HowToRegisterURLHandler

Registing a URL handler with your application will allow it to respond to users clicking on a link that uses the registered protocol. For example, an web browser would register a URL handler for the "http", or another example would be an application registering a custom protocol "myapp" which allows the application to handle any clicks on links using that protocol (ie "myapp://some_action_or_resource")

• URLParsing - helpful methods when responding to a URL

Here is what you need to do to register your app for a custom URL scheme (for the example we will use a "myapp" scheme).

1) In your Info.plist, add a new entry for CFBundleURLTypes?:

<key>CFBundleURLTypes</key>
	<array>
		<dict>
			<key>CFBundleURLName</key>
			<string>MyApp's URL</string>
			<key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key>
			<array>
				<string>myapp</string>
			</array>
		</dict>
	</array>

2) Somewhere in your application's startup code (e.g. init), add this code:

- (void)registerMyApp
{
	[[NSAppleEventManager sharedAppleEventManager] setEventHandler:self andSelector:@selector(getUrl:withReplyEvent:) forEventClass:kInternetEventClass andEventID:kAEGetURL];
}

- (void)getUrl:(NSAppleEventDescriptor *)event withReplyEvent:(NSAppleEventDescriptor *)replyEvent
{
	NSString *url = [[event paramDescriptorForKeyword:keyDirectObject] stringValue];
	// Now you can parse the URL and perform whatever action is needed
}

Launch Services: [http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/LaunchServicesConcepts/index.html]

In Mac OS X Tiger and later, you can call LSSetDefaultHandlerForURLScheme? to register an app as the default handler for a protocol, as would be need for a common protocol such as http, or ftp.

See http://www.xmldatabases.org/WK/blog/1154_Handling_URL_schemes_in_Cocoa.item