Newsletter # 6 Launch Agents that provide XPC services Oct 25 2019
Hi,
How was your week? I hope it was a good one. It was a busy week for me. I was worried I wouldn't be able to publish an article this week. But I made it.
I enjoy writing these articles. I wish I had more time to dedicate to research and writing, but I'm happy that I can dedicate at least a small amount of time every week.
Anyways, it's the weekend, so it's time to relax. I'm a fan of AudioBooks and podcasts. So on Saturdays, I take some time to get a coffee and listen to an interesting story. If you are a fan of audio content, here is one of my favourite podcasts:
Darknet diaries excellent storytelling on "hacker's stories". If you haven't listened to it, I would suggest episode 28 - Unit 8200. Listen to it and let me know what you think.
Going back to the post of the week. This week's post is a continuation for the XPC Service Bundle post I wrote last week. The new post covers the use of XPC services to communicate processes from other applications. I think this is one of the most useful applications of XPC, with it you can make your applications and services accessible to other developers/applications. If it sounds like something you might like here is the link:
https://rderik.com/blog/creating-a-launch-agent-that-provides-an-xpc-service-on-macos/
I also explain how to create Launch Agents, which is a useful tool on its own. Have a look and tell me what you think.
Ok, that's it for the week.
Enjoy your weekend,
Derik
Tip of the week:
I love URL handlers/schemes. When applications are well made and define proper URL schemes, they are the best. You can open the app by visiting a URL, and also execute actions based on the parameters. Maybe you've seen a few of them. For example, you can open Skype from your browsers just by typing skype:// on Safari. Quite nice right?
Well, I often find myself referencing man pages, but it's hard to link to the correct site that points to the man page from the same OS that the reader is using. Enter x-man-page. This URL scheme will open the man page in your Terminal application. How cool is that? Try clicking on the following link(it'll only work if you are on your computer tho):
You set the section and the command you want to check. For our example, section 1, command man.