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Re: WPAC configuration in Tiger (and beyond)

If what you're looking for is a mechanism to get the results from a PAC file and use it in your application which does not use CF/NS, no such official mechanism exists (that I know of), but rdar://3914712/ tracks the problem.

If you are writing a Cocoa app you can use a hidden WebView's stringByEvaluatingJavaScriptInString: to execute a PAC file. If your PAC files use any of the PAC DNS functions (getMyIpAddress or whatever), this will normally fail as these methods aren't exported by KJS. What you can do to get around this is to preprocess the PAC file, replacing calls to these functions with your own JavaScript functions which call prompt() to communicate with the Objective-C side, then do the DNS stuff there and return the result. This method is necessary if you want to support OS versions < 10.3.9. For > 10.3.9, you can probably use the new WebKit-JavaScript communications methods.

In a previous life I worked on a project where they embedded the mozilla JS engine *just* to process PAC files. Needless to say, this is killing a mosquito with a sledgehammer, but it's something to consider if your memory footprint is not a concern.

Hope this helps,
--dave

On Aug 5, 2005, at 8:48 AM, Jeremy Wyld wrote:

The proxy dictionary does nothing more than hold the settings as produced by the user and saved by the Network Preferences pane. After verifying that the checkbox for PAC is turned on, you should see a couple entries in the dictionary, "ProxyAutoConfigEnable" and "ProxyAutoConfigURLString." "ProxyAutoConfigEnable" should have a value of 1. This will indicate that the PAC should be used. It's up to you to determine how all these should be used. Now if these settings are not being flushed out to SystemConfiguration, make sure you file a bug.

Now, if you use CFNetwork for performing a HTTP or FTP request, it will interpret the dictionary and will make automatic use of the settings. To see how and in what order it chooses to interpret that dictionary, I suggest reading the code directly at http:// darwinsource.opendarwin.org/10.4.2/CFNetwork-128.2/Proxies/ ProxySupport.c and you can see how everything comes into play.

If you are not using CFNetwork or are below HTTP/FTP, you'll need to do the work yourself. I would then suggest filing an enhancement to have CFNetwork export a function which does the heavy lifting. I don't see any particular reason why such a function or such support couldn't be exported.

jeremy


On Aug 5, 2005, at 8:26 AM, Nathan Herring wrote:


[Originally sent to CarbonIT before I realized this list existed.]

Our IT department has a PAC file for use with our Windows browsers.
However, if in 10.4.2, I try and set my proxies "Using a PAC file",
nothing works outside of the firewall.

The CFDictionary information we use to connect shows a bunch of the
proxy server information correctly set in, but the XXXXEnable setting is
false, and we use that to determine whether or not to use that proxy
server.

Q: Is it a known issue that the proxy settings don't quite configure
correctly?

Q: How do you differentiate between internal servers (i.e. proxy
exceptions) and others?

AFAICT, unless you meta-interpret the Java script to extract the known
proxy exceptions, there's no good way to build the list -- you just have
to ask the script how to connect to server X for each server X.

What is the future direction of development here? Should we (as network
applications writers) be expected to use PAC files? Or will Apple
provide a functional intermediate layer above the PAC file? Or will the
proxy settings dictionary eventually "just work"?

TIA,
nh

----
Nathan Herring
MacBU SDE/Development


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References: 
 >WPAC configuration in Tiger (and beyond) (From: Nathan Herring <email@hidden>)
 >Re: WPAC configuration in Tiger (and beyond) (From: Jeremy Wyld <email@hidden>)



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