Retrieve variable from Applescript in Shell - bash

So, I'm trying to build a very small shell script that grabs the currently playing Spotify song and returns the lyrics of the song in the terminal.
What works
The applescript returns/echos the track name to the terminal
What I need help with
I can't seem to retrieve values of theArtist and theName from the applescript, to use in the curl command below.
Any tips on how to make this work? :)
echo "tell application \"Spotify\"
set theTrack to current track
set theArtist to artist of theTrack
set theName to name of theTrack
end tell" | osascript
song=`curl -s "http://makeitpersonal.co/lyrics?artist=$theArtist&title=$theName"`
echo -e "$theArtist - $theName\n$song"

Try:
# Get information from Spotify via AppleScript and store it in shell variables:
IFS='|' read -r theArtist theName <<<"$(osascript <<<'tell application "Spotify"
set theTrack to current track
set theArtist to artist of theTrack
set theName to name of theTrack
return theArtist & "|" & theName
end tell')"
# Create *encoded* versions of the artist and track name for inclusion in a URL:
theArtistEnc=$(perl -MURI::Escape -ne 'print uri_escape($_)' <<<"$theArtist")
theNameEnc=$(perl -MURI::Escape -ne 'print uri_escape($_)' <<<"$theName")
# Retrieve lyrics via `curl`:
lyrics=$(curl -s "http://makeitpersonal.co/lyrics?artist=$theArtistEnc&title=$theNameEnc")
# Output combined result:
echo -e "$theArtist - $theName\n$lyrics"
AppleScript implicitly returns the result of the last statement; thus, in order to return multiple items of information, build up a string to return with an explicit return statement .
You then need to parse the output string into its components using read (here I've chosen | as a separator, because it's unlikely to be contained in artist names or song titles) and assign them to shell variables (AppleScript is an entirely separate world, and its variables are not accessible to the shell - the information must be passed via output string).
For the curl command to work, the information you splice into the URL must be properly URL-encoded (e.g., Pink Floyd must be encoded as Pink%20Floyd), which is what the perl commands do.

Related

How to properly (quickly) iterate over Reminders using AppleScript/osascript?

What is the proper, efficient way to iterate over Reminders using AppleScript? The script below works as expected, but takes 18 seconds to iterate over 180 Reminders when run from the command line using osascript! (This same script takes only 2-3 seconds when run from within the ScriptEditor.)
# Find all Reminders whose name contains "Alumni"
set findMe to "Alumni"
set answer to "Maches: "
tell application "Reminders"
set names to name of every reminder
end tell
repeat with name in names
if name contains findMe then
set answer to answer & " --- " & name
end if
end repeat
return answer
I've run this script two ways from the command line: As a compiled script: osascript testReminders2.scrpt and as a text file: ./testReminders2.applescript (where this file begins with #! /usr/bin/osascript. Both versions take about the same amount of time.

OSX: How can check whether a file exists in current directory using applescript?

I want to make an automator app which creates an empty file in current directory.
I did some google search and found:
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20050219134457298 and http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20100509134904820
However, I want to do something more powerful.
If the specified file already exists, I want to show a warning instead of overwriting the original file, which is what one of the above link does. (The other one creates a text file using textEdit. I do not want to create text file. I want an empty file like what linux/unix does)
I already figured out how to do most of the part, but
How can check whether a file exists in current directory using applescript??
How can I concatenate two variable in applescript?
Checking if a file exists (assuming thefullpath is already set as in the referenced question):
tell application "Finder"
if exists POSIX file thefullpath then
--do something here like
display alert "Warning: the file already exists"
end if
end tell
Not sure what you mean by the second part but if you want to concatenate strings stored in var1 and var2 you could simply do
var1 & var2
Something I have been using a lot of late for this sort of thing is the command /bin/test
The test test for the existence of in this case a file
if (do shell script "/bin/test -e " & quoted form of (POSIX path of theFile) & " ; echo $?") is "1" then
-- 1 is false
--do something
end if
The -e option:
-e file True if file exists (regardless of type).
The are tons of other test options shown in the /bin/test man page
The following code, adapted from your second link, is usually right, but it doesn't always work. The current directory is better specified as the directory of the document that is being opened which is most likely from the Finder's front window, but not necessarily. I like to write code that will work no matter what.
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Finder"
set currentPath to insertion location as text
set x to POSIX path of currentPath
display dialog "currentPath: " & (x as text)
end tell
return x
end run
I wrote a whole "Run AppleScript" action to put things into context:
on run {input, parameters}
# count the number of files
set numFiles to 0
repeat with f in input
# warn the user that folders are not processed in this app
tell application "Finder"
if (kind of f is "Folder") then
display dialog "The item: " & (f as text) & " is a folder. Only files are allowed. Do you want to continue processing files or do you want to cancel?"
else
set numFiles to numFiles + 1
end if
end tell
end repeat
# require that at least one file is being opened
if numFiles < 1 then
display alert "Error: the application Test1.app cannot be run because it requires at least one file as input"
error number -128
end if
# get the current directory from the first file
set theFirstFile to (item 1 of input)
tell application "System Events" to set theFolder to (container of theFirstFile)
# ask the user for a file name
set thefilename to text returned of (display dialog "Create file named:" default answer "filename")
# create the file
tell application "System Events" to set thefullpath to (POSIX path of theFolder) & "/" & thefilename
set theCommand to "touch \"" & thefullpath & "\""
do shell script theCommand
# return the input as the output
return input
end run
The "touch" command is OK. If the file doesn't exist, it is created and if it does exist, only the modification date is changed (which isn't too bad) but it doesn't overwrite the file. If your file is being overwritten, it's not the touch command that is doing it.
I changed the default file name to remove the extension ".txt" This extension may default to being opened by TextEdit.app, but you can change this in the Finder by choosing "Get Info" for a file and changing the "Open With" property. You can change which application opens the file with that extension or you can change them all. For example, all of my ".txt" files are opened with BBEdit.app
Will you vote my answer up?
Another option that doesn't require Finder or System Events is to try to coerce a POSIX file or file object to an alias:
try
POSIX file "/tmp/test" as alias
true
on error
false
end try

