I'm working with plugins for Final Cut Pro X and need to send data out to another program. So far I was able to do it by using NSDistributedNotificationCenter but that is not supposed to work. According to its Apple Developer page:
Important: Sandboxed apps can send notifications only if they do not contain a dictionary. If the sending application is in an App Sandbox, notificationInfo must be nil.
Final Cut Pro X is sold in the Mac App Store and everything I've seen points to it being sandboxed. Does anyone know if there's a bug with FCPX's sandbox, with the distributed notification center, or are FxPlugs run outside the sandbox? I rather not have critical code rely on something that works but isn't supposed to.
My notification sending code in the FxPlug:
NSDistributedNotificationCenter* dist = [NSDistributedNotificationCenter defaultCenter];
NSDictionary* dict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:@"First value", @"key1",
@"Second value from FCPX", @"key2", @"Third & final value", @"3key3", nil];
[dist postNotificationName:@"FCPX plugin"
object:@"SFPCommApp"
userInfo:dict];
And receiving code in the other app:
m_center = [NSDistributedNotificationCenter defaultCenter];
[m_center addObserver:self
selector:@selector(GetNotification:)
name:nil
object:listenTo];
// in GetNotification
NSString *notifString = [notification description];
NSString *dispString = @"Got notification from Final Cut Pro X";
dispString = [dispString stringByAppendingString:notifString];
// dispString displayed in a dialog
It works in the Xcode debugger and entirely outside Xcode (both launched from Finder). Also, I need to support 10.6 so can't use XPC.
Ideas on other methods to send data out from an FxPlug? Thanks!
If you download the latest FxPlug SDK (3.0) from Apple's developer site, it includes updated examples for building an FxPlug with an XPC. Final Cut Pro X is not yet sandboxed, but it seems likely that it will be in the future.