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Default Download Directory

Have you ever wondered how to access the user's default download directory/folder (as used by Safari for example) using Cocoa? You cannot directly. So we wrote a category for NSWorkspace calling into the legacy InternetConfig library which is now part of Carbon - so do not forget to link against Carbon when using this code.

Thanks to Uli Kusterer for the original!

@implementation NSWorkspace (OPExtensions)

- (NSString*) downloadDirectory 
/*" Returns the user's std. download directory path 
    taken from Internet Config. "*/
{ 
    // Code modified from Uli Kusterer's UKPathUtilities:
    ICInstance     inst = NULL; 
    ICFileSpec     fSpec; 
    long length = kICFileSpecHeaderSize; 
    FSRef fref; 
    unsigned char fpath[PATH_MAX] = { 0 }; 
    if (ICStart(&inst, 0L ) != noErr) goto cleanup; 
    ICGetPref(inst, kICDownloadFolder, NULL, &fSpec, &length); 
    ICStop(inst); 
    if (FSpMakeFSRef( &fSpec.fss, &fref ) != noErr ) goto cleanup; 
    if (FSRefMakePath( &fref, fpath, 1024 ) != noErr ) goto cleanup; 
cleanup: ;
    if (fpath[0] == 0) return [NSHomeDirectory() 
        stringByAppendingPathComponent: @"Desktop"];
    return [NSString stringWithUTF8String: (char*)fpath]; 
}
@end

Have fun!

Dirk

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