I'd like to copy something from a native application into the paste board. And then read the copied value from the native browser. Is there a way to do this?
Do you mean read it from the pasteboard without having the user actually paste it? If so, then the answer is a definite no -- reading the pasteboard without user input would be a security no-no (suppose you'd just copied your credit card # or SS# in another app?).
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I am writing an iOS app and I just want to make sure I call it the appropriate thing. I'm used to clipboard but apparently Apple calls it a pasteboard on iOS. Googling doesn't turn anything specific up.
I see the class is called UIPasteboard but I'm just looking to verify the literature/end user communication uses this term as well.
Yes, UIPasteboard is the clipboard (or the service behind the copy and paste feature). Most users are unlikely to know what either pasteboard or clipboard means. If you're describing the feature you should probably use the simple 'copy & paste' terminology.
I have the same question: which string is preferable to show to the user?
"Copy"
"Copy to Clipboard"
"Copy to Pasteboard"
Looking at the standard built-in apps on iOS 12, it looks like the first form ("Copy") is used almost everywhere.
Doing some more research, I googled for pages containing "pasteboard" on site:help.apple.com, and found pages such as https://help.apple.com/voiceover/info/guide/10.7/English.lproj/_1128.html which include text like You can also copy the last spoken phrase to the Clipboard (also called the “Pasteboard”) by pressing VO-Shift-C. But note that this is a page for macOS, not iOS. When I searched for iOS pasteboard site:help.apple.com I got zero results, while searching for iOS clipboard site:help.apple.com got many hits, all of which suggests that Apple doesn't use the term "pasteboard" when addressing users (even though UIPasteboard is the name of the internal API).
Another data point is that the Simulator has a menu command Edit / Automatically Sync Pasteboard although (speculation!) maybe that's meant to be understood by developers not end-users?
I've got a similar problem in that I'm trying to display an error message if the pasteboard contents are "invalid" in the current situation. (In the app, there is a main tweet which has already been loaded in the main part of the window, but I also want to let the user select a second tweet if they've copied a Twitter URL to the pasteboard.) I want to say something like The tweet on the pasteboard could not be downloaded but I assume most users won't know what a "pasteboard" is, and even changing it to The tweet on the clipboard could not be downloaded isn't great IMHO. Removing the on the pasteboard/clipboard phrase is not an option because The tweet could not be downloaded won't work since it sounds like it applies to the main tweet already loaded in the main part of the window, not the tweet on the pasteboard. I could remove the message entirely, but then the user wouldn't know if they successfully copied an invalid link to the pasteboard; they could keep retrying because they think the copy-to-pasteboard failed, not the download-from-twitter failed.
Update 2019-07-20: I wanted to document how Google Chrome does it, because it seems like a good solution. When you tap into the search box to start typing a URL, it provides an extra option immediately below it saying "Link You Copied" followed by the link. I like this because "You Copied" aligns with the action the user took ("Copy") and avoids the whole issue of using "pasteboard" or "clipboard".
from ios development cookbook :
Pasteboards, also known as clipboards on some systems, provide a
central OS feature for sharing data across applications. Users can
copy data to the pasteboard in one application, switch tasks, and then
paste that data into another application. Cut/copy/paste features are
similar to those found in most operating systems. Users can also copy
and paste within a single application, when switching between text
fields or views.
so to answer your question yes, clipboard is called pasteboard in iOS.
Looking at the human interface guidelines, there is a picture of app showing a pop up menu with an option for Copy. So simply say Copy and do not mention pasteboard or clipboard
https://developer.apple.com/ios/human-interface-guidelines/interaction/3d-touch/
I have an iOS application, which stores all downloaded *.pdf files in its cache. Is there a way to prevent this data from extracting? Encryption or something else? Thanks in advance.
There are quite a few ways to encrypt files, and I'm sure everyone will have an opinion on the best way to do so.
In a project I've recently been working on, we've been using CommonCrypto (https://github.com/AlanQuatermain/aqtoolkit). Just take any NSData, encrypt it, and save it to a file, and vice versa. You can even write an easy Transformer by subclassing NSValueTransformer, which abstracts all of the encryption to one spot and you will never have to worry about it again.
You can protect PDF files with a password. I assume you create the PDF files not within the application but externally. For example you can use Preview.app in Mac OS X to secure existing PDF files with a password (Hit Cmd-P, then select PDF in the print menu and there you can set security options. Or even more simple: in the menu choose Export...).
In iOS you can then open the PDF files like this:
CGPDFDocumentRef documentRef = CGPDFDocumentCreateWithURL((__bridge CFURLRef)[NSURL fileURLWithPath:filePath]);
if (!CGPDFDocumentIsUnlocked(documentRef))
CGPDFDocumentUnlockWithPassword(documentRef, password);
...
There are actually 2 Documents folders in which your app can store content. One can be extracted, and one is private. Check the accepted answer in this ticket.
