CoreZen.framework

A macOS Cocoa framework made up of useful bits of code from my side projects.

Written by Zach Nelson. See the LICENSE file for license info (it's the MIT license).

Getting Started

FMDB.framework Dependency

CoreZen links against and bundles FMDB.framework. The Xcode project is set up to find FMDB installed using Carthage.

Installation: Run carthage update --platform mac to build Carthage/Build/Mac/FMDB.framework. The CoreZen Xcode project will find it from there.

mpv and libav Dependencies

CoreZen links against and bundles dynamic libraries for libmpv and libav. The Xcode project is set up to find headers and libraries installed using Homebrew.

Installation:

1. Run brew install mpv ffmpeg to install mpv and libav.
2. Run Scripts/stage_dependencies.py. This will gather mpv and libav dylibs and headers into Dependencies/lib and Dependencies/include, respectively. The CoreZen Xcode project will find them there.

What's In CoreZen.framework?

1. Preferences

Create dynamic preference windows, inspired by CCNPreferencesWindowController.

2. Foundation Categories

Categories to add functionality to Foundation classes:

• NSFileManager+CoreZen: get application support directory path and executable name
• NSNumber+CoreZen: generate a random integer
• NSURL+CoreZen: find volume details from a URL or volume UUID, get relative paths between URLs, find a URL file size

3. Domain Data Modeling and Persistence

I. Object Identifiers

ZENIdentifier is an (atomically unique increasing) 64-bit integer identifier and the ZENIdentifiable protocol is for objects with such an identifier.

II. Object Cache

ZENObjectCache is a thread safe object cache for ZENIdentifiable objects, configurable to hold either weak or strong refs to cached objects.

III. Database

Helper classes around FMDB and sqlite3, including:

• ZENDatabaseQueue is a database queue with both blocking and async execution options, and shutdown mechanics to handle outstanding async work. (FMDatabaseQueue offers only blocking methods. ZENDatabaseQueue still works with FMDB FMDatabase instances and standard sqlite3 databases.)
• ZENDataTransferObject is a ZENIdentifiable object to build DTOs. ZENDataTransferObject serves as a base class for simple data storage objects which may be serialized (including to and from an sqlite3 database).
• The ZENDatabaseTable protocol to abstract the FMDB work for create, read, update, and delete operations on ZENDataTransferObjects on an sqlite3 database table.
• ZENDatabaseSchema performs simple dynamic database schema updates based an array of ZENDatabaseTable objects.

Note on dependencies: ZENDatabaseQueue and other classes in CoreZen depend on FMDB.framework. See above for installation from Carthage.

IV. Domain Objects

Helper classes to build a domain model, including:

• ZENDomainObject is a ZENIdentifiable object built around a ZENDataTransferObject, allowing asynchronous initialization after initial creation or retrieval from database (or other serialization). Subclasses overriding performAsyncInit:completion: can do work such as checking a file's existence on disk, reading media file metadata, or even fetching other objects from the database (which themselves can then perform asynchronous initialization work). ZENDomainObject allows async init to be performed on an array of objects at once, and will automatically distribute the work using dispatch queues.
• ZENObjectRepository is an object repository combining a ZENDatabaseQueue and a ZENDatabaseTable for object persistence, with a strong or weak ZENObjectCache. ZENObjectRepository exposes ZENDomainObjects while hiding the details of storing and retrieving object ZENDataTransferObjects through ZENDatabaseTable. ZENObjectRepository also hides the complexity of asynchronously initializing the domain objects after retrieval, and caches domain objects in its ZENObjectCache to avoid repeated async initialization costs.

4. Media

Classes to support reading audio and video media files:

• ZENMediaFile is a Work In Progress. Currently supports only basic media metadata retrieval including: video frame size, media duration, and audio and video codec names.

Note on dependencies: ZENMediaFile and other classes in CoreZen depend on libmpv and libav. See above for installation from Homebrew.