# BridgeSupport XML files

## Introduction

PyObjC 2.0 introduced a way to load enhanced API descriptions from XML “bridgesupport” files. The format of this file is shared between a number of bridges, although later releases of PyObjC added more capabilities that aren’t in the official format.

As of PyObjC 2.4 [1] use of bridgesupport files is deprecated, the compiled metadata system allows for faster and lazy loading.

Note

macOS ships with bridgesupport files in most frameworks, but the quality of those files is in general pretty bad and those files are therefore not used by PyObjC.

## Basic structure and use

Bridgesupport files are XML files with a root element “signatures” that has child elements for various kind of API descriptions. The API descriptions contain information that cannot be extracted at runtime, such as the names and types of global variables (constants), enum labels, function prototypes and additional information about method signatures.

PyObjC supports loading bridgesupport files when initializing a module using `initFrameworkWrapper()`, as well as parsing the contents of bridgesupport files using `parseBridgeSupport()`.

The function `initFrameworkWrapper()` is basicly a one-step solution for wrapping a framework: it loads the framework bundle and bridgesupport file and then initializes the contents of the wrapper module. Bridgesupport files are located using a search path:

> 1. “PyObjC.brigesupport” next to the module calling `initFrameworkWrapper()`.

> 2. A resource file inside the framework itself (with suffix “.bridgesupport” and the same basename as the framework, located in subdirectory “BridgeSupport”).

> 3. A resource name with the same basename as the framework and suffix “.bridgesupport” in “/System/Library/BridgeSupport”

>    Note

>    PyObjC will not load bridgesupport files from “/Library/BridgeSupport” or “~/Library/BridgeSupport” to avoid depending on system-specif files that could make a bundled PyObjC application non-portable.

When a bridgesupport is loaded from the last two location the function also looks for “PyObjCOverrides.bridgesupport” next to the module that called `initFrameworkWrapper()`.

## Creating a library wrapper

The easiest way to create a framework wrapper using bridgesupport files is to use a python package where the “__init__.py” contains a call of `initFrameworkWrapper()`

    import objc as _objc

    __bundle__ = _objc.initFrameworkWrapper("FrameworkName",
                         frameworkIdentifier="com.apple.Framework",
                         frameworkPath=_objc.pathForFramework("/System/Library/Frameworks/FrameworkName.framework")
                         globals=globals())

The framework name, identifier and path should be replaced by the information for the framework you are wrapping.

The `initFrameworkWrapper()` will load bridgesupport files from a file named “PyObjC.bridgesupport” next to the “__init__.py” when such a file exist, and otherwise from the default location in the framework itself.

Note

The call to `objc.pathForFramework()` ensures that the wrapper does the right thing when DYLD environment variables are set (see dyld(1) for more information on those).

## Detailed file structure

This section describes the BridgeSupport file as supported by PyObjC. PyObjC supports a slightly different dialect of those files than what is described in Apple’s manual page for BridgeSupport.

The file is an XML document with a toplevel element named “signatures”. The standard proscribes an attribute named version, that attribute is ignored by PyObjC. A minimal BridgeSupport file is:

    <signature version='1.0'>
    </signatures>

The document root has children that contain the metadata for various types of objects.

- <cftype>: Describes a Core Foundation type

- <class>: Describes additional information for an Objective-C class, this does not contain all information about the class, only those bits that cannot be extracted from the Objective-C runtime.

- <constant>: Describes a (constant) external variable

- <enum>: A numeric constant, used for enum labels and #define’s that expand into an integer or float literal.

- <function>: Describes a C function

- <function_pointer>: An alias for a <function> node.

- <informal_protocol>: Describes the interface of an Objective-C informal protocol (that is, a protocol that is only described in documentation and not as a language construct)

- <null_const>: Describes a constant value that evaluates to C’s NULL pointer

- <opaque>: A pointer type that refers to an opaque blob (a “handle”).

- <string_constant>: Describes a #define that expands into a C or Objective-C string literal

- <struct>: Describes a typedef-ed C structure (for example `NSPoint`)

The sections below contain more information about all types, with details about their semantics, supported child elements and attributes.

The document can contain other elements, attributes, and extra whitespace and those will be ignored by the bridgesupport parser.

