Is it possible to locate the download folder in Cocoa (and/or Carbon) without having to delve in InternetConfig? None of the usual candidates (NSSearchPathForDirectoriesInDomains, FSFindFolder) do this, and InternetConfig makes it a pain by requiring me to use FSSpec – a type that was marked as deprecated in the PowerPC -> IntelCore transition, thus making me worry about the portability of my code. What should I do? – EmanueleVulcano aka l0ne

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The download folder is stored as data in a plist called com.apple.internetconfig.plist. The data is an alias to the folder. I realize this involves “devling into internet config”, but it works fine for me.

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I meant “delving into InternetConfig” as in “having to use the very old, half-deprecated InternetConfig APIs”. Which I don’t have to, thanks to you :).

Anyway, it’s a NSDictionary plist with “Version X.X.X” [NSDictionary] > “ic-added” [NSDictionary] > “DownloadFolder” [NSDictionary] > “ic-data” [NSData], for everyone’s future reference, where X.X.X is 2.5.4 in my case (but might reasonably vary) and is the only item in the root NSDictionary.

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Keyword for google: Safari

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I’m concerned that the above solution reads the Internet Config plist directly. This seems a little fragile to me. I’ve written the code to load it from IC using the APIs. It isn’t pretty but it seems safer.

Getting the downloads folder using IC:

• (NSString*)downloadsLocationFromIC { NSString * result = nil; ICInstance icInstance = {‘\0’};

  if ( ICStart ( &icInstance, ‘????’ ) == noErr ) { OSStatus error = noErr; ICAttr attr = {‘\0’}; Handle downloadFolderDataSpec = NewHandle(0);

    // Grab ICFileSpec data...
    error = ICFindPrefHandle ( icInstance, kICDownloadFolder, &attr, downloadFolderDataSpec );
    if ( error == noErr && downloadFolderDataSpec != NULL )
    {
        // How big is alias data?
        long	aliasSize = GetHandleSize(downloadFolderDataSpec) - sizeof(ICFileSpec) + sizeof(AliasRecord);
  		
        // Make new handle to hold just the alias data (not the ICFileSpec header).
        AliasHandle	aliasHandle = (AliasHandle)NewHandleClear(aliasSize);
        if ( aliasHandle != NULL )
        {
            ICFileSpec	**	fileSpec = (ICFileSpec**)downloadFolderDataSpec;
            FSRef			ref = {'\0'};
            Boolean			wasChanged = FALSE;
  
            // Copy aliasrecord data into aliashandle
            HLock( downloadFolderDataSpec );
            HLock( (Handle)aliasHandle );
            memcpy( *aliasHandle, &((**fileSpec).alias), aliasSize);
  			
            // Resolve and get path from URL....
            if ( FSResolveAlias( NULL, aliasHandle, &ref, &wasChanged ) == noErr )
            {
                CFURLRef url = CFURLCreateFromFSRef( NULL, &ref );
                if ( url != NULL )
                {
                    result = [((NSURL*)url) path];
                    CFRelease( url );
                }
            }
  			
            DisposeHandle( (Handle)aliasHandle );
        }
  		
        DisposeHandle( downloadFolderDataSpec );
    }
  	
    ICStop ( icInstance );   }
  

  return( result ); }

Enjoy!