CPDistributedMessagingCenter not working ios7

Question

I am fairly new to jailbreak iOS development and had a question. I am trying to send a message between two processes(MobileSafari to SpringBoard) and am having a problem, the reciever function in SpringBoard is never called! So far in SpringBoard I have this:

    -(void)applicationDidFinishLaunching:(id)arg1{

            %orig(arg1);

            //register for notifications
            CPDistributedMessagingCenter *messagingCenter = [CPDistributedMessagingCenter centerNamed:@"com.magnusdevelopment.flow"];
            [messagingCenter runServerOnCurrentThread];
            [messagingCenter registerForMessageName:@"updateWallpaper" target:self selector:@selector(handleMessageNamed:withUserInfo:)];
            [messagingCenter registerForMessageName:@"updateScalingMode" target:self selector:@selector(handleMessageNamed:withUserInfo:)];
            [messagingCenter registerForMessageName:@"downloadWallpaper" target:self selector:@selector(handleMessageNamed:withUserInfo:)];
            UIAlertView *testAlert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Yo!" message:@"registered" delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"Ok" otherButtonTitles:nil, nil];
            [testAlert show];
    }
}
    %new
    -(NSDictionary *)handleMessageNamed:(NSString *)name withUserInfo:(NSDictionary *)userInfo{

        UIAlertView *testAlert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Yo!" message:@"2" delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"Ok" otherButtonTitles:nil, nil];
        [testAlert show];
        if([name isEqualToString:@"updateWallpaper"]){

            //get info for wallpaper
            NSString *wallpaperImagePath = [userInfo objectForKey:@"WALLPAPER_PATH"];
            int option = [[userInfo objectForKey:@"OPTION"] intValue];
            BOOL retValue = setWallpaperImage(wallpaperImagePath, option);

            //return the dictionary
            NSMutableDictionary *replyDict = [[NSMutableDictionary alloc] init];
            [replyDict setObject:[NSString stringWithFormat:@"%hhd",retValue] forKey:@"RETURN_VALUE"];
            return replyDict;

        }else if([name isEqualToString:@"updateScalingMode"]){

            //get info from dictionary
            int option = [[userInfo objectForKey:@"OPTION"] intValue];
            NSString *scalingMode = [userInfo objectForKey:@"SCALING_MODE"];

            //set wallpaper scaling mode
            setWallpaperScalingMode(scalingMode,option);

        }//end if

        return nil;
    }//end method

and when a button is pressed in MobileSafari I call this code:

NSString *option = [NSString stringWithFormat:@"%i",wallpaperOption];
        NSDictionary *infoDict = [NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys: wallpaperPath, @"WALLPAPER_PATH", option, @"OPTION", nil];
        CPDistributedMessagingCenter *messagingCenter = [CPDistributedMessagingCenter centerNamed:@"com.magnusdevelopment.flow"];
        [messagingCenter sendMessageAndReceiveReplyName:@"downloadWallpaper" userInfo:infoDict];
        UIAlertView *testAlert = [[UIAlertView alloc] initWithTitle:@"Yo!" message:@"sent" delegate:nil cancelButtonTitle:@"Ok" otherButtonTitles:nil, nil];
        [testAlert show];

I get the alert "registered" whenever SpringBoard starts up and then when I press the button I get the message "sent". The only thing that isn't called is the function handleMessageNamed:withUserInfo:

Why isn't this working?

Thanks!

Answer 1

Try darwin notifications https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/corefoundation/Reference/CFNotificationCenterRef/Reference/reference.html It's a public API, shouldn't be hard to find sample code.

Answer 2

If you look at this document entitled "Updating extensions for iOS 7, it looks there are problems using CPDistributedMessagingCenter on iOS 7, but Ryan Petrich has published a library that may help you work around them:

Inter-process communication

CPDistributedMessagingCenter, XPC and other IPC methods built on top of bootstrap registered mach services don't work; you get deny lookup in the Xcode console.

Workaround:
rpetrich has built a workaround called RocketBootstrap: "One common way processes communicate with each other on iOS and OS X is through a messaging system called mach ports. Each port is a channel that can either receive or send messages. There is a central registration system for these ports called bootstrap, where ports can be registered and accessed by a service name assigned to them. Recent versions of iOS restrict which names a process can access—MobileMail, MobileSafari and App Store apps are only allowed to access a very specific set of services that come with iOS. RocketBootstrap adds a secondary lookup service that doesn't restrict which processes can access which services."