What would be the Scripting Bridge equivalent of the following AppleScript?

set previousApp to the name of the current application — some app gets activated here, raising is window(s) to the front tell application previousApp to activate

My attempt, which probably just shows that a little knowledge is dangerous, partially works:

NSString *systemEventsAppName = @"com.apple.SystemEvents";
systemEventsApp = [SBApplication applicationWithBundleIdentifier:systemEventsAppName];
if (systemEventsApp == nil) {
    prependMessageToErrorChain("couldn't find an app named \"%s\"", [systemEventsAppName UTF8String]);
    return FAILURE;
}
if ( [systemEventsApp isRunning] ) {
    for (SystemEventsItem *systemEventsProcess in [systemEventsApp processes]) {
        NSDictionary *processProperties = [systemEventsProcess properties];
        NSString *processName    = [processProperties objectForKey:@"name"];
        NSString *processIsFront = [processProperties objectForKey:@"frontmost"];
        NSLog(@"getPreviousApp: processName = \"%@\", processIsFront = \"%@\"", processName, processIsFront);
    }
}

Although this identifies the app that has focus, it seems like this is the wrong approach – the loop through the processes is slow – it stops for a second or two on one of the processes. Is there somewhere I can look for guidance? A mailing list?

Thanks,

– Pete

Apparently, applicationWithBundleIdentifier doesn’t throw exceptions, and it NSLog’s on errors whether you like it or not.

Correct on both counts. This isn’t particularly unusual in Cocoa. SBApplication is unusual in that it will raise exceptions (once created), and this turns out to be handy in my opinion. Because there are several pieces of Cocoa that will NSLog, I always freopen() STDOUT and STDERR to a log file in Release mode so that I can capture the failure when users send in problem reports.

MailApplication *mailApp = 
    [SBApplication applicationWithBundleIdentifier:@"com.apple.mail"];

…then mailApp will be set to nil. To test it, I changed “com.apple.mail” to, like, “com.apple.xxx”. As documented, mailApp was set to nil. Also, a line like this appeared on standard out and in the Console:

2010-07-07 11:11:59.026 myApp[1584:903] Can’t find app with identifier com.apple.xxx

Apparently, applicationWithBundleIdentifier doesn’t throw exceptions, and it NSLog’s on errors whether you like it or not.

@try {
    safari = [SBApplication applicationWithBundleIdentifier:@"com.apple.Safari"];
} @catch (NSException *exception) {
    NSLog(@"Caught %@: %@", [exception name], [exception reason]);
}
// etc.

This works fine. To test that the exception handling works, I change the name of the app to something nonexistent. When I run it, an error like this is NSLog’d:

2010-07-06 18:00:06.647 myApp[1357:903] Can't find app with identifier com.apple.xxx

The “catch” doesn’t execute. I can check that “safari” isn’t nil, but I apparently con’t control that an error appears in the Console and on standard out.

Should the try/catch work for this error? Is there any way I can get control of the error?

There is a private property called “htmlContent,” but I’ve never been able to read or write it. There’s also a “source” property, but it’s readonly. The mail headers are not modifiable on outgoing messages.

I don’t know if anyone has solved this problem in a good way.

It’s a long, long time ago and I can’t remember the specifics except that I was working with System Events, but it’s worth noting that in some edge cases, Scripting Bridge won’t allow you to access some areas that AppleScript does.

So I eventually resigned myself to using a third party tool called AppScript – http://appscript.sourceforge.net/

Hope this is helpful to someone else for who Scripting Bridge isn’t suitable.

The only interface 3rd party apps have to the Mail app on iPhone in 2.2 is the mailto: URL, which is limited, but all we really have.

The pointy brackets were throwing the script.