iPhone Backup Extractor Helps iPhone Developers Debug Bugs

July 2009

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Developer Pádraig Kennedy has released the iPhone Backup Extractor which converts the iPhone backups created by iTunes into Mac OS X files that you can browse, examine, etc.

Pádraig was the author of the Python script that was used by iPhone developers to extract data from the .mdbackup files. With iPhone Backup Extractor Pádraig has wrapped an easy-to-use GUI around the process to make it a lot easier.

The utility allows iPhone developers to debug customer bugs.

As per Pádraig's website, the iPhone Backup Extractor can be used perform the following:

Extracting application resources for developers to help them investigate bugs.
Exploring files that are created by third party applications using Finder.
Decoding the SQLite database files that are stored on the iPhone and iPod Touch, such as Call History, SMS messages, and Notes.

ADC award-winning iPhone developer Craig Hockenberry has commented that it allows iPhone developers to debug customer bugs.

Hockenberry explains how the tool can be used to debug customer bugs:

You can instruct your customer to download the application, sync their device with iTunes and then have them select the latest backup and your application within that backup. The resulting output contains the documents and preferences in use by the application at the time it was synced and can easily be put in a ZIP archive.

Getting this information into your development environment is then just a matter of hacking around with the Simulator folder structure in ~/Library/Application Support/iPhone Simulator/User/Applications.

Its great to see iPhone developers like Hockenberry sharing such tips with other developers.

iPhone backup extractor is a freeware and currently available only for Mac users. You can download it by following this link.

[via Pádraig's website]

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