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POLoading a dictionary property list generated by the codesign tool on OS X
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  1. POLoading a dictionary property list generated by the codesign tool on OS X
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    copied!<p>I'm working on a simple project but I've bumped up against a wall with a seemingly easy task. Loading a dictionary-rooted plist into a NSDirectory. This is something I've done plenty of times before so I'm a bit puzzled as to why I'm currently stuck.</p> <p>I'm attempting to read in a plist that I created with the codesign tool on OS X. The invocation of that tool I'm using dumps the app entitlements to a file. In the case of Safari it would do this:</p> <pre><code>codesign --display --entitlements :&lt;path to plist&gt; /Applications/Safari.app </code></pre> <p>This generates a normal XML plist at my specified path. You need the colon prefix so that it doesn't insert a magic binary blob at the beginning of the file. The full XML for the plist generated looks like this:</p> <pre><code>&lt;?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?&gt; &lt;!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd"&gt; &lt;plist version="1.0"&gt; &lt;dict&gt; &lt;key&gt;com.apple.private.accounts.allaccounts&lt;/key&gt; &lt;true/&gt; &lt;key&gt;com.apple.developer.ubiquity-kvstore-identifier&lt;/key&gt; &lt;string&gt;com.apple.Safari.SyncedTabs&lt;/string&gt; &lt;key&gt;com.apple.private.tcc.allow&lt;/key&gt; &lt;array&gt; &lt;string&gt;kTCCServiceAddressBook&lt;/string&gt; &lt;/array&gt; &lt;/dict&gt; &lt;/plist&gt; </code></pre> <p>Simple right? So now I just want to load this into a NSDictionary. I simply try to load it in the normal way:</p> <pre><code>NSDictionary *entitlementDict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithContentsOfFile:tempFile]; </code></pre> <p>What happens though is that it refuses to load anything and I get a nil for contents:</p> <pre><code>Printing description of entitlementDict: &lt;nil&gt; (lldb) </code></pre> <p>I feel like I'm missing something obvious here. I know that the NSDictionary loading methods only work if all the contents are plist-objects, but it looks like they are and Xcode and QuickLook will happily show me the contents of the file. Additionally plutil validates that the syntax is correct.</p> <p>Any ideas? Thanks.</p> <p><strong>UPDATE:</strong></p> <p>Thanks to the folks who have answered so far. For more information I am using the proper full path.</p> <p>From the debugger:</p> <pre><code>Printing description of tempFile: /var/folders/yk/kvvzp89x03v896rqx4mc9rqw0000gq/T/FFF82FDD-0A01-4139-9719-00B447B2F907-60198-000284518B41D04F/BC54EEC8-5A0B-49FD-9BFD-44B7FFB29B73.plist </code></pre> <p>And from the terminal:</p> <pre><code>FatMan:~ macshome$ file /var/folders/yk/kvvzp89x03v896rqx4mc9rqw0000gq/T/FFF82FDD-0A01-4139-9719-00B447B2F907-60198-000284518B41D04F/BC54EEC8-5A0B-49FD-9BFD-44B7FFB29B73.plist /var/folders/yk/kvvzp89x03v896rqx4mc9rqw0000gq/T/FFF82FDD-0A01-4139-9719-00B447B2F907-60198-000284518B41D04F/BC54EEC8-5A0B-49FD-9BFD-44B7FFB29B73.plist: XML document text </code></pre> <p>and:</p> <pre><code>FatMan:~ macshome$ ls -l /var/folders/yk/kvvzp89x03v896rqx4mc9rqw0000gq/T/FFF82FDD-0A01-4139-9719-00B447B2F907-60198-000284518B41D04F/BC54EEC8-5A0B-49FD-9BFD-44B7FFB29B73.plist -rw-r--r-- 1 macshome staff 455 Jan 12 15:13 /var/folders/yk/kvvzp89x03v896rqx4mc9rqw0000gq/T/FFF82FDD-0A01-4139-9719-00B447B2F907-60198-000284518B41D04F/BC54EEC8-5A0B-49FD-9BFD-44B7FFB29B73.plist </code></pre> <p>I can post the code that generates my temp path, but I don't really think it matters much. Maybe I'll try testing with a shorter path, but I don't think that matters much either. This is a pretty typical way to generate a temp file.</p> <p><strong>Final update:</strong> I figured out what I was doing wrong, although I wish it was a more interesting answer.</p> <p>I'm calling the codesign tool with a NSTask, but in my basic testing I was forgetting to wait until it completed before attempting to load the plist into my NSDictionary. If I just use the termination handler or waitUntilExit or the termination notification then everything works as expected.</p> <p>Many thanks to those who tried to help!</p>
 

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