How to retrieve iTunes preferences programmatically to find audio libraries?

Question

I'm creating an application on the Mac in Cocoa that plays audio. I think the best place for my application to search for audio files on a user's computer is to get the directory path(s) from iTunes. How would I retrieve the directory paths(s) from iTunes? Would this be in some sort of preference setting?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Just for those who will encounter this problem in the future, I've documented the approach that I used below.

I decided not to use the Karelia framework because I don't need all the bells and whistles. I just need to locate the iTunes library and display a list of songs.

I went through the Karelia framework and it appears that they locate the iTunes library via the user defaults as shown below.

+ (NSArray*) parserInstancesForMediaType:(NSString*)inMediaType
{
    NSMutableArray* parserInstances = [NSMutableArray array];

    if ([self isInstalled])
    {
        CFArrayRef recentLibraries = CFPreferencesCopyAppValue((CFStringRef)@"iTunesRecentDatabases",(CFStringRef)@"com.apple.iApps");
        NSArray* libraries = (NSArray*)recentLibraries;

        for (NSString* library in libraries)
        {
            NSURL* url = [NSURL URLWithString:library];
            NSString* path = [url path];
            BOOL changed;
            (void) [[NSFileManager imb_threadSafeManager] imb_fileExistsAtPath:&path wasChanged:&changed];

            NSString *libraryPath = [path stringByDeletingLastPathComponent];   // folder containing .xml file
            [IMBConfig registerLibraryPath:libraryPath];

            IMBiTunesParser* parser = [[[self class] alloc] initWithMediaType:inMediaType];
            parser.mediaSource = path;
            parser.shouldDisplayLibraryName = libraries.count > 1;
            [parserInstances addObject:parser];
            [parser release];
        }

        if (recentLibraries) CFRelease(recentLibraries);
    }

    return parserInstances;
}

Using the above approach, you can locate all iTunes libraries with the following code.

NSUserDefaults *userDefaults = [NSUserDefaults standardUserDefaults];
NSDictionary *userPref = [userDefaults persistentDomainForName:@"com.apple.iApps"];

NSArray *recentDatabases = [userPref objectForKey:@"iTunesRecentDatabases"];

for (NSString *key in recentDatabases)
{
    NSLog(@"%@", key);
}

Also if you inspect the user defaults iApps dictionary you can use these other keys to get info for other applications

iMovie
iPhotoAutoImportPath
iPhotoRecentDatabases
iTunesRecentDatabases
iTunesRecentDatabasePaths