, I've so far been lucky enough to not have to ship IAC in sandboxed apps, so I defer to anyone who has a more recent and deeper experience. Cheers, -- Uli Kusterer The Witnesses of TeachText are everywhere... http://www.zathras.de ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On Aug 4, 2014, at 2:23 PM, Uli Kusterer witness.of.teacht...@gmx.net wrote: What OS version was that with? It's definitely not easy in the old Prefs mechanism, but it should have improved a lot with the new prefs in 10.9 (or was it already in 10.8?) Well, basically there's now a central prefs server, so those caching issues should be less of a problem. 10.6? 10.7? It was unreliable enough that I gave up long ago, before 10.8 10.9. So it may very well work just fine if you don't need to support older OS versions. -- Scott Ribe scott_r...@elevated-dev.com http://www.elevated-dev.com/ (303) 722-0567 voice ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On Mon, Aug 4, 2014, at 03:23 PM, Uli Kusterer wrote: On 04.08.2014, at 19:51, Scott Ribe scott_r...@elevated-dev.com wrote: On Aug 4, 2014, at 11:47 AM, Uli Kusterer witness.of.teacht...@gmx.net wrote: You can have a domain that is shared by two apps from the same manufacturer. Careful, I've had lots of problems with that--changes to defaults not being saved when you synch, and so forth. What OS version was that with? It's definitely not easy in the old Prefs mechanism, but it should have improved a lot with the new prefs in 10.9 (or was it already in 10.8?) Well, basically there's now a central prefs server, so those caching issues should be less of a problem. Please don't do this. David might have a heart attack if he has to maintain compatibility with more apps that do this kind of stuff. --Kyle Sluder ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On Mon, Aug 4, 2014, at 04:17 PM, Uli Kusterer wrote: Well, what other communication mechanisms are there for talking between sandboxed apps ... ? I *did* call it a last-ditch thing. XPC and Apple Events (as long as your sdef uses access groups). --Kyle Sluder ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On 4 Aug 2014, at 22:49, Kyle Sluder k...@ksluder.com wrote: On Mon, Aug 4, 2014, at 04:17 PM, Uli Kusterer wrote: Well, what other communication mechanisms are there for talking between sandboxed apps ... ? I *did* call it a last-ditch thing. XPC and Apple Events (as long as your sdef uses access groups). There has been some discussion on the xpc forum in Core OS on devforums about inter application communication. I new I'd seen it somewhere. https://devforums.apple.com/community/mac/coreos/xpc The thread Can I use NSXPCConnection between two desktop apps? I think is most relevant as there is some discussion of different options. Kevin ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
Re: Talking to other apps
On 4 Aug 2014, at 2:54 pm, Gerriet M. Denkmann gerr...@mdenkmann.de wrote: My app wants to talk to some app-friend. Like sending a string and getting another string back. Or something slightly more complicated. In the good old days I would have used Distributed Objects, but this seems to be no longer the fashion. Xcode 6 does not provide any documentation about this (or I can't find it). So, what to do? NSPerformService (which also has the feel of not being well-loved), XPC, or what else? Gerriet. It’s odd how it’s easier to get two public apps to talk to each other than it is to get two private ones to. I’d put them in the same app group (presuming they are sandboxed) and then either use a domain socket or set up a simple dropbox in the shared directory and use a long-running NSFilePresenter to listen for changes and NSFileCoordination to read/write files to it. I’ve used that rather simple method in a few places now and it’s been surprisingly successful. You just end up with a callback on a queue of your choice in your app, read the file and go on your way. ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: https://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to arch...@mail-archive.com
