Mac App Store Sandboxing - Writing a new file?

Question

I've been playing around with an app I want to submit to the Mac App Store, and part of the functionality is simply grabbing a file the user chose by dragging or opening, and saving a modified of it to the same directory as the original file (but with a different file name).

I don't want to use a 'Save' dialog box, as that destroys the utility of the application I'm building, but it looks like that might be the only way the app would be allowed—under sandboxing requirements—to write a file to an arbitrary location (arbitrary, in this case, being in the same folder as the existing file) on the disk as a new file.

Is there any way I can approach this without disabling sandboxing? Also, if I submit the app without entitlements/sandboxing turned on today, will it be approved by Apple (supposing it passes all the other requirements), or are they already turning down non-sandboxed apps?

Answer 1

For your first question, no, I don't believe there is any way to write to a file the user didn't specify, unless it's either in your app's container, or (as of 10.7.3) in a directory you have a security-scoped URL for. See the documentation here. If the user specifies a file, I doubt you get permissions to the enclosing folder, but it's worth a shot.

Answering your second question, as of today, Friday April 27th, 2012, the App Store does not require sandboxing. The latest deadline given was June 1, 2012.