Sandboxing Confirmation...

ChrisYates · June 2012

I'm just trying to get some confirmation on Sandboxing. I understand exactly why it's been put in place and the principle behind it.

As I start to near the release of my first Mac App I kept putting off sandboxing as it sounded rather complicated and thought I'll worry about it nearer the time. I watched a couple of the Apple videos and read up on some of the documentation (not all) and thought I'd try and add it to my app!

I turned on sandboxing in Xcode, didn't specify any entitlements as they didn't really relate to my app and the entitlements certificate popped up on the left and ran my app....that was it, all ran fine without issues.

That's where I got confused...surely it can't be that simple?! My app saves data in the background, no user input to save, it just happens seamlessly. Anyway I checked /Users/whoever/Library/Containers and there was my app named container folder and the relevant data was saved there (although of course that wasn't the exact path I specified as the save location in my app). I closed my app, reopened it and sure enough the saved data was still there.

IS THAT IT? Does that now mean my app is sandboxed or am I missing something here?

vbovio · June 2012

I'm wondering the same as you, my next app would not use anything special other than saving it's own data on it's container, so for what I have read, what you say are the only steps to do for sandboxing. Hope someone can confirm us, or perhaps post this question on Apple forums.

nestochi · June 2012

it depends on what your app does.
If you just write to the app support folder, sandboxing does not affect you. It's transparent.

If begins to be a problem if you need to read/write outside of your app's folders (app Support, cache, preferences, etc)

ChrisYates · June 2012

Before thinking about sandboxing my app, I set the apps save data to:

NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
    
    NSString *folder = @\"~/Library/Application Support/AppName/\";
    folder = [folder stringByExpandingTildeInPath];

As soon as I added sandboxing and without adding a different path to the above it now saves in ~/Library/Containers/MyDeveloperName/Data/Library/ApplicationSupport/AppName/SavedData

So I presume it's all set up for me pretty much automatically.

Having said that I haven't added any preferences to the app yet, I'm thinking of adding 'Launch App At Startup' which may cause problems with sandboxing!

nestochi · June 2012

ChrisYates;436107 said:
Before thinking about sandboxing my app, I set the apps save data to:
NSFileManager *fileManager = [NSFileManager defaultManager];
    
    NSString *folder = @\"~/Library/Application Support/AppName/\";
    folder = [folder stringByExpandingTildeInPath];
As soon as I added sandboxing and without adding a different path to the above it now saves in ~/Library/Containers/MyDeveloperName/Data/Library/ApplicationSupport/AppName/SavedData

So I presume it's all set up for me pretty much automatically.

Having said that I haven't added any preferences to the app yet, I'm thinking of adding 'Launch App At Startup' which may cause problems with sandboxing!

If you're only writing there and the preferences , you should not have any problem.

mlfarrell · June 2012

Pull up console hit "all messages", type in sandboxd in the filter, and if nothing for your app appears there during a run, you're all in the clear.

Mountain Tiger · August 2012

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Sandboxing Confirmation...

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