CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosautomationapplescriptosx-yosemite
A9S6
A9S6

Reputation: 6675

Mac OS X: interacting with an application programmatically

I am working on a project where I need to call methods on an existing application (my own) and use some of its functionality. For e.g. my application ThunderBolt runs on Mac OS X 10.10. It also provides a dictionary of events that can be called externally through Apple Script or some other way that I don't know yet.

My question is what are the different (and better) ways of interacting with an application programmatically on Mac OSX? If I use something like the following code in Apple Script Editor: 

tell application "ThunderBolt"
    set open_file to (choose file with prompt "Choose the file you wish to parse")
    set theContents to read open_file as data
    set retPict to (image convert theContents)
end tell

then it is going to launch ThunderBolt with a splash screen and then call "image convert". This can be done via NSAppleScript but still it would launch the application and call methods/events on it.

Is it possible to somehow create an instance of (or get a pointer to) one of the class inside the application and use that? Something similar to COM or automation on a Windows system?

Upvotes: 3

Views: 1158

Answers (2)

Bill Agee
Bill Agee

Reputation: 3656

If you're working on OS X 10.10, you might consider taking a look at JavaScript for Automation (JXA).

With it you can apparently build methods into your app that can be invoked from client scripts written in JS (although I'm not yet familiar with the particulars of how to handle implementation of such a thing on the app side). But many of the apps that ship as part of OS X Yosemite have such APIs built in (e.g. iTunes and Finder).

Here's a great tutorial on JXA written by Alex Guyot: http://www.macstories.net/tutorials/getting-started-with-javascript-for-automation-on-yosemite/

The JXA-Cookbook repo also appears to be a nice resource: https://github.com/dtinth/JXA-Cookbook/wiki

Here's a brief example - this script makes iTunes go back one track. Try it while iTunes is playing (by putting the text into Script Editor, with the language option set to JavaScript, and hitting the Run button):

iTunes = Application('iTunes')
state = iTunes.playerState()
// Console msgs show up in the Messages tab of the bottom view:
console.log("playerState: " + state)
iTunes.backTrack()

Alternatively, you can place the code into a .js file and run it on the command line:

$ osascript itunes-backTrack.js
playerState: playing

Upvotes: 3

Nick Groeneveld
Nick Groeneveld

Reputation: 903

The way you specify the 'tell application' is the best way, in my opinion.

What do you do with your app that needs to be called? Maybe some of the functionalities can be done with Applescript? It would simplify things a lot.

Upvotes: 0

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