xcparse

This project is a ~~work in progress / proof of concept~~ seemingly spec compliant pbxproj parser. The API is subject to breaking changes.

yarn add xcparse

Website https://xcode-seven.vercel.app/

Here is a diagram of the grammar used for parsing:

Why

The most popular solution for parsing pbxproj files is a very old package by Cordova called xcode.

But xcode has some major issues:

• Inaccurate parsing: strings can be quoted incorrectly very often, lists often don't work.
• Outdated: values for App Clips, iMessage Sticker packs, etc are missing.
• Untyped: TypeScript is a crutch I proudly support.
• Slow: PEG.js is not very fast (benchmark).
• Feature Incomplete: Missing the Data type (<xx xx xx>).

Solution

• Unlike the xcode package which uses PEG.js, this implementation uses Chevrotain.
• This project support the Data type <xx xx xx>.
• Unopinionated: this could change in the future :] but if it does we'll use modern graph API patterns that are typed.
• This implementation also appears to be more stable since we follow the best guess pbxproj spec.
• String parsing is the trickiest part. This package uses a port of the actual CFOldStylePlist parser which is an approach first used at scale by the CocoaPods team (originally credited to Samantha Marshall).

How

The parsing is very simple (simplicity is the key).

pbxproj is an "old-style plist" (or ASCII Plist), this means it should be possible to represent it as any other static configuration file type like JSON or XML.

We support the following types: Object, Array, Data, String. Notably, we avoid dealing with Integer, Double, Boolean since they appear to not exist in the format.

TODO

• [x] Reading.
• [x] Writing.
• [x] Escaping scripts and header search paths.
• [x] Use a fork of chevrotain -- it's way too large for what it offers.
• [ ] Generating UUIDs.
• [ ] The API would probably be implemented using unist
• [ ] Docs

Docs

Docs are in the works. For now, you can refer to the types and the estimated pbxproj spec.

The API will change in the future, for now we have two methods:

import { 
    /** Given a stringified `pbxproj`, return a JSON representation of the object. */
    parse, 
    /** Given a JSON representation of a `pbxproj`, return a `.pbxproj` string that can be parsed by Xcode. */
    build 
} from 'xctrace'

import fs from 'fs';
import path from 'path';

const pbxproj = parse(fs.readFileSync('/path/to/project.pbxproj'));

const pbxprojString = build(pbxproj);