Apple's Services Implementation Guide - Sample Code Not Working

Question

Whenever I'm like surfing on the web and I highlight a bunch of text, I see a "New TextWrangler Document with Selection" item on the contextual menu.

How do I replicate this functionality with my app so that whenever a user selects text in any other application, he can see a "New (My App) Document with Selection" item in the contextual menu and upon clicking on it, it feeds the selected text into my app?

Update

To try to answer my own question, I followed the sample code here: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/SysServices/Articles/providing.html

which implements a simple rot13 encryption service on highlighted text. but it ain't working.

Although my "Encrypt Text" appears in the system preferences menu like "New TextWrangler Document with Selection" as shown above, it doesnt actually appear in an application's services menu or right-click contextual menu when text is selected.

Can someone tell me why the sample code in apple's documentation is not working

@PeterHosey here it is, with NSRequiredContext too:

my app name is called "simpleEncrypt" and the message is exactly the same as the one copied from apple's services implementation guide.

- (void)simpleEncrypt:(NSPasteboard *)pboard
userData:(NSString *)userData error:(NSString **)error;

ok i solved it. its all in here: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/cocoa/conceptual/SysServices/introduction.html — hollow7, Nov 16 '11 at 07:25
@dragoncharmer Those are system services, as you have found and linked to. That is the correct answer, so please post it as an answer and accept it! — Michael J. Barber, Nov 16 '11 at 07:55
I wanted to wait till I tested the code from apple before I accepted the answer. And after I tested it, I realized it didn't work.. yeah so the question is still open :) — hollow7, Nov 16 '11 at 14:42
Please edit your question to include your service dictionary. — Peter Hosey, Nov 16 '11 at 18:02
@PeterHosey I added the service dictionary in. Does it help? — hollow7, Nov 22 '11 at 10:47

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Nov 22 '11 at 17:53

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You need to include an NSRequiredContext dictionary in your service dictionary that describes when the service is appropriate to enable. Until you do, it is disabled in all contexts by default. (I'm not sure why it still doesn't show up even after you enabled it, but this is a required first step.)

answered Nov 22 '11 at 17:53

Peter Hosey

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Yup you are right. I included NSRequiredContext in and it still doesn't work. – hollow7 Nov 26 '11 at 16:32
@dragoncharmer: Please edit your question to include the updated service dictionary. – Peter Hosey Nov 26 '11 at 16:41

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 27 '11 at 08:04

In the Info.plist for my Translate Text application, I'm using NSStringPboardType as the send type for each of its services.

The system-declared UTIs list says that the modern equivalent to that is public.utf8-plain-text, so try changing your service's send and return types to that.

If it works, it'd probably be a good idea to list all the plain-text variants. Those are listed there in the Uniform Type Identifiers Reference; they're the types that conform to public.plain-text.

Apple's Services Implementation Guide - Sample Code Not Working

2 Answers2