CoreLib

CoreLib is a collection of reusable Objective-C source code to make various aspects of developing Mac apps easier, faster & safer.

CoreLib is designed so you can just use the parts you want/need and are not forced to adopt all of it.

Just #import CoreLib.h in your .pch (or in files that use it). Additional Classes in the Mac/ folder can be included as needed.

CoreLib has these components:

• categories on base Cocoa like NSArray, NSData, NSObject, NSString, etc for new functionality or syntactic sugar (AppKit+CoreCode, Foundation+CoreCode)

• for Mac) convenience classes for e-mail sending, getting host information, managing login items, showing styled font lists, etc (Mac/JM*)

• for Mac) subclasses for WebView, NSButton, NSTextView as well as custom view controllers to do many common tasks easier e.g. just configure properties in IB without any code (Mac/JM*)

• CoreLib provided much important stuff earlier than Apple, which is still useful on older Xcode versions where this is not supported (API availability warnings, statically typed collections, properties for getters/setters, object subscripting)

Requirements

CoreLib up to version 1.8 requires Xcode 6 and deploys back to Mac OS X 10.6 / iOS 6
CoreLib version 1.9 requires Xcode 7 and deploys back to Mac OS X 10.6 / iOS 7
CoreLib version 1.10 and above requires Xcode 8 and deploys back to Mac OS X 10.6 / iOS 8
CoreLib version 1.14 and above requires Xcode 9 and deploys back to Mac OS X 10.10 / iOS 8
CoreLib version 1.21 and above requires Xcode 10 and deploys back to Mac OS X 10.10 / iOS 8
CoreLib version 1.25 and above requires Xcode 10 and deploys back to Mac OS X 10.13 / iOS 11

Initialization

in your PCH file if you have one, or at top of your source or header files you have to include the CoreLib master header:

#import <Cocoa/Cocoa.h> // you had that before
#import "CoreLib.h"

in your applicationDidFinishLaunching method:

cc = [CoreLib new]; // dont forget this

Usage

some examples how CoreLib makes developing apps more fun.

example user defaults convenience:

// setting defaults
// old way 
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] setInteger:1 forKey:@"MyPref"];
// new way 
@"MyPref".defaultInt = 1;

// using defaults
// old way 
[[NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults] objectForKey:@"MyPref"]
// new way 
@"MyPref".defaultObj

example string convenience:

// splitting string into lines
// old way
[@"abc\ndef\nbla" componentsSeparatedByCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet newlineCharacterSet]]
// new way
@"abc\ndef\nbla".lines

// trimming whitespace
// old way
[someString stringByTrimmingCharactersInSet:[NSCharacterSet whitespaceCharacterSet]]
// new way
string.trimmedOfWhitespace;

example downloading files:

// old way
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:@"http://myhost/myfile"];
NSURLRequest *request = [NSURLRequest requestWithURL:url];
NSData *file = [NSURLConnection sendSynchronousRequest:request returningResponse:NULL error:NULL];
// new way
NSData *file = @"http://myhost/myfile".download;

there are about 2000 lines of convenience categories including some functional extensions for NSArray.

Defines & Configuration

some features of CoreLib require linking additional frameworks and are therefore only available if you include these framework and set some preprocessor value:

#define USE_SECURITY 1 // if you (want to) link Security.framework
#define USE_SYSTEMCONFIGURATION 1 // if you (want to) link SystemConfiguration.framework
#define USE_IOKIT 1 // if yo (want to) link IOKit.framework
#define USE_DISKARBITRATION 1 // if you (want to) link DiskArbitration.framework

#define USE_APPLEMAIL 1 // if you want to send mail through Mail.app with the ScriptingBridge (needs temporary exception if sandboxed)

#define USE_MAILCORE 1 // if you link MailCore.framework
#define USE_SNAPPY 1 // if you link Snappy.framework

additionally some parts of CoreLib require setting the SANDBOX #define to indicate whether your app is sandboxed

you can also use this if you want to include JMApplicationDelegate but not JMRatingWindow

#define SKIP_RATINGWINDOW 1 

also you can define VENDOR_HOMEPAGE and FEEDBACK_EMAIL for the built-in feedback mechanism (openURL)

some parts of CoreLib do more checking if DEBUG is defined

CoreLib saves the last 10 messages logged with cc_log() to the user defaults unless you define DONTLOGTOUSERDEFAULTS

CoreLib has changed its return values of the alert*() functions away from deprecated NSAlertDefaultReturn/NSOKButton values and undefines those to make sure you update. define IMADESURENOTTOCOMPAREALERTRETURNVALUESAGAINSTOLDRETURNVALUES to make sure you can still use the old return values for old appkit functions

defining FORCE_LOG forces output to the system log even for release builds