libapplescript

A tiny C library to execute AppleScript

Copyright © 2014-2018 by Renaud Guillard (dev@nore.fr) Distributed under the terms of the MIT License, see LICENSE

Introduction

libapplescript is a macOS C library that wraps the Objective-C AppleScript API of the Cocoa framework

Building

make -C build

The Makefile was generated by premake5 using the script located in scripts/build/premake5.lua

premake5 --file=scripts/build/premake5.lua [--location=] [--targetdir=] gmake

With

• location: The place where to put the build files (Makefile etc.)
• targetdir: The base path of the targets output. Equivalent of the --prefix on most configure scripts

Linking

A program using libapplescript have to be linked against the Cocoa framework too

API Usage

Basics

int res = applescript_execute_cstring("tell application \"iTunes\" to quit", NULL, NULL);
if (res == kAppleScriptResultInvalidScript)
{
	fprintf(stderr, "Invalid AppleScript code\n");
}
else if (res != 0)
{
	fprintf(stderr, "An error occured while executing the script (exit code: %d)\n", res);
}

Or simply

applescript_tell_application_cstring("iTunes", "quit", NULL, NULL);

Catching AppleEvents

AppleEvents generated by executing AppleScript code can be catched by passing a callback to the execution functions.

#include <stdio.h>

void my_callback (int event_index, size_t event_count, int event_type, const char *event_value, void *cookie);
{
	if (event_index >= 0)
	{
		fprintf (stdout, "#%d %s\n", event_index + 1, event_value);
		++(*((int*)cookie));
	}
	else
	{
		fprintf (stderr, "Execution failure (code %d, message %s)\n", event_type, event_value);
	}
}

int main ()
{
	int count = 0;
	
	int result = applescript_tell_application_cstring("System Events", "get the name of every login item", my_callback, &count);
	fprintf (stdout, "Total event count: %d\n", count);
	
	return result;
}