Access files in "private Documents" folder transferred with iTunes
Assuming you want the PDF files from getting extracted on jailbroken devices, the most straight forward approach would be along the following lines:
generate a random string during the first launch of the app
save the random string either in NSUserDefaults in state file inside your own app's sandbox
using this random string create a secret key using a deterministic but hard to figure out algorithm
use this secret key, which you don't store anywhere but always generate on demand, symmetrically encrypt your buffer with AES or something similar
You would probably find the source code here very helpful.
I need to code in authentication information for specific parts of my website into my app. Is it at all possible for the app to be "decompiled" and the username and password exposed?
NSURL *url = [NSURL URLWithString:#"https://predefinedUsername:predefinedPassword#www.website.com"];
Yes, it is possible. Assume that if you have anything compiled into your app, it can [and will] be discovered by someone somewhere. Even if it isn't possible today, you are creating a frozen record of such information that will be vulnerable to any future attacks, known or unknown.
You really need the user to perform some task that authenticates them. There are a million and one ways to do that, and for every one of those, a million and two ways to do it wrong. :)
Without knowing more about your specific requirements, it is impossible to really say much more outside of "keep it simple and don't store or send anything in clear-text".
As #Hyperbole said, If you store the username and password in plain text it will be visible in the executable. It is extremely trivial to examine the executable for strings, and it's usually the first thing someone with malicious intent will try.
Right click on any app you've downloaded in iTunes and select show in finder. Make a copy of the app on your desktop and rename the app from AppName.ipa to AppName.zip. Double-click to unzip it, and look inside the folder. Navigate to the folder Payload and then right click on the (probably only) file in there called AppName that looks like an application but has a big circle with a cross through it for the icon. Select show package contents. Scroll through until you find a file called AppName with no extension and a blackish rectangle with the green word "exec" as an icon. Open that file in text edit or another text editor. You'll find that most of this ends up being random symbols and other crap, but you should occasionally see some plain text. The compiler takes string constants and embeds them directly in the app when you compile it in most cases.
You asked about what magazine apps and others do to access content - There are a ton of different ways to do it but off the top of my head, after the server verifies your in-app purchase receipt, the server would record an identifier specific to your iTunes account, saying that you've purchased a specific issue of the magazine. Then your app can request that file from the server, adding the identifier to the request in the process. The server would respond with the file once it looks through the database and determines that you've purchased the content.
Other solutions include signing/hashing a unique key.
Your example would expose the username and password without the need to decompile as you send it via plain text in a URL request. Anyone with a sniffer or MITM service yould snatch it out of the air. A better approach would be to make use of SSL via the http*s* protocol. You could go a step further and either prompt at runtime for the credentials and/or store an encrypted version within the app.
This is very bad because it is trivially easy to recover these credentials just by running 'strings' against the app binary without needing to decompile it.
Can't you pop up a dialogue box asking the user to enter the credentials when they first start the app ? Alternatively you could store them encrypted in a file and then ask the user for an alternative credential e.g. Passcode that derives the key but even this will not survive a determined attack unless the Passcode is long.
I am working on an application in which i write to an xml file and then send it through email and at the reciever end the receiver recives it in his/her inbox and download the file to the iphone and then open the same app on his phone and browse to this file and by clicking sync button the progra should parse the tags in the xml file.
Everything is cler but i am not sure whether we can download a file to our iphone and browse thru it our app.
Thanks, i appreciate. :)
No, I don't believe you can download a file from mail and pass it to your app to open and read. This would be for security reasons.
I think the only way to achieve this would be to not use an XML file, and instead construct a URL with parameters.
There are a few drawbacks here, though. Depending on how much data you need to pass, the url could get pretty large. You would have to take considerations to make sure that each parameter value is properly URL escaped. And you could have to write code to parse the data in the parameters.
This is how other apps pass data between apps, an example would be the iPhone's Phone app. You can make it call a number by using a tel:// URL.
You can register a URL scheme in your app and use it to pass data around.
I want to bind my app to some file extension so when I receive an email with an attached file with the correct extension, clicking on it will launch my app and pass it the attached file.
Is it possible ? How ?
Thx
--G.
As iPhone applications are not allowed to share files on the file system, what you're looking for is not immediately possible (not with the published APIs that I know of, anyway). You might still have a couple of options though.
Either way you'll have to use a custom URL scheme, which is associated with your app, and paste that into your email. This URL might point to some external location, which your app can download the file from.
Or it might contain the actual file contents if it's fairly small. URLs are 'just text' (some restrictions apply), so you're free to put any data you want to in it, as long as it is URL-encoded.
You still need to get the URL into the email though, which might or might not be as easy as attaching a file.
It's not possible to simply associate a file extension with an application on the iPhone.
You could create a custom URL scheme that would launch your app, but probably that won't help you.
This is actually possible, I'm working on this exact same problem and this great tutorial has really helped me.