I managed to make Firefox to follow specific protocol links (oxygen:/...) and use an application to open them. As the Mac OS X oXygen XML Developer app doesn't accept arguments, I need to use a shell script that is shipped together with oXygen itself. Given Firefox doesn't like shell scripts, I needed to write an Automator application 'Run Shell Script'. As I was having trouble to get it to work, I decided to use a stub code, with osascript, just to debug variables.
My current script looks like:
osascript -e 'display alert "'"$1"'"'
and it is defined as a bash script, receiving data as arguments.
When I click the link the dialog of osscript appears, but with an empty message. So, I am not sure how the URL is being passed to the application itself. I tried, also, with receiving data as stdin, but with no lock. I got to the point of writing a script that dumped all the parameters and STDIN to a file, but it ends up always empty.
Thank you for any hint.
Related
I am fairly new to Mac OSX, and am trying to create an .app file to run in the Applications folder. I'm using MacOS Big Sur, and this will just be run on a Mac (it doesn't need to be cross platform). There is a jar file that executes by running a shell script, as well as a few extra resource files, so ultimately I'd like to bundle this all together in something like a dmg so that I can share it easily with a few other people.
I followed the advice given here and here to set it all up, and almost everything works. The program starts when I double click on the .app file, but without a terminal window. Unfortunately I need the terminal window to open because I use it to log messages to the user.
Terminal is the default app for the shell script, and a terminal does open when I run the shell script directly by double-clicking on it. The script file works with an .sh extension and without one, though I get an error trying to run the .app if the script has an .sh extension. Everything has execute permissions. I went through the Info.plist docs but couldn't find anything about the Terminal. I also tried creating the .app with Automator, but with the same result.
Any suggestions would be very much appreciated, as at the moment I'm completely stuck. As I said, ultimately I want to have a way of sharing this with others who may not be very computer-savvy (e.g. they're used to just downloading things from the App Store and wouldn't be able to install things using the command line). So if I'm going about this all wrong or there's an easier way, then let me know that too.
Unfortunately I need the terminal window to open because I use it to log messages to the user.
If this is all you want the Terminal app for then you don’t need it all.
The Terminal app is a GUI app which runs a shell using standard OS calls, passes keyboard input to that shell (and hence any commands it in turns invokes) via a pipe, and reads the output of the shell (and hence...) and displays it in a window.
You can run your shell script direct from your own app, collect the output, and dimply that output in a window in your app.
In Objective-C the classes you want to look up are NSTask, to run a shell passing it your shell script, and NSPipe, to create pipes needed.
There are plenty of Q & A’s on SO about NSTask/NSPipe, here is one and here is another which uses Swift.
Note that both of the above read all of the output before converting it to a string which can then be displayed in a window or otherwise processed. This is not required and if you have a long running shell script and wish to display output as it runs you can read shorter chunks from the pipe. Read the documentation to see how to do this.
I'm posting my solution in case it helps anyone in the future. As the comments/answers said, what I really needed to know was how to get my app to open a terminal window. Obviously by creating the app manually (creating the folder structure and minimal Info.plist) I was missing some key elements.
I tried to generate one using Xcode. I'm sure it's pretty straightforward, but I got bogged down trying to work out the Swift code.
What worked for me was creating an AppleScript using Script Editor. The script simply tells the Terminal program to run my bash script:
tell application "Terminal"
do script "/Applications/{name of app}/Contents/MacOS/run.sh;exit"
end tell
The key is that Script Editor can save this as an app to the Applications folder, which means it creates the necessary folder structure and files. After that I could just copy my program files into the MacOS folder, which is where my bash script looks for everything.
One option might be to give the script file the extension .command, e.g., and then open that, e.g.:
open myscript.command
The myscript.command file needs execute permissions (chmod a+x myscript.command).
These .command files can also be double-clicked in Finder to execute them in a new Terminal window.
I am using Ruby on a mac to open a dozen URLs one at a time with Nokogiri etc.
For each URL I need to let my ruby program know
whether to keep the URL window for further inspection or close it.
But I cannot see the terminal window and its prompt, it is hidden behind
the last URL window.
I have to click on the terminal window in order to bring it to the front, in order to enter my decision on the keyboard.
puts "close webpage?"
if gets =~ /^y/i then 1 ; else; 0; end;
I would like the terminal window to come to the front before it prompts
me for an answer.
I think the question is two fold
Is there a terminal command that tells a terminal window to become
the active one (the one in the front) that would work with mac iTerm.
The Apple script "bringiTermtofront" works in the applescript editor.
tell application "iTerm" to activate
Is there a way to execute a terminal command from ruby.
the ruby code
system "osascript bringiTermtofront.scpt"
brings the iTerm to the front.
For Question 1, one approach would be to write an Applescript to handle the switch, and then use the Terminal command osascript to run it from your Ruby code. You could also check if rb-appscript is still usable (it's no longer supported, but might work).
