How can I use PlistBuddy to add settings without overriding existing ones?

Question

I am trying to write a script that adds settings to the Settings app during build time without overwriting the existing ones, if existing. Here is a snippet of my script:

PLISTBUDDY="/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy"
SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH="$CODESIGNING_FOLDER_PATH/Settings.bundle/Root.plist"

{
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:0:Type string 'PSGroupSpecifier'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:0:Title string 'Version Information'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
} || {
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Set :PreferenceSpecifiers:0:Type 'PSGroupSpecifier'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Set :PreferenceSpecifiers:0:Title 'Version Information'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
}

{
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:1:Type string 'PSTitleValueSpecifier'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:1:Title string 'Version:'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:1:Key string 'appVersion'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:1:DefaultValue string '$APPVERSION'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
} || {
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Set :PreferenceSpecifiers:1:Type 'PSTitleValueSpecifier'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Set :PreferenceSpecifiers:1:Title 'Version:'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Set :PreferenceSpecifiers:1:Key 'appVersion'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
$PLISTBUDDY -c "Set :PreferenceSpecifiers:1:DefaultValue '$APPVERSION'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
}

I don't want to overwrite any existing settings though. How do I add these settings to the end of PreferenceSpecifiers?

I have read the documentation, and I have tried using Merge to no success.

$PLISTBUDDY -c "Merge ${PROJECT_DIR}/Settings1.bundle/Root.plist" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"

Edit: added 'try-catch'es to the code, this fixes the issue when running the script twice.

Hold on, so `$CODESIGNING_FOLDER_PATH` will contain some build-machine-related folder and you are building that folder name into the app? Alarm bells are ringing... — trojanfoe, Dec 23 '15 at 10:18
Is that not okay? It seems a lot easier to write to there, since I only want to add certain settings based on build configuration. — Belle, Dec 23 '15 at 10:54
I think I've got the wrong end of the stick. You are setting-up the `.plist` in that folder for inclusion in the app, which is perfectly reasonable. Sorry for the mistake. — trojanfoe, Dec 23 '15 at 11:18

score 2 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:15

This first counts all dictionaries PreferenceSpecifiers, as in these answers. Then it will loop over the dictionaries and check if the group is already present, so when you build your app a second time, the script will not add the rows again. If the group is not found, it will add the rows just after the last index. One thing I'm not certain of is why count is not a number and how to properly fix it (the current code works).

PLISTBUDDY="/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy"
SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH="$CODESIGNING_FOLDER_PATH/Settings.bundle/Root.plist"

count=`${PLISTBUDDY} -c "Print PreferenceSpecifiers:" ${SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH} | grep "Dict"|wc -l`
let count++
let count--

FOUND=false
for index in `seq 0 $count`
do
    val=`${PLISTBUDDY} -c "Print PreferenceSpecifiers:${index}:Key" ${SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH}`
    if [ "$val" == "versionInfo" ]; then
        FOUND=true
        break
    fi
done

if [ "$FOUND" == false ]; then
    $PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:$count:Type string 'PSGroupSpecifier'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
    $PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:$count:Title string 'Version Information'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
    $PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:$count:Key string 'versionInfo'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"

    let count++
    $PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:$count:Type string 'PSTitleValueSpecifier'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
    $PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:$count:Title string 'Version:'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
    $PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:$count:Key string 'appVersion'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
    $PLISTBUDDY -c "Add :PreferenceSpecifiers:$count:DefaultValue string '$APPVERSION'" "$SETTINGSBUNDLEPATH"
fi

How can I use PlistBuddy to add settings without overriding existing ones?

1 Answers1