Some python to pull Info.plist values out of a .ipa file

get_attritubes_from_ipa.py

# This has to be run on macOS, because it relies on `plutil(1)` to convert binary Info.plist files
# into ASCII xml plist files. If you know the Info.plist will not be binary, you should be able to
# run this on other systems with minimal modification

# we pass the file path of the .ipa and array of plist keys to retrieve
# returns: a dict of the plist keys and their values as found in the app’s Info.plist
def get_attritubes_from_ipa(ipa_file, attributes):
    retval = {}
    
    zip_archive = zipfile.ZipFile(ipa_file, 'r')
    
    # we want Payload/{filename}.app/Info.plist, but we have to find the value for {filename}.app
    app_filename = ''
    p = re.compile('Payload/[^/]+\\.app/$')
    for file_info in zip_archive.infolist():
        if p.match(file_info.filename):
            # TODO: regex saved subpattern match may be clearer than this basename/dirname nonsense
            app_filename = os.path.basename(os.path.dirname(file_info.filename))
            break
    
    if app_filename == '':
        raise ValueError('Supplied zip file (`%s`) did not contain an entry matching `Payload/*.app`' % ipa_file)
    
    plist_relpath = 'Payload/%s/Info.plist' % app_filename
    temp_dir = tempfile.mkdtemp() # extract the plist to here
    
    # wrap this all in a try, so that we can clean up the temp dir we made in case of failure
    try:
        zip_archive.extract(plist_relpath, temp_dir)
        extracted_plist_abspath = '%s/%s' % (temp_dir, plist_relpath)
        
        # convert what may be a binary plist to an xml plist so that python’s plistlib can use it
        # see the man page for plutil(1) for more on plutil
        retcode = subprocess.check_call(['/usr/bin/plutil', '-convert', 'xml1', extracted_plist_abspath])
        plistObj = plistlib.readPlist(extracted_plist_abspath)
        for attr in attributes:
            retval[attr] = plistObj[attr]
    except:
        shutil.rmtree(temp_dir)
        raise
        
    shutil.rmtree(temp_dir)
    return retval