File access permission in Swift on OSX

Question

I'm using:

let dialog = NSOpenPanel()

to get a file URL.

I'm then reading in the contents of the text file with:

let content = try String( contentsOf: dialog.url)

This works!

I'm then trying to read in another text file in the same directory with a different extension:

let b = dialog.url?.deletingPathExtension()
// Add the new file extension
let c = b?.appendingPathExtension("TSN") 

let content2 = try String( contentsOf: c)

With this I get:

"The file “FLO5.TSN” couldn’t be opened because you don’t have permission to view it."

If I try and open the .tsn file with a URL from a NSOpenPanel() dialog result it works. I need to open several data files from this same directory with different extensions. Is there a way to do this?

Andrew: That's a somewhat confusing answer. We already knew it was OS X. — Ssswift, Nov 10 '17 at 19:25
Fair enough. It's an actual OS X application accessing files in my desktop folder. — Andrew, Nov 10 '17 at 21:41

score 7 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 07 '19 at 23:57

7

set off sandbox!!) Xcode 9 and later enables sandboxing by default, which severely limits interactions with the system.

Select your target, then Capabilities and set Downloads Folder to Read/Write:

edited Jun 07 '19 at 23:57

matt

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answered Jun 07 '19 at 21:48

Sam

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score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 05 '22 at 12:04

In my case, solve it's startAccessingSecurityScopedResource

Example:

let selectedFile = try result.get() // get path to file

                do {
                    // get access to open file
                    if selectedFile.startAccessingSecurityScopedResource() {
                        let path = selectedFile.path
                        let data = NSData(contentsOfFile: path)
                        print(data) // array bytes
                        selectedFile.stopAccessingSecurityScopedResource()
                    }

                } catch {
                    // Couldn't read the file.
                    print(error.localizedDescription)
                }

Apple wiki about this feature https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nsurl/1417051-startaccessingsecurityscopedreso

File access permission in Swift on OSX

2 Answers2