Re: decodeObjectForKey without definition
Re: decodeObjectForKey without definition
- Subject: Re: decodeObjectForKey without definition
- From: Andy Bell <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 23 Aug 2010 09:34:51 +0200
Hi Kirk,
Thanks for that, I will give it a whirl, its sort of a side project which I
am working on so I haven't chance to try out your ideas yet.
Andy
On Fri, Aug 20, 2010 at 8:01 PM, Kirk Kerekes <email@hidden> wrote:
> Open the file in a hex editor (0xED, for example), if it has the text
> "plist" near the beginning, it may have been archived with NSKeyedArchiver.
> If instead it displays 0x3 or 0x4 followed by 0xb followed by "typedstream"
> or "streamtyped" at the beginning of the file, it was probably archived with
> NSArchiver.
>
> In either case, examining the file should give you some clues as to the
> class contents.
>
> If they are all stock NSClasses, just use the appropriate unarchiver
> class's methods.
>
> If the root is a custom class, you are sort of toast unless you can Google
> the class -- and even then you may be going down a wrong path.
>
> You could write an app that would let you select subtrees of the archive
> and decode them perhaps. Sounds like an interesting project.
>
> Or you could subclass the appropriate archiver class and add some error
> handling/exception handling so that it could proceed as best it could when
> encountering unknown classes. Might need to swizzle in a subclass of NSCoder
> also.
>
> You could substitute an NSMutableDictionary instance for unknown classes
> NSArchiver finds and dynamically create entries in the dictionary for any
> decodable items.
>
> It isn't going to be drop-dead easy -- and there is always the possibility
> (however unlikely) that the originator of the file had subclassed NSCoder
> itself to do something custom.
>
> Could be an interesting tool, if you can make it even half work. Might find
> a market in forensic computing and related areas.
>
> If you are just looking for text, it may be staring at you in the hex
> editor.
>
>
> > I am trying to decode a Yahoo chat file which has been encoded using
> > NSArchiver. The problem is I don't have the definition of the class it
> has
> > encoded and I want to be able to decode it to view the chat conversation.
> > Any ideas on how I go about working out the definition to decode the
> file?
>
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