Use Automator/Applescript to crop filenames after certain character?

I have a folder containing about 5000 files with names like:
Invoice 10.1 (2012) (Digital) (4-Attachments).pdf
Carbon Copy - Invoice No 02 (2010) (2 Copies) (Filed).pdf
01.Reciept #04 (Scanned-Copy).doc
I want to rename these files by removing everything from the first bracket onwards, so they look like this:
Invoice 10.1.pdf
Carbon Copy - Invoice No 02.pdf
01.Reciept #04.doc
I have found lots of scripts that will remove the last x letters, but nothing that will crop from a particular character.
Ideally I would like to use Automator, but I'm guess this might too complex for it. Any ideas?
Try:
set xxx to (choose folder)
tell application "Finder"
set yyy to every paragraph of (do shell script "ls " & POSIX path of xxx)
repeat with i from 1 to count of yyy
set theName to item i of yyy
set name of (file theName of xxx) to (do shell script "echo " & quoted form of theName & " | sed s'/ (.*)//'")
end repeat
end tell
The code posted by #adayzone will work, but there is no need to use sed for this – plain AppleScript will do, using offset:
set fullString to "Invoice 10.1 (2012) (Digital) (4-Attachments).pdf"
set trimmedString to text 1 thru ((offset of "(" in fullString) - 1) of fullString
-- trim trailing spaces
repeat while trimmedString ends with " "
set trimmedString to text 1 thru -2 of trimmedString
end repeat
this returns “Invoice 10.1". To split the file name into the name and extension, and re-add the extension, you can use System Events’ Disk-File-Folder suite, which will provide the handy name extension property you can store and re-add after trimming the name.
Assuming you use some Automator action to get the files to be processed, the full processing workflow would be to add an AppleScript action after the file selection part with the following code:
repeat with theFile in (input as list)
tell application "System Events"
set theFileAsDiskItem to disk item ((theFile as alias) as text)
set theFileExtension to name extension of theFileAsDiskItem
set fullString to name of theFileAsDiskItem
-- <insert code shown above here>
set name of theFileAsDiskItem to trimmedString & "." & theFileExtension
end tell
end repeat
If you want your Automator workflow to process the files any further, you will also have to create a list of aliases to the renamed files and return that from the AppleScript action (instead of input, which, of course, is not valid anymore).

