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Get File creation Date

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Join Date: Oct 2007

Posts: 60

Reputation: Grub is an unknown quantity at this point

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Grub

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Junior Poster in Training

Get File creation Date

Dec 12th, 2008

Hi

is it possible to get the file creation date of files on the mac using c++? If so, may you assist me on how do I go about doing so?

Many thanks

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Join Date: Dec 2008

Posts: 2

Reputation: spaceppl is an unknown quantity at this point

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spaceppl

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Re: Get File creation Date

Dec 12th, 2008

 Help with Code Tags 
 C++ Syntax (Toggle Plain Text) 
do {		
		FSRef ref;
		if (noErr != FSPathMakeRef((const UInt8 *)filePath, &ref, NULL))
			break;
		FSCatalogInfo catalogInfo;
		if (noErr != FSGetCatalogInfo(&ref, kFSCatInfoCreateDate, &catalogInfo, NULL, NULL, NULL))
			break;
		UTCDateTime createDate = catalogInfo.createDate;
		CFAbsoluteTime absTime;
		if (noErr != UCConvertUTCDateTimeToCFAbsoluteTime (&createDate, &absTime))
			break;
		CFGregorianDate gregorianDate = CFAbsoluteTimeGetGregorianDate (absTime, NULL);
} while (false);
do {		
		FSRef ref;
		if (noErr != FSPathMakeRef((const UInt8 *)filePath, &ref, NULL))
			break;
		FSCatalogInfo catalogInfo;
		if (noErr != FSGetCatalogInfo(&ref, kFSCatInfoCreateDate, &catalogInfo, NULL, NULL, NULL))
			break;
		UTCDateTime createDate = catalogInfo.createDate;
		CFAbsoluteTime absTime;
		if (noErr != UCConvertUTCDateTimeToCFAbsoluteTime (&createDate, &absTime))
			break;
		CFGregorianDate gregorianDate = CFAbsoluteTimeGetGregorianDate (absTime, NULL);
} while (false);

CFGregorianDate is a struct containing fields such as year, month, day etc.

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Join Date: Oct 2007

Posts: 60

Reputation: Grub is an unknown quantity at this point

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Grub

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Junior Poster in Training

Re: Get File creation Date

Dec 12th, 2008

Many thanks for your contribution. Please may you explain it. I would rather understand than simply copy and paste. Please if you do not mind.

Many thanks.

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Join Date: Dec 2008

Posts: 2

Reputation: spaceppl is an unknown quantity at this point

Solved Threads: 1

spaceppl

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Newbie Poster

Re: Get File creation Date

Dec 12th, 2008

basically:
FSPathMakeRef creates a FSRef object from a given file path.
This object is passed to FSGetCatalogInfo function which returns an info about the file. kFSCatInfoCreateDate is a flag that notifies you're interested only in the creation date. You can combine different flags to obtain information about the file, which returns in catalogInfo object. Since you're interested only in the creation time, you can then access it via catalogInfo.createDate field. It's saved as UTCTime object. If you want to convert it to readable format, you first need to convert it to absolute time (using UCConvertUTCDateTimeToCFAbsoluteTime), and then to CFGregorianDate by using CFAbsoluteTimeGetGregorianDate.

BTW, developer.apple.com is an excellent source of information, you can read about all these methods there.