Mac OSX get USB vendor id and product id - macos

Question

I'm a newbie in Mac OSX world and I have to write a script which gives me the vendor id and product id of a connected usb device. I have done it for Windows and Linux but for Mac I have no idea where to start from.
I have seen this post but the link with the example is not working. Do you guys have any advice about where I can start from or where I can find some examples?
In particular, which language should I use?

Answer 1

You tagged your question with bash, so I'll answer it as if you're asking how to do this in bash, rather than asking what language to use (which would make the question off-topic for StackOverflow).
You can parse existing data from system_profiler using built-in tools. For example, here's a dump of vendor:product pairs, with "Location ID" and manufacturer...
#!/bin/bash
shopt -s extglob
while IFS=: read key value; do
key="${key##+( )}"
value="${value##+( )}"
case "$key" in
"Product ID")
p="${value% *}"
;;
"Vendor ID")
v="${value%% *}"
;;
"Manufacturer")
m="${value}"
;;
"Location ID")
l="${value}"
printf "%s:%s %s (%s)\n" "$v" "$p" "$l" "$m"
;;
esac
done < <( system_profiler SPUSBDataType )
This relies on the fact that Location ID is the last item listed for each USB device, which I haven't verified conclusively. (It just appears that way for me.)
If you want something that (1) is easier to read and (2) doesn't depend on bash and is therefore more portable (not an issue though; all Macs come with bash), you might want to consider doing your heavy lifting in awk instead of pure bash:
#!/bin/sh
system_profiler SPUSBDataType \
| awk '
/Product ID:/{p=$3}
/Vendor ID:/{v=$3}
/Manufacturer:/{sub(/.*: /,""); m=$0}
/Location ID:/{sub(/.*: /,""); printf("%s:%s %s (%s)\n", v, p, $0, m);}
'
Or even avoid wrapping this in shell entirely with:
#!/usr/bin/awk -f
BEGIN {
while ("system_profiler SPUSBDataType" | getline) {
if (/Product ID:/) {p=$3}
if (/Vendor ID:/) {v=$3}
if (/Manufacturer:/) {sub(/.*: /,""); m=$0}
if (/Location ID:/) {sub(/.*: /,""); printf("%s:%s %s (%s)\n", v, p, $0, m)}
}
}
Note that you can also get output from system_profiler in XML format:
$ system_profiler -xml SPUSBDataType
You'll need an XML parser to handle that output, though. And you'll find that it's a lot of work to parse XML in native bash.

Answer 2

Depending on what you want to do with the information, you can just look it up in System Information.
Click the Apple menu at top left of screen, About this Mac, More Info, System Report and select Hardware at top left, then USB.
You could maybe write Applescript to do that, but if you are going to go on and interact with the device in some way, this may not be the best approach.

Answer 3

You can use the system_profiler command, like this:
system_profiler -detailLevel full
and parse the outout from that. Or you can add the -xml option to the system_profiler command and parse XML pretty easily with awk/grep or the XML module in Perl.
Example extract:
| | | | +-o FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)#0 <class IOUSBInterface, id 0x1000002b2, registered, matched, active, busy 0 (26 ms), retain 7>
| | | | | {
| | | | | "IOCFPlugInTypes" = {"2d9786c6-9ef3-11d4-ad51-000a27052861"="IOUSBFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/IOUSBLib.bundle"}
| | | | | "bcdDevice" = 0x755
| | | | | "IOUserClientClass" = "IOUSBInterfaceUserClientV3"
| | | | | "idProduct" = 0x850b
| | | | | "bConfigurationValue" = 0x1
| | | | | "bInterfaceSubClass" = 0x1
| | | | | "locationID" = 0xfffffffffa200000
| | | | | "USB Interface Name" = "FaceTime HD Camera (Built-in)"
| | | | | "idVendor" = 0x5ac
Regarding the path to the USB device, I have no idea how you would do that simply on a Mac. I might be tempted to run:
find /dev -type b -o -type c
before inserting the USB device, and saving the output. Then have your user insert the device and run the same command again to see what device special files have been added as a result of plugging in your device. Maybe crude, maybe effective - just an idea.