For Question 2, you have a few choices. Using backticks around the command will let you capture the output of a brief command, if you want to store the result of the command in a variable. (E.g. use grep or something similar).
The system method in Kernel is probably your best choice, though, as it will execute shell commands as if at the terminal.
Per the edit showing what script you're using, you need to execute the script as Applescript, not as a terminal script. You don't even need a separate file as it's just one line. This would be :
command = %q[osascript -e "tell application \"iTerm\" to activate"]
system(command)
You could also put the Applescript in a file and execute it using just
system("osascript bringiTermtofront")
See "Running shell commands from Ruby" for a little more help on how to interact with these methods.
I'd like to create a program which uses certain information given by my program's users and bakes this info into executables which can be used with Mac's "Open with...".
Since bash scripts cannot be used directly for Mac's "Open with..." functionality1, however, I'd like to find a way to wrap such a script (and as painlessly as possible).
I am aware Automator lets one build applications which include bash scripts and which work with "Open with...", but I want to be able to programmatically build both the script and the containing application (and I haven't found that Automator can accept command line arguments to compose applications).
What are some simple, lowest common denominator/open format approaches (without using Python, etc.) whereby I can do this (ideally in a way that could work on Linux as well)?
I found I was able to build an AppleScript application programmatically using osacompile (or apparently also possibly using Apple's JavaScript) using on open listener to listen for "Open with...", default file association, or dragged files (including when placed on the dock) and an on run listener to work with command line invocation. I could then use do shell script internally to invoke my desired file (in my case, calling the Node.js binary with a Node script and some arguments).
I was also able to do try/on error check for an input and if none were present do a choose file with prompt (specifically choose file with prompt "Prompt message" of type {"js"} for JS files) so that the application could be double-clicked without a file argument but yet trigger a file dialog (e.g., for use on the dock).
We have a script to send email using Microsoft outlook or Apple mail application. It will dynamically load the default email from system preference (maybe user input also), and using it to decide which mail client to use.
So the code is as following:
if (mailClientStr contains "outlook")
tell application id "com.microsoft.outlook"
-- <<< there will be error if there is no outlook installed
-- <<< even else branch will be run.
...
end tell
else
tell application id "com.apple.mail"
...
end tell
end if
On an machine which doesn't have outlook installed, and the mailClientStr will be "com.apple.mail", but this script cannot be run by osascript
It complains Can’t get application id "com.microsoft.outlook" even the first branch will not be executed. My understanding is osascript will need to access Outlook apple script interface when load and compile this script (before run it).
I can separate the outlook related code into a separate script, but because there is a lot of data to passing, it will be complex, so I don't want this workaround.
So does there any solution from the apple script language side?
From the AppleScript Language Guide:
Entering Script Information in Raw Format
You can enter double angle brackets, or chevrons («»), directly into a script by typing Option-Backslash and Shift-Option-Backslash. You might want to do this if you’re working on a script that needs to use terminology that isn’t available on your current machine—for example, if you’re working at home and don’t have the latest dictionary for a scriptable application you are developing, but you know the codes for a supported term.
You can also use AppleScript to display the underlying codes for a script, using the following steps:
Create a script using standard terms compiled against an available application or scripting addition.
Save the script as text and quit Script Editor.
Remove the application or scripting addition from the computer.
Open the script again and compile it.
When AppleScript asks you to locate the application or scripting addition, cancel the dialog.
Script Editor can compile the script, but displays chevron format for any terms that rely on a missing dictionary
This may be a basic question. I have written a small perl script to run on a Mac running OS X which can be called from the finder by double clicking in the normal way. The file is executable and contains starts with #!/usr/bin/perl and input and output is via the clipboard. This all works but automatically opens a terminal window which the user must then close once execution is finished.
Is there an easy way to run this program as an application without opening a terminal? Can one do this with the native OS X perl? Or do I need to download something? Since the program will also be used by other users, the simpler the solution to better.
With the application "AppleScript Editor" : open it
Copy/paste this script
tell me to path to resource "this Name.pl" in directory "Scripts"
do shell script (quoted form of POSIX path of the result)
In the first line, change the name "this Name.pl" by the name of your perl file.
Save as --> Application
In the Finder :
Copy your perl file (executable) to the folder "/Contents/Resources/Scripts" of the created application
For Win32/Linux/or Mac use http://www.cavapackager.com/
If you're distributing your application to others, Platypus includes an installer to build free-standing apps around scripts.
Platypus supports Perl, Python, PHP, Ruby, Swift, Expect, Tcl, AppleScript or any other user-specified interpreter. It is free, open-source software distributed under the terms of the three-clause BSD license. It can run silently (without opening a terminal window, as you require), or can display graphical feedback of script execution as progress bar, text window with script output, droplet, WebKit HTML rendering or status item menu.