Bonjour for Windows has another version of dns_sd.jar. If your application uses functions in dns_sd.jar and about to be launched on Bonjour for Windows, then build path and run time library path should indicate the dns_sd.jar in Bonjour for Windows.

In sum, dns_sd.jar on MacOSX works only with mDNSResponder for MacOSX. mDNSResponder on Windows should communicate with dns_sd.jar that is included in Bonjour for Windows.

This is because, though Avahi supports most functionalities through its service discovery daemon, the abstraction layer of Apple Bonjour in Avahi doesn’t include that method. Seems that author are curious why that method is needed. Refer to the following link. There’s a talk about updateRecord function as well as addRecord. http://avahi.org/ticket/56

Running Bonjour enabled application is possible by default on that platform.

If you want to build your own Java based application using Bonjour, two steps are required before building them.

1. sudo apt-get install build-essential

2. mDNSResponder from Apple and build this.

And then it works.

will update this later.

While you can write code and test them on the simulator that is provided in the free iPhoneSDK 2.0, you must get the certificate from Apple to make your application running on the real target such as iPhone/iPhone3G/iPod Touch. When you have your program run on them, the target device tries to see if you are a valid person who are allowed to upload a file or change the contents in iPhone device. Otherwise, the device would be vulnerable to malicious code and something else. (A lot of mechanisms are provided in iPhone to address those security issues. This also involves proprietary issues.)

Here is a brief description about what you need and why they are needed. This is actually backward steps to describe why each component is in need. 

1. Certificate

This is the certificate that shows you are a valid person who can control the devices (up to 100 ea. according to the document.). To get this, you send CSR (certificate signing request) to the developer’s portal site. To make CSR, you generate your private/public key pair, exports it to a file, and upload the file to the portal.

2. Profile

In the device, profiles are stored. It contains the information about your certificate and the registered device (by providing the serial number of your iPhone.). This is also generated in the developer’s portal. It combines the device information and your certificate, then you download the result and store it in your device. Every time you upload the program you wrote to the device, it inspects the profiles to see if the program is from a valid person and the device is right one that runs the program with the certificate.

3. Apple Portal For iPhone Developer

As an intermediate entity, this portal site works. When a developer get the certificate, he or she sends the CSR to this portal then it generates the certificate. The developer downloads the newly generated certificate from this site, exports it to a file and uses it to generate a profile after registering the device information to this portal that you want to use.

4. iPhone Developer Program

To get in to Apple iPhone Developer’s Portal, you enroll in iPhone Developer Program. In order to do that, you also need an Apple ID. This can be free but it seems that the steps for the registration forces users to get MobileME account. Carefully reading the steps leads you not to buy Mobile ME account that should be paid annually. 

The detail steps to do all these are described in the documents from Apple and they are available once you buy the membership. Or, reading the above steps from the last one would show you briefly what the steps will be.

This is about the iPhone/iPod Touch version of BBS application (v1.0.3)

The internal HTTP server to serve item information to other nodes should run in a different thread in order to response to itself. (In a lot of situations, the BBS application sends request to itself.) Otherwise, it would be freeze right after sending a request to itself since it waits for the result from the parsers that are supposed to parse the contents in the response from the counter node, which is itself in this case.

While you can connect to a certain host machine with the URL containing the host name (ex. host.name.local.), it doesn’t seem to work on the iPod Touch.

Assume that we have iPod Touch and one Mac machine. There would be two names on Zeroconf network. Let’s say that “iPodT” for iPod Touch, and “MacMini” for a mac machine.

It is possible to connect to the Mac machine with URL “http://MacMini.local.:80″ if a web server is running on it. However, under the same condition, “iPodT” cannot be resolved. So, I couldn’t connect to a web server running on the host, “iPodT”, via the address, “http://iPodT.local.:80″ though the server is listening on the port 80.

To test this, I built an application that contains a small size web server and launch the app on my iPod Touch version 2.0. The web server runs on MacOS under the same condition and test cases gracely.

This leads to another issue. If you connect to a certain local server according to the information from ZeroConfiguration network daemon, the host name cannot be used as a connection information since the IP address for that machine is not resolved automatically. You should resolve the service node, obtain the IP addresses (usually not just one address), and choose one of them. 

One good thing is my iPod Touch doesn’t have more than one IP address while most hosts have several ones. So, as workaround, if one service has only one IP address, I sometimes assume that the host is some tiny device such as iPod Touch.

Kiwoon Sung

Will get this more detail later.

In brief, you can publish more than one TXT record with the same keys continuously, while you should publish all of them only one time and TXT records should have different keys for each TXT record. 

In my program, to keep the information broadcasted to Zeroconf as simple as possible, some TXT record field is set several times with the same keys. (accordingly, on the browser such as Bonjour browser, user are not bothered with many information.) This works on general platforms such as Windows Vista and Mac OS X.

However, it doesn’t seem to work in iPhoneOS 2.0. If you want to publish the service and additional information with the same keys over and over, you have to publish the service again every time you want to update the information. But this action makes the program halted.

Three approaches

1. shttpd (I mentioned this in another article)

2. Cocoa HTTP server

3. SimpleHTTPServer (on Google Project Hosting)

Will be updated.

Some applications such as a HTTP daemon, should be running as long as the iPhone/iPod Touch is turned on. In order to make them running the that manner, you need to let the device know what programs should be invoked when it is turned on. What you need to do is writing the property list file for the program and store it the desired location in the device.

The property list file example:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
        <key>Label</key>
        <string>"Package Name".plist</string>

        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
                <string>/Applications/"AppFolder".app/"AppName"</string>
                <string>"Option"</string>
                <string>"Argument"</string>
        </array>

        <key>OnDemand</key>
        <false/>

        <key>StandardErrorPath</key>
        <string>/dev/null</string>

        <key>Disabled</key>
        <false/>
</dict>
</plist>

In the above example, you can see the double-quoted parts:
1. “Package Name” should be the name you intend of using
2. “AppFolder” is the location where your program is installed.
3. “AppName” is the file name of the execution file for the program.
4. “Option” is the option string that you can define for the program.
5. “Argument” is the value for the above option. For example, you can write “-port” for the option and “20001″ for the argument.

After writing the property file, store it /Library/LaunchDaemons/ in the device. After rebooting it, the program should be launched as the background entity.