I have a sandboxed application that uses a document format which can contain embedded filenames. E.g. some of these referenced files are for image files which the user selects in order to associate the image file with data stored in the document. Whilst such images will sometimes be located in the users pictures folder, sometimes they are elsewhere. The document format itself cannot be changed for portability reasons (it is shared with an existing Windows version of the app).
In order for the app to be able to access the files whose names are embedded within the document, when the user selects a filename (using nsopenpanel) to be stored in the document like this, the app also creates an app-scoped security scoped bookmark for each such stored filename. It then stores these bookmarks by serialising them to another file. When the app runs again it loads its previously serialised bookmarks and uses them when accessing the 'embedded' filename and that works fine.
But when I copy such a document (and its associated serialised bookmarks file) from one Mac to another, it doesnt work, even though all the files the bookmarks refer to are known to exist on both Macs. What happens is that whilst the app opens the document file ok (after the user selected it with an nsopenpanel), and successfully reads in the serialised bookmarks from its associated serialised bookmarks file (which again the user has selected using nsopenpanel), and even though the exact same filenames that the bookmarks refer to are known to exist on the other Mac (and can be accessed by the user through finder etc), the sandboxed app still cannot access them. Resolving the bookmarks seems to fail.
The question is: are app-scoped bookmarks restricted to only working on the Mac on which they were created? If I cannot move an app-scoped bookmark from one system to another, how else can I achieve the effect I want without forcing the user to have to manually re-select every such 'embedded' filename with an nsopenpanel?
Tried to find the answer to this question in the Apple docs without success.
I take it it goes without saying that security-scoped bookmarks can only be used by the app that creates them.
No, because if this were possible, developers could save security-scoped bookmarks to sensitive files/directories on their own computers and then deploy their apps and have access to those same sensitive files/directories on other peoples' computers.