Bonjour SDK

Bonjour SDK is Apple's software development kit for adding Bonjour zero-configuration networking to Windows applications. Bonjour lets programs automatically discover, publish and resolve network services such as printers, file shares or media servers on a local network using industry-standard IP protocols: multicast DNS (mDNS) and DNS Service Discovery (DNS-SD). The SDK contains everything needed to create Bonjour-enabled applications that run on Windows, together with the Bonjour installers that such applications can include.

Features

• DNS-SD API: The SDK provides the dns_sd.h header, the same C programming interface that Bonjour uses on macOS and iOS, so service discovery code can be shared across platforms.

The Bonjour SDK provides an easy-to-use interface for discovering, advertising and resolving network services on a local network.

• Service registration: Applications can advertise their own services on the local network under a name and service type, so other computers and devices can find them without manual configuration.

• Browsing and resolving: Programs can browse for available services of a given type and resolve a found service to its host name, port and TXT record data.

• 32-bit and 64-bit libraries: The dnssd.lib import library is supplied in separate Win32 and x64 versions for linking native C and C++ projects.

• Redistributable installers: The Bonjour.msi and Bonjour64.msi installers are included so developers can deploy the Bonjour service together with their software, under the terms of Apple's licence.

• C samples: The source code of the dns-sd command-line tool shows how to register, browse and query services from a console program.

• .NET samples: DNSServiceBrowser and SimpleChat examples are provided as C# and Visual Basic projects for Visual Studio.

• Java samples: BrowserApp and SimpleChat demonstrate the Java DNS-SD classes with Swing user interfaces.

• Extra components: The Bin folder holds the Bonjour Control Panel and an Internet Explorer plug-in for finding Bonjour-advertised servers.

• Documentation: The "About Bonjour SDK" document describes the contents of the kit and the supported Windows versions.

• Open standards: Bonjour is based on open Internet standards, and Apple publishes its mDNSResponder implementation as open source under the Apache 2.0 license.

• Local network focus: Service discovery works within the local network, which makes Bonjour a good fit for printers, media sharing and peer-to-peer applications.

• Status: The latest release is Bonjour SDK 3.0 for Windows, which has not been updated for many years; Apple offers it as a free download on its developer website.