Question

I want to run a simple applescript in a cocoa application. I read the apple documentation on the matter but it was too confusing for me (a beginner) to understand.

tell application "iTunes" to play

Answer 1

Per the documentation, you use the NSAppleScript class.

The very short API reference has a section called “Initializing a Script,” one method of which is -initWithSource:, which takes an NSString. You’ll create your object this way.

Once you have your script object, you can then either -compileAndReturnError: then -executeAndReturnError: as separate steps, or just -executeAndReturnError:, which – according to the documentation for that method – tries to compile the source first if it’s not been already, then executes.

So, in theory, you could probably do all this in one line. (alloc, init…, autorelease, executeAndReturnError:) if you ignore errors like a naughty developer.

Note the warning that NSAppleScript can only be executed from the main thread (ie, not from an NSOperation/Queue or other threads).

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