How to pass arguments to an IPA while deploying it on the device?

Question

To automate my app, I need to pass some parameters to the built IPA as I deploy it on various devices and run my automation. From various threads I figured I can use "ios-deploy" (https://github.com/phonegap/ios-deploy), a project forked from the fruitstrap project, to successfully deploy an IPA to device via the command line on my terminal. Although ios-deploy documentation suggests it has an option to provide arguments to pass to the app when launching it by using -a or --args, it didn't quite work for me. Rather I am not sure how to read these arguments inside the app. I have tried reading from [[NSProcessInfo processInfo] arguments] as well as NSUserDefaults method (http://perspx.com/archives/parsing-command-line-arguments-nsuserdefaults) and neither are reading the arguments that I am sending to the IPA via ios-deploy -a. These methods work fine if I am building app on XCode and sending arguments (Edit Scheme->Run->Arguments->Arguments passed on launch).

Can someone who has used ios-deploy provide an example on how to use the -a option? Or Is there any other way to launch an IPA (after passing arguments) to a device on the CLI.

Additory

Might be a known issue: see github.com/phonegap/ios-deploy/issues/7 - in any case surely the people to ask are the phonegap people. – Hevesy

Can you bake these things in at compile time, and just produce different build flavors for testing? – Homograft

Have you tried just reading the arguments in your main function? NSProcessInfo should probably contain the same ones but maybe there is a difference. – Armin

@Armin Yes. I tried that and the argv was empty. – Additory

@jeffamaphone No. I need them to be passed in runtime only. – Additory

@Hevesy Thanks a lot. I will forward this query to phonegap developers. – Additory

Answer 1

I needed this too, so, as I have finally found a solution, I will post it, so that it would be easier to find for everyone.

First, Install http://macappstore.org/ideviceinstaller/

If link is broken - in Terminal:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null
brew install ideviceinstaller

Then you can run an already installed app:

idevicedebug run "com.bundle.bundleId" "argument=value" "argument2"

If you have multiple devices connected, provide device UDID for target device:

idevicedebug -u 22296019555853ad916655420ab7596f7a0111 run "com.bundle.bundleId" "argument=value" "argument2"

In your project you then go through all parameters

for(NSString *arg in [[NSProcessInfo processInfo] arguments]){}

But this works on debug versions. If ad-hoc version is installed - can't really launch app (acts like it would have been compiled as ad-hoc from xcode). If debug version is installed - then it all works.

---

Then there is ios-deploy.

https://github.com/phonegap/ios-deploy

It turns out - they did not intend it to use just to launch app. Each time you need to "install it". (https://github.com/phonegap/ios-deploy/issues/236)

ios-deploy --bundle "/Users/user_name/Desktop/Payload/Device.app" --debug "parameter1,parameter2,parameter_key3=parameter_value3"

(parameters are provided within one string "all_parameters".. how to separate them - up to you.)

Where you encounter the argument string and then you think of a smart way how to deal with it (separate if multiple parameters, etc..)

But also - in ios-deploy case, if ad-hoc version is tested, I experienced problems (app not launching.. crashing etc..) if debug version is used - it's all fine.

Marabou