scripting bridge

Red Shed Softwarebetter necessarily means different

Scripting Bridgetell every application to objc_msgSend()

Jonathan ‘Wolf’ Rentzschhttp://rentzsch.com

PSIG 111

Red Shed Softwarebetter necessarily means different

App Interoperation• examples: “Reveal in Finder”, “Pause iTunes”

• low-level: AppleEvents; high-level: AppleScript

• Standard Cocoa application interop technique:

• Embed an AppleScript, execute via NSAppleScript

• Lame:

• Slow

• AppleScript logic separated from app (ObjC) logic

Red Shed Softwarebetter necessarily means different

Scripting Bridge• Scripting Dictionary -> Objective-C bridge

• Send AppleEvents by writing ObjC code

• New in 10.5 Leopold

• not to be confused with Bridge Support

• Bridge Support => XML describing all Sys APIs.

for Python+Ruby+F-Script+Nu

• “Faster” than AppleEvents (not really)

Red Shed Softwarebetter necessarily means different

How It Works• sdef /Applications/iTunes.app

• extracts Scripting dictionary as XML

• sdp -fh --basename iTunes

• generates iTunes.h

• ObjC 2 code: properties galore

• Add ScriptingBridge.framework to project

• Make sure project is targeting 10.5

Red Shed Softwarebetter necessarily means different

How It Works• #import "iTunes.h"

• [SBApplication applicationWithBundleIdentifier:@"com.apple.iTunes"];

• [app playpause];

• Slow on first message send

• parses target scripting dictionary

Red Shed Softwarebetter necessarily means different

DemoiTunes Playpause