Bridgesupport elements are processed in an undefined order, the side effects of alle elements that have the same name will take place but it is undefined which definition will be bound to a name in the module globals dictionary.

See also

BridgeSupport(5)

  Apple manual page describing the metadata format

### Type encodings

A number of elements have a “type” attribute that contains an Objective-C runtime type encoding. Most contain the type encoding for a single type, the signature for methods in informal protocol contains the type signatures of the return value and all arguments (included the implicit ones).

The type signatures are described in Apple’s Objective-C Runtime Programming Guide, and the format of the BridgeSupport file uses that format with one small change: the BridgeSupport file can contain some type encoding that aren’t presesnt in Apple’s runtime and redefines one type encoding.

> Typecode | Description
> --- | ---
> B | used for type `BOOL`, is used for `bool` in the Objective-C runtime
> Z | used for type `bool`
> T | used for type `UniChar`
> t | used for type `char` in the role of a single character
> z | used for type `char` in the role of a small integer

The bridge uses the information provided by these ehnanced type encodings and translates them to regular type encodings when communicating with the Objective-C runtime (or other Objective-C code).

### Boolean attributes

A number of elements that are described below have attributes that are booleans. When the documentation says that an attribute is a boolean attribute the value of the attribute is either true or false:

    <function name='func1' variadic='true' />
    <function name='func1' variadic='false' />

The values true and false correspond to the Python values `True` and `False` (the obvious interpretation).

### <cftype>

Nodes of this type define a CoreFoundation type, such `CFURLRef`. These elements are used to define a Python proxy for the CoreFoundation type and to register that type with the bridge. The proxy type is a subclass of `objc_object`.

    <cftype name='CFURLRef' type='^{CFURLRef}' gettypeid_func='CFURLGetTypeID' />

These elements do not have child elements, all information is encoded in attributes:

> - name: the name of the Objetive-C type (such as `CFURLRef`

> - type, type64: the type encoding for the Objective-C type, type64 contains the encoding for use in 64-bit mode when that encoding is different from the encoding used in 32-bit mode.

> - gettypeid_func: (optional) the name of a C function for retrieving the type ID of the type, the default is derived from the name (strip “Ref” from the end of name, then add “GetTypeID”)

> - tollfree: (optional) the name of an Objective-C class that is tollfree bridged to this type For tollfree bridged types the bridge does not create a new proxy type, but reuses the proxy type for the Objective-C class. That is, in Python the CoreFoundation and Objective-C interfaces can be used without any form of casting.

### <class>

Describes additional metadata for Objective-C classes.

    <class name='NSObject'>
      <method selector='description'>
        <retval type='@' />
      </method>
    </class>

The element has a single attribute name with the name of the Objective-C class. When that class is not present in the runtime the metadata is stored for later use (a later class definition or bundle loading action might make the class known to the runtime later on).

The element has 0 or more children with method definitions, the tag for those children is <method> and other children are ignored.

A <method> element has the following attributes:

- selector: The selector for this method

- class_method: A boolean attribute that indicates if this method is a class method (default: false).

- variadic: Boolean attribute that tells if the method has a variable number of arguments (default: false)

- c_array_delimited_by_null: Boolean attribute that tells if a variadic function has an argument list that is ended by a null value (default: false).

- c_array_length_in_arg: For a variadic function the argument with this index contains the number of variadic arguments.

- suggestion: Indicates that this method should not be used from Python code. The value contains a message to add to the Python exception that’s raised when trying to use the method.

Method’s have 0 or more <arg> and <retval> child elements that describe additional information about the method prototype (information that cannot be extracted from the Objective-C runtime). The structure of <arg> and <retval> elements is described in the section describing function and method prototypes.

### <constant>

This element defines a C constant/variable definition.

    <constant name="NSZeroPoint" type="{_NSPoint=ff}" type64="{_CGPoint=dd}" />

This element does not have children, all information is encoded in attributes.

- name: The name of the variable. This name is bound to the proxied value in the globals dictionary.

- type, type64: The type encoding of the variable. The attribute type64 is used to describe the type encoding for the 64-bit runtime when that encoding is different from the encoding for the 32-bit runtime.

