Publishing a Network Service

Bonjour zero-configuration networking lets you advertise network services, such as a printer or a document syncing service, on a network. There are three ways to publish a network service:

• For Objective-C and Core Foundation code, the recommended way is with the CFNetServices API.

• For portable C code that must run on operating systems other than iOS and OS X, the DNS Service Discovery C API is recommended.

You can publish a network service with the following steps:

1. Create a socket to listen for connections to the service. See Writing a TCP-Based Server in Networking Programming Topics for the recommended way to listen for connections on a network socket.

2. Create a service object, providing the port of your socket, the domain (usually an empty string), and the service type string of your choosing:

   • With Foundation, initialize an NSNetService object with the initWithDomain:type:name:port: method.

   • With Core Foundation, create a CFNetServiceRef object with the CFNetServiceCreate function.

   • With the DNS Service Discovery API, call DNSServiceRegister to return a DNSServiceRef object.

3. Assign a delegate or callback:

   • With Foundation, assign a delegate to the NSNetService object with the delegate method.

   • With Core Foundation, assign a client callback to the CFNetServiceRef object with the CFNetServiceSetClient function.

   • With the DNS Service Discovery API, you should pass a client callback (and, optionally, a pointer to a context object of your choosing) in your call to DNSServiceRegister. At this point, you are done except for handling callbacks when they occur.

4. Schedule or reschedule the service, if necessary:

   • With Foundation, the service is automatically scheduled on the current run loop in the default mode. If you need to schedule the object on another run loop or in a different mode, you should unschedule it and reschedule it at this point.

   • With Core Foundation, you must schedule the CFNetServicesRef object on a run loop by calling CFNetServiceScheduleWithRunLoop.

   • With the DNS Service Discovery API, call DNSServiceSetDispatchQueue to schedule the service on a dispatch queue. (If you must support an OS prior to OS X v10.7, see the SRVResolver sample code project for an example of how to use DNS Service Discovery without Grand Central Dispatch.)

5. Publish the service, if necessary:

   • With Foundation, publish the service by calling the publish method.

   • With Core Foundation, publish the service by calling CFNetServiceRegisterWithOptions.

   • With the DNS Service Discovery API, no further action is necessary; the service was already published when you called DNSServiceRegister.

After your service is published, you can listen for connections on your socket and set up input and output streams when a connection is made.

Browsing for and Connecting to a Network Service

The process for finding and resolving a network service is as simple as the process for publishing one. To browse for network services in Objective-C, create an instance of the NSNetServiceBrowser class and assign it a delegate. Then, call the searchForServicesOfType:inDomain: method on the service browser. The netServiceBrowser:didFindService:moreComing: delegate method is called once for every service found.

To connect to a service, first stop the browsing by calling stop (unless you have a specific reason to keep browsing), then call the getInputStream:outputStream: method on the NSNetService object that represents the service. The address of the service is resolved automatically.

You can also use the CFStreamCreatePairWithSocketToNetService function with a CFNetServiceRef object to connect to a Bonjour service.

Resolving a Network Service

You may need to resolve a network service manually to provide the service’s address to an API that does not accept network service names. To resolve a network service in Objective-C, first stop the browsing by calling stop (unless you have a specific reason to keep browsing), then call the resolveWithTimeout: method on the NSNetService object that represents the service.

The netServiceDidResolveAddress: method is called on the service’s delegate when the service’s address has been resolved. You can then access the service’s hostname with the hostName method or its address information with the addresses method. To avoid unnecessary network traffic, you should also call stop on the NSNetService object as soon as it returns a set of addresses.