Re: Objective-C and AppleScript
Am 01.09.2008 um 22:49 schrieb John Love <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: I am trying to convert as much as I can of my former Studio code over to Obj-C and thanks to this Mailing List I have been successful so far .. but here's a stumper or two: Here are 2 AppleScript statements that work in Studio: -- #1 works in Obj-C, so my question is = isn't there a more *direct* Obj-C call to do the same thing, -- rather than call NSAppleScript's executeAndReturnError method? It just seems that a one or two -- system calls should effect the same result? 1) tell application "System Events" to return (name of every application process contains "Microsoft Excel") -- see ExcelAppActive below You could use something like this: NSArray *result = NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] launchedApplications] filteredArrayUsingPredicate:[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"%K contains %@", @"NSApplicationName", @"Microsoft Excel"]] valueForKey:@"NSApplicationName"]; Or even better (assuming Excel has the bundle ID "com.microsoft.excel"): NSArray *result = NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] launchedApplications] filteredArrayUsingPredicate:[NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"%K = %@", @"NSApplicationBundleIdentifier", @"com.microsoft.excel"]] valueForKey:@"NSApplicationName"]; Both result in an array of running application names matching the criteria just like the AppleScript code above. (Typed in Mail.app) = -- If I hard-code the actual name of the file stringByAppendingString:@"some title" (see theWorkbookActive method below), -- everything works dandy. -- -- But ... this name is actually a instance parameter, NSString* itsFileName, defined in my .h file, and dynamically set in my .m file. -- So, I type stringByAppendingString:itsFileName -- but then my app crashes. Sounds like a memory management problem. How are you defining and initializing itsFileName exactly? 2) tell application "Microsoft Excel" to return (name of every window contains "some title") Here is the standard (I believe) method to execute the passed Script: - (NSAppleEventDescriptor*) ExecAppleScript:(NSString*)theScript { NSAppleScript *scriptObject; NSDictionary *errorInfo; NSAppleEventDescriptor *execResult; scriptObject = [[NSAppleScript alloc] initWithSource:theScript]; errorInfo = [[NSDictionary alloc] init]; You don't allocate any errorInfo object here. That is done for you if an error occurs. Your code would leak the NSDictionary. In any case an NSDictionary would do no good as it isn't mutable. You might want to initialize errorInfo to nil though. execResult = [scriptObject executeAndReturnError:&errorInfo]; Where are you releasing scriptObject? You're not? That's a memory leak! return execResult; // success = (execResult != nil) } - (BOOL) ExcelAppActive { BOOL ExcelActive = FALSE; Cocoa uses YES and NO as constants for the BOOL type. NSAppleEventDescriptor *execResult; NSArray *ExcelActiveScriptArray = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"tell application \"System Events\"", @"return (name of every application process contains \"Microsoft Excel\")", @"end tell", nil]; No AppleScript necessary, see above. And AppleScript allows this syntax: tell application "xyz" to blah Instead of: tell application "xyz" blah end tell That would have saved you the trouble of assembling a string fron an array. Or you could have used \n to assemble the string in one go like this: NSString *ExcelActiveScriptString = @"tell application \"System Events\"\n" "return (name of every application process contains \"Microsoft Excel\")\n" "end tell"; NSString *ExcelActiveScriptString = [ExcelActiveScriptArray componentsJoinedByString:@"\n"]; /* tell application "System Events" return (name of every application process contains "Microsoft Excel") end tell */ execResult = [self ExecAppleScript:ExcelActiveScriptString]; if (execResult != nil) { // success ExcelActive = [execResult booleanValue]; } If you use the pure Cocoa method described above you would check the result array for count > 0 like this: ExcelActive = ([result count] > 0) ? YES : NO; if (!ExcelActive) { // do something here } return ExcelActive; } - (BOOL) theWorkbookActive { BOOL wbActive = FALSE; NSAppleEventDescriptor *execResult; if ([self ExcelAppActive]) { NSString *WorkbookActiveScript = @"tell application \"Microsoft Excel\" to return (name of every window contains \""; WorkbookActive
Re: Objective-C and AppleScript