- magic_cookie: Boolean attribute. When the value is true and the type is an Objective-C or CoreFoundation class the value is assumed to be a magic cookie that cannot be accessed like a normal object.

The bridge will ignore constants that have a type that is a struct type with embedded function pointers.

Note

Due to the way these values are exposed to Python they will behave like constants in Python, the Python representation will not change when the value of the C variable would change. This means that <constant> definitions aren’t useful to expose variable definitions that aren’t effectively constant (such as the `NSApp` variable).

### <enum>

This element defines a numeric constant such as an `enum` label or C a macro that expands into an integer or float literal.

    <enum name='NSCompareEqual' value='0' />

This element does not have children, all information is encoded in attributes.

- name: The name of the constant

- value, value64: The value of the constant. The attribute value64 contains the value for 64-bit code when that value is different from value.

- le_value, be_value: When the value and value64 attributes are not present, these two attributes encode the value of the constant for little endian (le_value) and big endian (be_value) systems.

The value attribute can contain a numeric constant in a number of formats:

- An integer with or without a sign, in the format of a decimal integer C constant without a size suffix (such as ‘L’). Examples are 42, -32. These are converted to a Python integral type (`int` or `long`).

- A C floating point constant in a decimal representation, without a size suffix. Examples are 1.0, -1.5e30. These are converted to a Python floating point type (`float`).

- A C floating point constant in a hexadecimal representation, without a size suffix. An example is 0x1.77p+10. These are converted to a Python floating point type (`float`).

When the value cannot be parsed the definition is ignored.

### <function>

This element defines a global C function.

    <function name="NSCreateObject">
       <retval type="@" />
       <arg type="#" />
    </function>'

Information about the function itself is encoded in attributes of the <function> elements, information about the return value is encoded as the child element <retval> and information about arguments is encoded using <arg> elements.

- name: The name of the function

- variadic: Boolean attribute that tells if the function has a variable number of arguments (default: false)

- c_array_delimited_by_null: Boolean attribute that tells if a variadic function has an argument list that is ended by a null value (default: false). When the function is variadic and this attribute is true the last <arg> child contains information about all variadic arguments (that is, there can be 0 or more instances of the argument described by that node present in the actual argument list).

- c_array_length_in_arg: For a variadic function the argument with this index contains the number of variadic arguments. The last <arg> child contains the type information for those arguments.

The structure of <arg> and <retval> elements is described in the section describing function and method prototypes.

Note

Variadic functions are only supported when the bridge has enough information to construct a valid argument list using one of the arguments described above or a printf_format attribute on one of the <arg> children.

### <function_pointer>

This element is intended to be used to define function aliases, that is an alternative name for a <function> element. Due to the way PyObjC is implemented the element can also be used to define an alias for other elements (for example <enum> or <constant> elements).

    <function_pointer name='AlternateName' original='BasicName' />

This element does not have children, all information is encoded in attributes.

- name: the name that will be added to the globals dictionary

- orginal: the name from the globals dictionary that will be aliased. When this object does not exist the <function_pointer> element will be ignored.

### <informal_protocol>

This element is used to describe an Objective-C informal protocol, that is a set of methods expected by an API that are described in the documentation but are not a formal `@protocol` definition. The information in informal protocol definitions are used by the bridge to automaticly adjust the method signatures of method that are defined in Python.

    <informal_protocol name="NSTableViewDataSource">
       <method selector="numberOfRowsInTableView:" type="i@:@" type64="q@:@" />
    </informal_protocol>

The <informal_protocol> element has a single attribute, name, with the name of the protocol. Child elements with tag <method> contain more information about methods in the protocol. Other child elements are ignored.

All information for <method> elements is provided through attributes, the element does not have child elements (and does not contain the same kind of information as <method> elements in <class> definitions.

The following attributes can be used for <method> elements:

- selector: The selector for the method

- type, type64: The Objective-C type encoding of the method prototype: the return value followed by all arguments (including the two implicit arguments).

Note

The <method> elelments in an informal protocol cannot be used to describe complicated method signatures, such as variadic methods or pointer arguments that refer to arrays. This can be worked around by describing such methods using <method> notes of a <class> definition for class `NSObject` as well.

### <null_const>

This element defines a name that expands into a C `NULL` pointer, and that is represented as `None` in Python.

