How do I Pass a filename from finder into my OS X Application

Question

I want to be able to open a file with my application from finder

click on the file and and select open with then select my application.

I am not using NSDocumentController and I have put this in my applicationdelegate

-(BOOL) application:(NSApplication *)sender openFile:(NSString *)filename;

as I am more or less guessing my way through this can any one tell me if I am on the right track

also is there something I need to do in order to tell the os what king of files I can except

Regards Christian

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:05

You have to register with the file types your program is associated with , you can do this by adding "LSItemContentTypes" key to your plist and specifying the file types.

Something similar to described in this post. How do I associate file types with an iPhone application?

When a user opens the file the delegate method will get called .

-(BOOL) application:(NSApplication *)sender openFile:(NSString *)filename;

File name parameter will be with the path , then you can work with the file using that.

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 09 '14 at 06:10

You also need to specify Launch Services keys in Your Info.plist file.

from: Launch Services Programming

The CFBundleTypeName key specifies the document type’s kind string, a user-visible description used to characterize documents of this type on the screen (such as in the Finder’s Get Info window or in the Kind column of the Finder’s list view). This key can be localized by including it in the InfoPlist.strings file of the appropriate .lproj subdirectory. CFBundleTypeIconFile identifies the file containing the icon image to be used for displaying documents of this type on the screen. LSTypeIsPackage specifies whether the document is a packaged bundle (true) or a single file (false).

Files belonging to a given document type may be characterized by their file types, filename extensions, or MIME types. The CFBundleTypeOSTypes key in the type-definition dictionary specifies an array of four-character file type codes that characterize documents of this type; similarly, CFBundleTypeExtensions specifies an array of filename extensions and CFBundleTypeMIMETypes an array of MIME types. Any of these individual keys can be omitted if the corresponding file characteristic is not relevant, but at least one of them must be present for the file type to be nonempty. To allow an application to accept files of unrestricted file type or extension during drag-and-drop operations, you can use the special wild-card values '**' or '*' for CFBundleOSTypes or CFBundleTypeExtensions, respectively. (These are honored only in drag-and-drop operations and not when the user opens a document by double-clicking.) Finally, the CFBundleTypeRole key specifies the role that the application claims with respect to documents of the given type, as described under “Application Roles.”

Here's example from TextEdit.app for rtf files:

<key>CFBundleDocumentTypes</key>
    <array>
            <dict>
                    <key>CFBundleTypeIconFile</key>
                    <string>rtf.icns</string>
                    <key>CFBundleTypeName</key>
                    <string>NSRTFPboardType</string>
                    <key>CFBundleTypeRole</key>
                    <string>Editor</string>
                    <key>LSIsAppleDefaultForType</key>
                    <true/>
                    <key>LSItemContentTypes</key>
                    <array>
                            <string>public.rtf</string>
                    </array>
                    <key>NSDocumentClass</key>
                    <string>Document</string>
                    <key>NSIsRelatedItemType</key>
                    <true/>
            </dict>
</array>

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 09 '14 at 08:29

0

Thanks all one more thing I found open file is callecalled before applicationdidfinishlaunching And is where I am creating my view controller which contains my file open method

Cheers christian andersen

answered Apr 09 '14 at 08:29

canderse

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So save any info you need when the application:openFile: method is called so later when applicationDidFinishLaunching: is called you can use the saved info. – geowar Apr 09 '14 at 17:00
Yes, it gets called before the applicationdidfinishlaunching method. – rustylepord Apr 10 '14 at 05:20

How do I Pass a filename from finder into my OS X Application

3 Answers3