Hiding (or encrypting) app resources?

Question

I\'ve developing a Cocoa app that has certain resources (images) which I wish to protect, but still display. Normally one would just place these in the resources folder, bu

Answer 1

Simple solution:

Merge all files into one big data-file, optionally using 'salts'.
Then retrieve specific files with something like this:

NSData *dataFile = [NSData dataWithContentsOfFile:filePath];  
NSData *theFile = [dataFile subdataWithRange: NSMakeRange(startPos,endPos)];

This does not really protect the files,
but prevents people simply dragging out the resources.
At least, the data-file is unusable, certainly with salts.

Another solution:

Create NSData object for every resource.
Add all objects to a NSMutableArray.
Convert the array to one big NSData object.
Write the NSData object to a file.
And add it to the resources folder.

Your app can then read the data-file.
And retrieve the array with the resources.

// Convert array to data
NSData* data=[NSKeyedArchiver archivedDataWithRootObject:theArray];

Use NSKeyedUnarchiver to retrieve the array again.