    <null_const name='nil' />

This element does not have children, all information is encoded in attributes.

- name: The name of a `NULL` constant. This name will be bound to `None` in the globals dictionary.

### <opaque>

This element describes pointer types that are used as handles.

    <opaque name='NSOpaqueType' type='^{opaque}' />

These elements do not have child elements, all information is encoded in attributes:

- name: The name of the type

- type, type64: The Objective-C type encoding of the pointer type. The type64 attribute can be used

    to describe the type for the 64-bit runtime when that type is different from the type for the 32-bit runtime.

### <string_constant>

This element describes C constants that are string literals, for example C macros.

    <string_constant name="NSLabel"  value="label text" />

These elements do not have child elements, all information is encoded in attributes:

- name: Name of the constant

- value, value64: The value of the constant. The attribute value64 can be used when the value for the 64-bit runtime is different from the value for the 32-bit runtime.

- nsstring: Boolean attribute, defaults to `False`. When this value is `True` the Python representation is a unicode string (`unicode`), otherwise the Python representation is a byte string (`bytes`).

### <struct>

This element describes a C structure type and is used to create a Python type with a simular interface (see `createStructType()`).

    <struct name='NSPoint' type='{_NSPoint="x"f"y"f}' type64='{_CGPoint="x"d"y"d}' />

These elements do not have child elements, all information is encoded in attributes:

- name: The name of the structure type, this is usually the typedef name in C

- type, type64: The Objective-C type encoding of the type. Use type64 when the encoding for the 64-bit runtime is different from the encoding for the 32-bit runtime.

  The encoding should be for a structure type and must include embedded field names, when the field names are not present the definition is ignored. A structure type contains embedded field names with the encoding contains a (double-)quoted field name just before the type encoding of that field. In the example above the field names are x and y.

- alias: Name of a Python type that should be used for the Python representation of this structure. That type should be created using `createStructType()` (or a <struct> element in a bridgesupport file). The value of the attribute is a fully qualified name.

  One example for using this is to map the Objective-C types `NSPoint` and `CGPoint` to the same Python type.

### Describing function and method prototypes

The elements <function> and <method> (in <class> definitions) can have child elements that are used to describe the full prototype (for functions) or additional information about the prototype (for methods).

For functions the <arg> children contain information about all arguments, in order (and without using the attribute index described below). The <retval> child element can contain information about the function return value, when that element is not present the function has return type `void`.

For methods the <arg> children can contain more information about some arguments, these children have an index attribute that tells which argument is described. Likewise the <retval> element can optionally provide more information about the return value of a method.

It is undefined which <retval> element is used when more then one of them is present, and the bridge may also ignore definitions with multiple <retval> elements.

The following attributes can be used with <arg> and <retval> elements:

- index: For <arg> children of <method> elements only. Contains the argument index, where index 0 is the first explicit method argument (that is, the two implicit arguments cannot not present in the bridgesupport file).

- type, type64: Type of the argument or return value. Required for children of <function>, and optional for children of <method> (the default type is extracted from the Objective-C runtime). The type64 attribute can be used to describe the type for the 64-bit runtime when that type is different from the type for the 32-bit runtime.

- type_modifier: A modifier for pointer arguments. Use value ‘n’ to specify that a value is passed into the function, ‘o’ to specify that a value is passed out of the function and ‘N’ to specify that a value is passed both ways.

  When none of the c_array_… attributes are used the argument is a pass-by-reference argument (single value), otherwise the argument is a buffer (C array).

- already_cfretained: Boolean attribute (default `False`). When `True`, the return value, or pass-by-reference output parameter, is an object that is returned with an increased retain count (that is, the Objective-C caller must call `CFRelease()` when it no longer needs to access the value).

- already_retained: Boolean attribute (default `False`). When `True`, the return value, or pass-by-reference output parameter, is an object that is returned with an increased retain count (that is, the Objective-C caller must call the retain method when it no longer needs to access the value).

  Metadata where both already_retained and already_cfretained are true is invalid and will be ignored.

- c_array_length_in_result: Boolean attribute (default `False`). When true the <arg> is a pointer argument that points to a buffer of values where the number of values is in the return value of the function or method. This is commonly used with output parameters (see type_modifier), and with an argument that is used to specify the size of the buffer that needs to be allocated before calling the function or method.