John Love wrote: I am trying to convert as much as I can of my former Studio code over to Obj-C and thanks to this Mailing List I have been successful so far .. but here's a stumper or two: Here are 2 AppleScript statements that work in Studio: -- #1 works in Obj-C, so my question is = isn't there a more *direct* Obj-C call to do the same thing, -- rather than call NSAppleScript's executeAndReturnError method? It just seems that a one or two -- system calls should effect the same result? 1) tell application "System Events" to return (name of every application process contains "Microsoft Excel") -- see ExcelAppActive below If you use objc-appscript (I won't suggest the sdef/sdp/Scripting Bridge toolchain as an alternative as I know it has problems with Excel), you can check if Excel is running by calling the MEApplication object's -isRunning method: // To create glue: osaglue -o MEGlue -p ME Microsoft\ Excel MEApplication *microsoftExcel = [MEApplication applicationWithBundleID: @"com.microsoft.excel"]; if ([microsoftExcel isRunning]) { // do stuff here... } -- If I hard-code the actual name of the file stringByAppendingString:@"some title" (see theWorkbookActive method below), -- everything works dandy. -- -- But ... this name is actually a instance parameter, NSString* itsFileName, defined in my .h file, and dynamically set in my .m file. -- So, I type stringByAppendingString:itsFileName -- but then my app crashes. Code generation is fundamentally evil; if you need to pass values to a script, pack them into an NSAppleEventDescriptor and pass them to a handler in a compiled script via -[NSAppleScript executeAppleEvent:error:]. That said, appscript should suffice for general Apple event IPC, so the only time you should need to mess about with NSAppleScript is if you need to execute user-supplied scripts (appscript is pretty handy for that too, btw). 2) tell application "Microsoft Excel" to return (name of every window contains "some title") I would suggest doing: tell application "Microsoft Excel" to return (exists window "some title") as it's a bit clearer in meaning. The objc-appscript equivalent would be: MEReference *ref = [[microsoftExcel windows] byName: @"some title"]; id result = [[ref exists] send]; BOOL windowExists = [result boolValue]; The ASTranslate tool on the appscript website is very handy if you need help translating application commands from AppleScript to ObjC syntax; there's also ASDictionary for exporting application dictionaries in appscript format. HTH has -- Control AppleScriptable applications from Python, Ruby and ObjC: http://appscript.sourceforge.net ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Objective-C and AppleScript
I am trying to convert as much as I can of my former Studio code over to Obj-C and thanks to this Mailing List I have been successful so far .. but here's a stumper or two: Here are 2 AppleScript statements that work in Studio: -- #1 works in Obj-C, so my question is = isn't there a more *direct* Obj-C call to do the same thing, -- rather than call NSAppleScript's executeAndReturnError method? It just seems that a one or two -- system calls should effect the same result? 1) tell application "System Events" to return (name of every application process contains "Microsoft Excel") -- see ExcelAppActive below = -- If I hard-code the actual name of the file stringByAppendingString:@"some title" (see theWorkbookActive method below), -- everything works dandy. -- -- But ... this name is actually a instance parameter, NSString* itsFileName, defined in my .h file, and dynamically set in my .m file. -- So, I type stringByAppendingString:itsFileName -- but then my app crashes. 2) tell application "Microsoft Excel" to return (name of every window contains "some title") Here is the standard (I believe) method to execute the passed Script: - (NSAppleEventDescriptor*) ExecAppleScript:(NSString*)theScript { NSAppleScript *scriptObject; NSDictionary *errorInfo; NSAppleEventDescriptor *execResult; scriptObject = [[NSAppleScript alloc] initWithSource:theScript]; errorInfo = [[NSDictionary alloc] init]; execResult = [scriptObject executeAndReturnError:&errorInfo]; return execResult; // success = (execResult != nil) } - (BOOL) ExcelAppActive { BOOL ExcelActive = FALSE; NSAppleEventDescriptor *execResult; NSArray *ExcelActiveScriptArray = [NSArray arrayWithObjects: @"tell application \"System Events\"", @"return (name of every application process contains \"Microsoft Excel\")", @"end tell", nil]; NSString *ExcelActiveScriptString = [ExcelActiveScriptArray componentsJoinedByString:@"\n"]; /* tell application "System Events" return (name of every application process contains "Microsoft Excel") end tell */ execResult = [self ExecAppleScript:ExcelActiveScriptString]; if (execResult != nil) { // success ExcelActive = [execResult booleanValue]; } if (!ExcelActive) { // do something here } return ExcelActive; } - (BOOL) theWorkbookActive { BOOL wbActive = FALSE; NSAppleEventDescriptor *execResult; if ([self ExcelAppActive]) { NSString *WorkbookActiveScript = @"tell application \"Microsoft Excel\" to return (name of every window contains \""; WorkbookActiveScript = [WorkbookActiveScript stringByAppendingString:itsFileName]; WorkbookActiveScript = [WorkbookActiveScript stringByAppendingString:@"\")"]; /* tell application "Microsoft Excel" to return (name of every window contains "some title") */ NSLog(WorkbookActiveScript); execResult = [self ExecAppleScript:WorkbookActiveScript]; if (execResult != nil) { // success wbActive = [execResult booleanValue]; } if (!wbActive) { // do something here } } else { // [self ExcelAppActive] sets and displays Error } return wbActive; } John Love ___ Cocoa-dev mailing list (Cocoa-dev@lists.apple.com) Please do not post admin requests or moderator comments to the list. Contact the moderators at cocoa-dev-admins(at)lists.apple.com Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://lists.apple.com/mailman/options/cocoa-dev/archive%40mail-archive.com This email sent to [EMAIL PROTECTED]