Print to stdout from osascript/Applescript

I have some AppleScript code that I'm executing with osascript. This is part of a larger Perl program. I'd like to be able to print to stdout from the AppleScript, then have the Perl script process the output. But I haven't been able to print from within AppleScript. What should I do?
Here's what I've tried:
do shell script "echo Foo". Does not ouptut Foo.
This Google Groups discussion does some trickery to open /dev/fd/1. For me, I get an error of "File Macintosh HD:dev:fd:1 wasn't found"
Here's the script I'm running:
tell application "Safari"
set window_list to every window
repeat with the_window in window_list
set tab_list to every tab in the_window
repeat with the_tab in tab_list
set the_url to the URL of the_tab
-- I'd like to put a print statement here,
-- instead of display dialog
display dialog the_url
end repeat
end repeat
end tell
Since osascript will automatically print the last value of a program, I could collect the URLs into a list and print that. But then my Perl script would have to parse the list, remove quotes, etc. It seems like it should be more straightforward to just print one URL per line.
Thanks
I don't know how to do what you're asking and I don't know Perl, however I think you could make the parsing from perl simple if you collect your urls in a string instead of a list. Each url would be on a separate line of the string. Perl should be able to turn that into an array pretty easily and then do something with it. Something like the below applescript. Of course you can use a different separator in the applescript. I used "return" but it could just as easily be a "comma" or any other character you want. Whatever is easiest for you in perl to change the string to an array.
set urlString to ""
tell application "Safari"
set window_list to every window
repeat with the_window in window_list
set tab_list to every tab in the_window
repeat with the_tab in tab_list
set the_url to the URL of the_tab
set urlString to urlString & the_url & return
end repeat
end repeat
end tell
return text 1 thru -2 of urlString
I found that I can use 'log' to dump results to STDERR,
though I had to use Chrome instead of Safari:
#!/usr/bin/osascript
tell application "Chrome"
repeat with w in every window
repeat with t in tabs of w
log (get URL of t)
end repeat
end repeat
end tell
Just use log is OK.
MacBookPro:~ zxj5470$ cat demo.scpt
tell application "Terminal"
set WindowNum to get window count
log WindowNum
end tell
MacBookPro:~ zxj5470$ osascript demo.scpt
1

Getting the file name of files dropped on the script

I made this Applescript script to create symbolic links.
Appart from POSIX path of, how can I get the file name, without the path, of the dropped file?
on open filelist
repeat with i in filelist
do shell script "ln -s " & POSIX path of i & " /Users/me/Desktop/symlink"
end repeat
end open
PS: I know this expects many files to be dropped and tries to create many links with the same name, which gives an error. Actually I copied this example from a website and as I don't know almost anything about Applescript, I don't know how to do this for a single file, help on that would be appreciated too.
I'm not sure what precisely you're trying to do, but I have a guess. Is the idea that you want to take every file dropped on the script and create a symbolic link to each one on the Desktop? So if I drop ~/look/at/me and ~/an/example, you'll have ~/Desktop/me and ~/Desktop/example? If that's what you want, then you're in luck: ln -s <file1> <file2> ... <directory> does exactly that. (Edit: Although you have to watch out for the two-argument case.) Thus, your code could look like this:
-- EDITED: Added the conditional setting of `dest` to prevent errors in the
-- two-arguments-to-ln case (see my comment).
on quoted(f)
return quoted form of POSIX path of f
end quoted
on open filelist
if filelist is {} then return
set dest to missing value
if (count of filelist) is 1 then
tell application "System Events" to set n to the name of item 1 of filelist
set dest to (path to desktop as string) & n
else
set dest to path to desktop
end if
set cmd to "ln -s"
repeat with f in filelist & dest
set cmd to cmd & " " & quoted(f)
end repeat
do shell script cmd
end open
Note the use of quoted form of; it wraps its argument in single quotes so executing in in the shell won't do anything funny.
If you want to get at the name of the file for another reason, you don't need to call out to the Finder; you can use System Events instead:
tell application "System Events" to get name of myAlias
will return the name of the file stored in myAlias.
Edit: If you want to do something to a single file, it's pretty easy. Instead of using repeat to iterate over every file, just perform the same action on the first file, accessed by item 1 of theList. So in this case, you might want something like this:
-- EDITED: Fixed the "linking a directory" case (see my comment).
on quoted(f)
return quoted form of POSIX path of f
end quoted
on open filelist
if filelist is {} then return
set f to item 1 of filelist
tell application "System Events" to set n to the name of f
do shell script "ln -s " & ¬
quoted(f) & " " & quoted((path to desktop as string) & n)
end open
It's pretty much the same, but we grab the first item in filelist and ignore the rest. Additionally, at the end, we display a dialog containing the name of the symlink, so the user knows what just happened.
As an example, you can work with the Finder instead of a shell script to get the name of a single file that is dropped on the script that is saved as an application. If you don't need the display dialog, you can remove it, but you have the file name as a variable to work with:
on open the_files
repeat with i from 1 to the count of the_files
tell application "Finder"
set myFileName to name of (item i of the_files)
end tell
display dialog "The file's name is " & myFileName
end repeat
end open

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