DebugKit - Debugging Tools for Cocoa

DebugKit is a framework (Mac OS X) or a static Cocoa library (iOS) containing useful debugging tools that I find myself in need of regardless of what langauge or platform I am using.

In this initial version, the function use of this framework is for a utility to display the contents of a memory buffer in hexadecimal and printable ASCII format, much like the hd or hexdump UNIX utilities. I find this type of display invaluable when dealing with network protocols or when storing/loading persistent binary data to/from storage.

The hexDump utilty is provided as a simple Objective-C function, but there are also categories so that NSData and NSString objects can easily be dumped without the overhead of extracting the underlying binary data from the objects.

I hope other developers can find this utility helpful in their own work.

Chad Gibbons Nuclear Bunny Studios, LLC June, 2012

Build Usage

For iOS projects:

• Check out the DebugKit project to a location of your choice.
• Drag the DebugKit.xcodeproj file to your project (or use the Add Files to... option in the File menu).
• Go to your Target definition in your project
  • Go to Build Settings
    • Set the User Header Search Path to ${BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR}/usr/local/include
  • Go to Build Phases
    • In Target Dependencies, add DebugKitLibrary
    • In Link Binary with Libraries, add libDebugKitLibrary.a

Code Usage

Using hexDump directly to display an array of bytes:

#import "DebugKit.h"

...

const char *str = "hello, world!";
NSLog(@"Dump:\n%@\n", hexDump(str, strlen(str)));

...

2012-06-27 15:23:32.002 otest[41823:403] Dump:
0000 68 65 6c 6c 6f 2c 20 77 6f 72 6c 64 21          hello, world!  

Using the NSString+HexDump category:

#import "DebugKit.h"

...

NSString *str = @"How now, brown cow.";
NSLog(@"Dump:\n%@\n", [str hexDump:NSUnicodeStringEncoding]);

...

2012-06-28 21:46:04.557 otest[81123:403] Dump:
0000 48 00 6f 00 77 00 20 00 6e 00 6f 00 77 00 2c 00 H.o.w. .n.o.w.,.
0010 20 00 62 00 72 00 6f 00 77 00 6e 00 20 00 63 00  .b.r.o.w.n. .c.
0020 6f 00 77 00 2e 00                               o.w...