Open Text in App - objective-c

Question

I am looking for a way to right click selected text and open it in my app. Eg. via OS X's third party share menu. But I can not find any references at Apple's.

Answer 1

Have a look at the apple docs SysServices for creating a service for you app.
The Docs take you through an example of how to set one up.
Once done you will need to go into System Preferences and Enable the service. Your users will also need to do that.
Here is a quick project that shows an adaption of the apple code.
Update:
Although I think the services work good enough. Creating a Share or Action Extension is possible.
This example uses the same Project as above. But I have added an App Action extension (Target) to it.
The template for the Action is not too hard to understand and it took me 5 minutes to do this quick example.
(So I am not saying everything is as it should be but it works)
For the Action Extension:
Follow the instructions here
Which basically is:
After you choose the extension point that makes sense for your app
extension, add a new target to your containing app. The easiest way to
add an app extension target is to use an Xcode template that provides
a target preconfigured for your extension point.
To add a new target to your Xcode app project, choose File > New >
Target. In the sidebar on the left side of the new target dialog,
choose Application Extension for iOS or OS X. In the pane on the right
side of the dialog, Xcode displays the templates you can choose
Do read the above docs to understand better of what you need to do.
Once you have added the Extension. You can actually run it straight away.
Xcode provides you an option to choose a test app to test it in i.e TextEdit.app and takes you through the whole process of temporarily enabling the Extension.
In this example, remember I chose an Action Extension which suited the App.
The App's function in life is to do a basic encryption of selected text and then display the result.
The App's Action Extension will do the same but instead of displaying it, it will replace the selected text with the encryption text.
All that was needed for me to do, was copy the encryption method from the main app, over to the Extension.
I did have to adjust a couple of things though. Namely the original code deals with a NSString, where as the Extension deals with a NSAttributedString.
The conversion I did works but styling attributes are lost. For this example that does not really matter.
An Action Extension does not use the Share contextual menu. It uses an Action menu.
To see the menu, select some text and the hover the cursor over the selected text. You then should see a discloser button on the left of the text.
Like this:
Click it and choose the Extension.
If you do not see it, go to the 'more' option. This will take you to the system preferences where you can grant access to the extension.
The documentation is mainly concerned about distributing the extension and App via the App store.
But you can code sign your App and extension and do a normal archive export.
From there, all should work ok with gatekeeper.
But again refer to the Docs for a fuller understanding.
Here is a link for the code signed app and also the new Project.
Encrypto2