CODEWITHSUNDEEP
bashlocationapplescript
DonielF
DonielF

Reputation: 169

Get bash to stop running after x seconds

So I have this Applescript:

on run{}
    set myPath to path to me as text
    set x to the length of myPath
    set myPath to characters 13 thru x of myPath as string --Removes "Macintosh HD:" from the front of the file path
    set myPath to my fileAdapt(myPath)
    set lat to do shell script myPath & " -f \"{LAT}\"" --See comments below the script
    set lon to do shell script myPath & " -f \"{LON}\""
end run

on fileAdapt(myPath)
    set x to the length of myPath
    set myPath1 to ""
    repeat with i from 1 to x
        if character i of myPath is ":" then
            set myPath1 to myPath1 & "/"
        else if character i of myPath is " " then
            set myPath1 to myPath1 & "\\ "
        else
            set myPath1 to myPath1 & (character i of myPath)
        end if
    end repeat
    set myPath1 to myPath1 & "Contents/Resources/LocateMe" as string --See comments below the script
    return myPath1
end fileAdapt

where LocateMe is a bash script that can get a user's latitude and longitude, among other statistics, using the -f command.

The Issue

Now, on first run, the program asks for permission to get the user's location. If the user presses "OK," then all is good. But if the user presses "Cancel," we've got issues.

As I describe over on SuperUser regarding deleting applications from Location Services, LocateMe seems to continue running in the background until Location Services are turned back on. In the meantime, my Applescript just hangs until the bash script finishes loading, or until I force-quit the application (or Script Editor, whatever I'm running it in). Obviously, this is not a desirable behavior.

To make matters worse, once the application has asked for Location Services permission, it never asks again; the user has to manually go to System Preferences and tick the box themselves (or get a script to do it for him). What this means is that on a second run of this script, the user would have absolutely no way of knowing why the script is hanging.

My first attempt at dealing with this was to stuff LocateMe inside a try statement, but, as per my conclusion above, that wouldn't do anything; since LocateMe continues running until it gets access to the user's location, the Applescript never reaches the on error line.

My Question

I would like to know if there is a way to call LocateMe from within some sort of statement, be it an Applescript or a bash script or some other language that can be run from within an Applescript, that sets a time limit; if the time limit is not reached, LocateMe will be terminated, and the Applescript will display an error message to the user, explaining that location services must be turned on.

Upvotes: 0

Views: 331

Answers (1)

match
match

Reputation: 11060

This is a possible duplicate of How to introduce timeout for shell scripting?

If you have timeout available, simply run timeout -k 10 Contents/Resources/LocateMe (where 10 is the number of seconds before timeout.

Otherwise either call that expect command directly, replacing $command with Contents/Resources/LocateMe, or copy that function into your .bashrc so that the function timeout is available in bash, and call that.

That expect example is defining a bash function - when you call functions with arguments, they get put into variables called $1, $2 etc. So for timeout 10 foo, $1 would be 10 and $2 would be foo. If you copy it 'as-is' into your .bashrc you can use it in the same way as the timeout command suggested above. Alternatively, just copy the expect line out of the function into your script, and replace all the variables with hard-coded values (time, command etc).

Upvotes: 1

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