As I was building Dossier.js I ran into a small parity issue between iOS and Android.  On Android Titanium provides you two helper functions.  On a Ti.File object you can call isFile() to get a boolean indicator if your currently working with a file.  Likewise you can call isDirectory() to determine if you are working with a directory.  These are extremely helpful utilities when performing any kind of file system acrobatics.

How do we get this to work on iOS?  Easy, update the SDK and send a pull request.  Just shows how powerful open source can be.

Want to add this to your SDK now?  It couldn’t be easier, just follow the below three simple steps.

Updating your SDK

Find your SDK Directory

The first step is to find your Titanium SDK directory.  This is usually installed under a directory path similar to the one shown below.

Adding your methods

After locating your SDK directory, you will need to go to the Classes folder as shown below.

Look for the TiFilesystemFileProxy.m file and open this in your favorite text editor.

Scroll down in the file until you see the method –(id)createFile:(id)args right above this method paste in the below.

-(id)isFile:(id)unused
{
	BOOL isDirectory;
	return ([fm fileExistsAtPath:path isDirectory:&isDirectory] && !isDirectory);
}

-(id)isDirectory:(id)unused
{
	BOOL isDirectory;
	return ([fm fileExistsAtPath:path isDirectory:&isDirectory] && isDirectory);
}

view on gist

Once completed, save the file (TiFilesystemFileProxy.m)

Clean your project & done

You will need to clean your Titanium Projects before the SDK modifications will be available.  To clean your projects using Titanium Studio go to the Project menu and select Clean… as shown below.

In the Clean Dialog Window, select Clean All Projects.

You are now ready to use these new functions in your Titanium Projects.

How what? How does it work?

After adding these updates to your SDK, the Ti.File object will have the same isFile and isDirectory methods as they do on Android.  Below is a demonstration app.js you can use for testing.

//Test if the resources folder is a directory.
var resourceDir = Titanium.Filesystem.getFile(Titanium.Filesystem.resourcesDirectory);
Ti.API.info('resourceDir ' + resourceDir);
Ti.API.info('resourceDir nativePath ' + resourceDir.nativePath);
Ti.API.info('resourceDir isDirectory ' + resourceDir.isDirectory());
Ti.API.info('resourceDir isFile ' + resourceDir.isFile());

var newDir = Titanium.Filesystem.getFile(Titanium.Filesystem.applicationDataDirectory,'mydir');
if(!newDir.exists()){
  Ti.API.info("Created mydir: " + newDir.createDirectory());
}

var newFile = Titanium.Filesystem.getFile(newDir.nativePath,'newfile.txt');
newFile.write("\nText appended via write()", true);

Ti.API.info('newdir ' + newDir);
Ti.API.info('newdir nativePath ' + newDir.nativePath);
Ti.API.info('newdir isDirectory ' + newDir.isDirectory());
Ti.API.info('newdir isFile ' + newDir.isFile());

Ti.API.info('newFile ' + newFile);
Ti.API.info('newFile nativePath ' + newFile.nativePath);
Ti.API.info('newFile isDirectory ' + newFile.isDirectory());
Ti.API.info('newFile isFile ' + newFile.isFile());

Ti.API.info('Now open a window so we can test on device easier');

// Create a simple window to show our results
(function(){

	var win = Ti.UI.createWindow({
		backgroundColor:'#fff',layout:'vertical'
	});

	win.add(Ti.UI.createLabel({
		top:10, text:'resourceDir isDirectory ' + resourceDir.isDirectory()
	}));

	win.add(Ti.UI.createLabel({
		top:10, text:'resourceDir isFile ' + resourceDir.isFile()
	}));

	win.add(Ti.UI.createLabel({
		top:10, text:'newdir isDirectory ' + newDir.isDirectory()
	}));

	win.add(Ti.UI.createLabel({
		top:10, text:'newdir isFile ' + newDir.isFile()
	}));

	win.add(Ti.UI.createLabel({
		top:10, text:'newFile isDirectory ' + newFile.isDirectory()
	}));

	win.add(Ti.UI.createLabel({
		top:10, text:'newFile isFile ' + newFile.isFile()
	}));

	win.open();

})();

Ti.API.info('End Test');

I’m happy to announce the the availability of the Securely Titanium module.  The goal of Securely is to provide a security toolkit for Titanium developers to write more secure apps.

KeyChain Properties API

The first release of Securely (iOS only) provides a Properties API which provides access to the iOS KeyChain.  Designed for ease of use the Properties module should be familiar to anyone using Titanium as it mimics the popular Ti.App.Properties API.

var securely = require('bencoding.securely');
Ti.API.info("module is => " + securely);

//You can provide optional identifier and accessGroup 
//If none are provided we will use your bundle id as the identifier
var properties = securely.createProperties({
     identifier:"Foo",
     accessGroup:"Bar"
});

Since the Securely Properties module mimics Ti.App.Properties you simply call setString when you would like to save a value.  Instead of being written to Properties it is instead persisted to the device’s KeyChain.

properties.setString('String','I am a String Value ');

Similarly you use the getString method just like you would for properties, but instead you are retrieving values from the KeyChain.  We even support default values for API compatibility.

Titanium.API.info('String: ' + properties.getString('whatever',"Fred"));

All of your other Ti.App.Properties you rely upon also have a compatible equivalent in Securely.  To see the full list please read our documentation here.

Get the module

The module is available at benahrenburg/Securely on github.

Need an example?

The module’s example folder contains a sample app.js demonstrating all of the available methods.  You can view the sample in on github here.

Learn more

To learn more please visit the Securely github repo and read the documentation.

What’s next?

I am currently working on adding Encryption and File Handling features to Securely.  An Android version is also in the planning stages.

Occasionally you will need to a module’s GUID.  This is commonly done to avoid licensing conflicts with open source modules.

Updating a module’s GUID is a straight forward and simple process.  The below steps demonstrate how to change the GUID in your Titanium iOS custom module.

Before getting started it is important to note that Appcelerator doesn’t support updating your module’s GUIDs so please make a back-up of your original files just in case.

Generate a new GUID

The first step is to generate a new GUID.  I like to use GuidGenerator.com. Using this site we generate a GUID of 2016a336-bc2-494a-b112-98d6edd999de that we will us to update our Xcode module project.

Updating the Manifest File

When you create a Titanium Module project, a manifest file is automatically created for you.  This file contains your project name, version information, module id, and your module’s GUID.

The manifest file is located in the root of your Xcode project, as shown below.

Open this file in your favorite text editor and change the existing GUID to the new one generated by GuidGenerator.com.  In our case the manifest should now look like the below.

 

Updating your Xcode Project

The next step is to update your module’s moduleId method.  This is located in the <Your Module Name>Module.m file of your project. In this example our module is called BencodingNetwork, so we will want to look in the BencodingNetworkModule.m project file.

You will want to open this class file in Xcode and update the moduleGUID property.  You simply update the return value with the same GUID used in updating our manifest file.

Almost done, one last step

Now that you’ve updated your module’s GUID you will need to re-build your module.  To do this open terminal in the root of your module’s folder and run the ./build.py script as shown below.  This will generate a new compile module zip for you to use in your Titanium projects.