[djohnson]

Anyone know how to access the stored list of available applications? Basically everything at /Applications/ and a few other places. Thanks!

[itai195]

What other places? I'm not aware of any way to do this other than searching a bunch of standard paths that may contain applications. You might want to take a look at NSPathUtilities.h in the Foundation Framework to see how you can get a list of search paths, and just look for bundles or .apps or read plists. Of course, Mac OS allows users to put applications anywhere they want them, so you might not find everything this way.

[djohnson]

Ok, I will check out NSPathUtilities. I mainly want the ones located in /Applications/ Thanks!

[itai195]

In that case, you can just grab the search path (don't hard code a path to "/Applications") and look for everything in that folder, or in nested folders, that has a .app extension. Be careful not to look inside of the .apps though -- they are also folders and they may contain other applications that you probably don't want to include.

[djohnson]

Ok, I just checked out what I can use in NSPathUtilities. Care to enlighten me on grabbing an entire folder?

[itai195]

You can use NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains to find the paths you want to search, and methods in the NSFileManager class to look at directory contents. eg:

Code:
- (NSDirectoryEnumerator *)enumeratorAtPath: (NSString *)path

[djohnson]

How about this:

NSString *directory;

NSSearchPathDirectory dir;
directory = [dir NSApplicationDirectory];

I cannot test it right now because I am at work... Does it look right though?

[Rickster]

Check LaunchServices/LaunchServices.h -- IIRC, it provides functions to list all the applications "known" to the system.

[djohnson]

Isnt that carbon? I am trying to keep the app all cocoa... Dont know if it matters though.

[itai195]

I thought LaunchServices could only discover document bindings? Anyway, I figured there's probably a better way than using Foundation/PathUtilities.

[larkost]

If you are not looking for constant run-time listing, you could also look at the system_profiler command line app. If you just run it it will spew a lot of information to stdout, including a list of applications.

[djohnson]

I need constant runtime updating. I think the code I posted earlier will find what I need. If not I am sure I can find the way to make it work.

[itai195]

NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains is a function, not an object. I should've given you the documentation URL:

http://developer.apple.com/documenta...00055/BCIJCEFC

The code you want to start off with is probably something like this:

Code:
NSFileManager * fm = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
NSArray * paths = NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains
                 (NSApplicationDirectory, NSLocalDomainMask | NSUserDomainMask, TRUE);
NSEnumerator * pathEnum = [paths objectEnumerator];
NSString * path, * file;
NSDirectoryEnumerator * dirEnum;

while (path = [pathEnum nextObject]) {
    dirEnum = [fm enumeratorAtPath: path];
    while (file = [dirEnum nextObject]) {
        if ([[file pathExtension] isEqualToString:@"app"])
            // do what you want with it here
    }
}

You can access Carbon in a Cocoa app tho, so if LaunchServices has a method to call that would be a much easier way to do it.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by Rickster:
Check LaunchServices/LaunchServices.h -- IIRC, it provides functions to list all the applications "known" to the system.

Last I checked, that was SPI. Pretty easy to use, though. Normal disclaimer about using undocumented, private functions applies.

Code:
#include <ApplicationServices/ApplicationServices.h>
#include <CoreFoundation/CoreFoundation.h>

extern OSStatus _LSCopyAllApplicationURLs(CFArrayRef *array);

int main(int argc, char *argv[])
{
        CFArrayRef array;
        _LSCopyAllApplicationURLs(&array);
        CFShow(array);
        return 0;
}