Q: How do I add to this plist?

Mucking around with plists is a delicate matter and is an esoteric art. Accourding to the manpage, something along these lines might work. Copy the plist to the Desktop and play around with it until you ascertain the correct syntax.

PlistBuddy Add  :CFBundleDocumentTypes:0 dict "<key>Folder Name</key>  <string>My Folder</string>"

Alternatively, open the file in a text editor or use the nano command, add the lines, and save it as a plist. Ensure that the permissions remained as the original and just replace it with the modified one.

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "add dict:'Folder Name' string 'My Folder'" path/to/foo.plist

The defaults command is not liking your xml file but PlistBuddy to the rescue.

Thanks for popping in. As I said, esoteric and not readily discernible from the manpage examples, which aren't at all.

John,

Did you try Mark’s syntax substituting delete for add, after making an appropriate backup of your plist?

If you print your plist with PlistBuddy you'll get a better idea of the files structure.

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Print" path/to/foo.plist 

You are adding an element to an array. To remove an element of the array you must reference the element by its number.

/usr/libexec/PlistBuddy -c "Delete 0:" path/to/foo.plist 

The problem with that is that PlistBuddy's Print doesn't reveal the element's number if there are multiple ones in an array. Only something like Property List Editor, XCode, or PlistEditor can do that. Then, there's the problem with the syntax for each dict element. Poorly written manpages don't help.

E.g., in the user's .GlobalPrefs there's a text substitution array with dict entries and no element numbers. Here's a portion:

Dict {        NSUserDictionaryReplacementItems = Array {

        Dict {

            replace = c/o

            on = 1

            with = ℅

        }

        Dict {

            replace = ...

            on = 1

            with = …

        }

        Dict {

            replace = 1/2

            on = 1

            with = ½

        }

    }

}

This is one of the things that applescript is good at:

tell application "System Events"

  set markupFile to property list file "/path/to/XML file.xml"

  tell markupFile

  make new property list item at beginning of property list items with properties {value:{|folder name|:"My Folder"}}

  end tell

end tell

If you need to run it from the command line you can use osascript to call a precompiled script or build the script line-by-line.

What I'm trying to do is similar.

I need to create a simple shell script to call on PlistBuddy to add a new string (/System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Script Menu.menu) to the existing "menuExtras" array in the file from the screenshot below.

The syntax is killing me. I just can't find the right combination from the examples I've found. This is a copy of the real plist file to test first.

The purpose is to enable the Script Menu in the menubar when one of my users installs a new AppleScript from Casper Suite's Self Service app.

/usr/libexec/plistbuddy ~/Desktop/_Casper/_PLIST_FILES/com.apple.systemuiserver.plist

Command: add :menuExtras: string /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/Script Menu.menu

Command: print :menuExtras

Command: Save

Command: Exit