Getting info about parent process that launched us

https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/115369

Q：
I’m currently using “ProcessInformationCopyDictionary” to fetch @“ParentPSN”, and then “ProcessInformationCopyDictionary” again to fetch the parent’s bundle id and what-not. This is deprecated. What can I use instead to get the bundle id of the app that launched my app?

A:
In general, the replacement for ProcessInformationCopyDictionary() is NSRunningApplication. However, there doesn’t seem to be replacement for ParentPSN. So, I looked for a different way.

When your app is launched, it receives an Apple Event. It could be kAEOpenApplication (‘oapp’), kAEOpenDocuments (‘odoc’), or a few others. This Apple Event carries sender information, where the sender is the app that launched yours. So, you can do this to learn about the “parent” app:

- (void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(NSNotification *)aNotification
{
    NSAppleEventDescriptor *desc = [[NSAppleEventManager sharedAppleEventManager] currentAppleEvent];
    int32_t parentPid = [[desc attributeDescriptorForKeyword:keySenderPIDAttr] int32Value];
    NSLog(@">>>>> %@ %d %@", desc, parentPid, [NSRunningApplication runningApplicationWithProcessIdentifier:parentPid]);
}

I noticed that the parent was sometimes the app itself. This happens when the app is launched by directly running its executable instead of by Launch Services or the like. For example, if you run the executable inside the app bundle from Terminal. Also, when Xcode runs it. In these cases, the Apple Event is synthesized by Cocoa, which is why it comes from itself.