MAC AE plugin: Bundle scripts with plugin and access for execution

Question

Hi there,
as the title says I'm trying to execute some scripts from my plugin but I can't figure out how to get the plugins location to access the bundled resources. I'm pretty new to the  plugin development so can sombody please point me in the right direction?
I found in the SDK guide the PF_GET_PLATFORM_DATA but there is no example that is using it.
Thanks in advance
Fabian

Answer 1

Hi shachar thanks for your help,
I tried reading a text file that is bundled with the .plugin package without path but I had no luck. The structure within the package is like this (tree looks better with monospaced fonts):
├── Info.plist
├── MacOS
│   └── EXECUTABLE
├── PkgInfo
└── Resources
    ├── EXECUTABLE.rsrc
    ├── bundle-test.txt
    ├── example.txt
And my code is like this:
                string line;
                string alllines("");
                ifstream myfile ("../Resources/example.txt");
                if (myfile.is_open()){
                    while ( myfile.good() ){
                        getline (myfile,line);
                        cout << line << endl;
                        alllines+=line;
                    myfile.close();
                    suites.UtilitySuite3()->AEGP_ReportInfo( S_my_id,alllines.c_str());
                }else{
                    cout << "Unable to open file";
                    suites.UtilitySuite3()->AEGP_ReportInfo( S_my_id,"Error Reading file");
So my result is always my error reading file.
I also tried using getcwd like this:
                char cwd[256];
                if (chdir("/tmp") != 0)
                    perror("chdir() error()");
                else {
                    if (getcwd(cwd, sizeof(cwd)) == NULL)
                        perror("getcwd() error");
                    else
                        printf("current working directory is: %s\n", cwd);
But ther i get a current working directory as: /private/tmp
So how did you manage to read files bundled with your plugin? Magic?
Maybe there is something else I missed.
- I added the files to my source directory.
- I went in xcode rightclick onto the project and selected "add files to PROJECTNAME"
- in the TRAGETS Tab for the project the file is under "Copy Bundle Resources"
- When building the plugin the file I want to read is within the .plugin package
What else could go wrong?
I could also create a script that escapes my script and creates an .h file with a string where I could read from, but this would feel like giving up and I'm not there yet.
I appriciate your help a lot. (to everyone and specially to shachar)
Cheer
Fabian