Mac Forum / Programming / Mac Programming / December 2005

I am trying to make a customized open file dialog that allows the
opening of files that need root permissions, eg a file like
/etc/httpd.conf.  I can use the Authorization API to prompt a user when
saving the file. But if I use a regular open dialog, all those files are
grayed out, so I cannot even open them.

One thing I tried is the following in MyDocument:

- (IBAction)openDocument:(id)sender
{
  int         result;
  NSArray     *fileTypes = [NSArray arrayWithObject: @"conf"];
  NSOpenPanel *oPanel = [NSOpenPanel openPanel];
 
  [oPanel setAllowsMultipleSelection: NO];
 
  if (result == NSOKButton)
  {
     NSArray *filesToOpen = [oPanel filenames];
     NSString *aFile = [filesToOpen objectAtIndex: 0];

     if (aFile != nil)
     {
       // open file, etc
     }
  }
}

It works, but this will only work for .conf files, and the code needs to
be edited when I decide to open files with a different extension.

So I was wondering is this is a good approach, or that I am overseeing
something and need to use another method

As an example, TextWrangler does what I am looking for.

thanks,

- Koen.