- c_array_delimited_by_null: Boolean attribute (default `False`). When true the value is a pointer to a null-terminated buffer of values.

- c_array_of_variable_length: Boolean attribute (default `False`). When true the value is a pointer to a buffer where the bridge has no information about the expected size. For arguments the bridge assumes that the size of the sequence that the caller passes is sufficient (for input parameters), for return values the bridge creates a special sequence type that doesn’t limit the indexes you can use.

- printf_format: Boolean attribute (default `False`). When true the argument is a printf-style format string, used when the function or method is a variadic callable to convert the additional arguments.

- function_pointer: Boolean attribute (default `False`). When true the argument is a function pointer, the function interface is described by child elements of this element.

- block: Boolean attribute (default `False`). When true the argument is a block, the block interface is described by child elements of this element.

- function_pointer_retained: Boolean attribute (default `False`). When true and either function_pointer or block is true, the function pointer argument will be stored by the called function. The bridge cannot create a temporary C bridge for the function that’s cleaned up after the call.

- free_result: The return value in C is a buffer that should be freed using the function `free()`.

- sel_of_type, sel_of_type64: Used when the argument has type `SEL`: the value of the attribute describes the type signature of a selector. This data is used by the decorator `selectorFor()` to adjust the method signature of a newly defined python method.

- c_array_of_fixed_length: The argument or return value is a C array of a fixed length. The attribute value is the (integer) value of that length.

- c_array_length_in_arg: The argument or return value is an array whose length is passed in another argument. The value is the index of that argument (for methods index 0 is the first explicit argument). For <arg> nodes the value can also be two integers separated by a comma, in those cases the first value is the argument that contains the array length that should be passed to the function while the second value the argument that contains the usuable length of the array when the function returns.

## API description

objc.parseBridgeSupport(xmldata, globals, frameworkName[, dylib_path[, inlineTab]])
  Parameters:

    - xmldata – A string with the bridgesupport XML document

    - globals – Globals dictionary for the wrapper module, usually the result of `globals`.

    - frameworkName – Name of the framework, it is assumed that the Python module for the wrapper has the same name.

    - dylib_path – (Optional) filesystem path for a shared library with additional function definitions. Used by the system bridgesupport files to provide access to inline functions.

    - inlineTab – (Optional) A capsule object with function pointers, see `loadFunctionList()` for more information on this parameter.

  Load a BridgeSupport XML file with metadata for a framework.

  The definitions from the framework will be added to the globals dictionary.

  Note

  This function is primarily present for backward compatibility and for users that need an easy way to wrap their own Objective-C code. PyObjC itself uses a different metadata mechanism that’s better tuned to the needs of PyObjC.

  Changed in version 2.4: This function is not present.

  Changed in version 2.5: The function is available again.

objc.initFrameworkWrapper(frameworkName, frameworkPath, frameworkIdentifier, globals[, inlineTab[, scan_classes[, frameworkResourceName]]])
  Parameters:

    - frameworkName – Name of the framework, it is assumed that the Python module for the wrapper has the same name.

    - frameworkPath – Filesystem path for the framework bundle

    - frameworkIdentifier – Bundle identifier for the framework

    - globals – Globals dictionary for the wrapper module, usually the result of `globals`.

    - inlineTab – (Optional) A capsule object with function pointers, see `loadFunctionList()` for more information on this parameter.

    - scan_classes – (Optional) If this option is `True` (the default) all Objective-C classes in the runtime are added to globals.

    - frameworkResourceName – (Optional) the first argument for pkg_resources.resource_string(), defaults to frameworkName.

  Load the named framework using the identifier if that has result otherwise using the path. Also loads the information in the bridgesupport file ( either one embedded in the framework or one next to the module that called `initFrameworkWrapper()`).

  See Basic structure and use for more information on the way this function loads for bridgesupport files.

  Changed in version 2.4: This function is not present.

  Changed in version 2.5: The function is available again.

Footnotes

[ 1 ]

Technically, deprecation started in PyObjC 2.5, the bridgesupport system was temporarily removed in PyObjC 2.4.