Running AppleScript From Java
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Join For Freen my current project, I need to launch an external application and
maybe execute some additional commands on this external application.
Due to the very nature of the project, the whole system will always be
run on Mac OS X. So I thought, "why not use AppleScript"?
Turns out using AppleScript to launch applications is fairly easy, all you have to do is
tell application "name of your app" to launch
If you want to try this from the command line, osascript comes in handy:
osascript -e 'tell app "iTunes" to launch'
So far so good. Should be easy to do this from Java, shouldn't it? Turns out it's not so easy at all. Let's try this:
String launchCmd = "osascript -e 'tell application \"iTunes\" to play'"; process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(launchCmd); BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(process.getErrorStream())); while ((lsString = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) { System.out.println(lsString); }
I'm not sure why, but it results in a nasty "0:1: syntax error: A unknown token can't go here. (-2740)" error message.
But there is another signature for Runtime.exec:
String[] cmd = { "osascript", "-e", "tell app \"iPhone Simulator\" to launch" }; process = Runtime.getRuntime().exec(cmd); BufferedReader bufferedReader = new BufferedReader( new InputStreamReader(process.getErrorStream())); while ((lsString = bufferedReader.readLine()) != null) { System.out.println(lsString); }
... and this works out just fine!
Java (programming language)
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