I have a script on a machine that has multiple versions of Photoshop that looks for any open version of Photoshop (in this case CS6) and saves the name as a variable called AppName.
It seems to work fine for checking "If AppName is running" but later on down the script I have "tell application ... " and when I start doing things inside there, I get error 1728.
Example: I have CS6 open and one image open.
tell application AppName
log count documents
log file path of document 1
end tell
That would generate
(*1*)
(*Adobe Photoshop CS6 got an error: Can't get path. - -1728*)
It works perfectly fine if I just enter "Adobe Photoshop CS6" or "com.adobe.photoshop", but for various reasons I can't do that and need it to remain a variable.
Anyone have any ideas? =/
The argument of tell application must be a literal string (a constant) because the terminology is evaluated at compile time.
The only way to evaluate AppleScript terminology beside tell application is an using terms from block frequently used in event handlers for example
using terms from application "Adobe Photoshop CS6"
end using terms from
but this requires also a constant as argument. The implementation depends on the context.
Related
I'm new to all this programming stuff, but trying to learn. I've had moderate success, but feel like it's more accidental than intentional. I'd appreciate help learning and understanding AppleScript in particular and networking, automation and programing in general.
Here's the environment: Almost all Apple with two Minis, a couple of laptops and various iOS devices including an AppleTV. The network consists of an Apple Airport Extreme, and an older D-Link switch I rescued (with permission) from the recycle bin at work. There are three Foscam wi-fi cameras as well. One of the Mini's (named Dora) is acting as a file server running Yosemite and the OS X Server application with a growing RAID 1 array for media storage.
What I’d like to be able to do is to run a single AppleScript from my laptop (Adam’s Macbook) that does the following:
Launch the application iCamSource on Adam’s Macbook
Change “Require Password to Wake” to true on Adam’s Macbook
Quit iTunes on Adam’s Macbook if it’s running
Start the current ScreenSaver locking Adam’s Macbook
Quit iTunes on Dora if it’s running
Start the current ScreenSaver on Dora if it’s not already running thereby locking Dora
I’d also like to have a single script on Adam’s Macbook that reverses these actions.
I have been able to launch iCamSource, set “Require Password to Wake” to true and start the ScreenSaver on Adam’s Macbook with a lot of Google-Fu, much trial and error, and quite a bit of frustration. I’ve not yet tried to quit iTunes if it’s running. That’s a new idea/requirement, but I think it should be pretty simple to add to the functioning script.
Where I’m running into trouble is controlling Dora from a script on Adam’s Macbook. I run into access errors (905 and 927 generally) about half to two thirds of the time I run the script. I’ve tried every syntax option and many combinations of syntax that I found via Google searches, but this is the one that has the most (but still inconsistent) success.
set remoteMachine to "eppc://remoteMachineadam:slajdlll#10.0.1.2"
tell application "iTunes" of machine remoteMachine
quit
end tell
When reading various articles explaining how to do this, sometimes the scripts use eppc, others use epps and I’ve not seen a consistent result with either one. Some of the articles use the actual IP address of the remote machine, others use password#name.local, so that syntax would be slajdlll#dora.local. That change also seems inconsistent in its results.
This seems to be a pretty basic task, and I’ve found lots of articles that do this very thing, but their methods don’t work in my environment. Many of the articles I’ve read are quite old, so the syntax may be out of date. I’m kind of at my wits end, but feel I should be able to make this work. Any help y’all could provide would be VERY appreciated.
Update - I had the scripts working last night in all regards except controlling the remote machine. This morning, I tried to open the "Away" script to again tackle the remote control issue and I get a Syntax Error Unable To Authenticate User message and the script won't compile. Here's the code:
tell application "System Events"
try
tell application "iTunes" to quit
end try
try
tell application "iTunes" of machine "eppc://Dora.local" to quit
end try
tell security preferences
set require password to wake to true
tell application "iCamSource" to activate
tell application "System Events" to start current screen saver
end tell
end tell
Both "Away" and "Home" scripts run from the AppleScript menu. When I unlock the ScreenSaver after running the "Away" script I get a dialog box stating "There was a problem connecting to the server "Dora's Airport Extreme. The share does not exist on the server. Please check the share name, and then try again." I'm beginning to think I may have a Permissions error on one or more of the machines, or if there's another problem that's making the scripts act inconsistently.
Thanks for all the help so far!
UPDATE Ok, it seems that there was a problem with iPhoto and Screen Saver interacting with the files on the networked hard drive. Opening iPhoto and slowly opening each image and re-linking those that had lost their location seems to have solved that problem. I am still encountering the access error code 905. In order to troubleshoot this process, I'm stripping the script down to one task, to quit iTunes on the remote machine named "Dora" Here's the code:
set Dora to "epps://adam:slajdlll#10.0.1.2"
try
tell application "iTunes" of machine Dora to quit
end try
Here's the event log that running that script generates:
tell application "iTunes" of machine "eppc://epps/adam%253kslajdlll%4010.0.1.2.local"
quit
--> error number -905
end tell
Is it possible/probable that the OS X Server application is mis-configured and is preventing the script from controlling the remote machine? Any other thoughts or things to try?
Thanks!
UPDATE 2
In the Groups section of the OS X Server application running on the remote machine, I found that there is a group called Apple Remote Events ACL. When I click the Edit button to view it's settings I see the actual account name is "com.apple.access_remote_ae-disabled". I wonder if this is telling us something. I searched several libraries for "com.apple.access" thinking it may be something that could be edited, but found nothing. I'm a member of that group. I tried removing myself from the group and tried the script with no change in the results so I added myself back into it.
UPDATE 3
As suggested I'm trying to eliminate OSX Server from the equation. To do this I'm going to try to launch TextEdit (since it's faster to launch than iTunes) on a third machine, known as Office Mini that does not have the Server application on it. Here's the script:
set OfficeMini to "eppc://10.0.1.196"
try
tell application "System Events" of machine OfficeMini
open "/Applications/TextEdit.app"
end tell
end try
When I ran the script initially I got two dialog boxes asking for username and password. I supplied them and checked the "Save in Keychain" checkbox. The script didn't open TextEdit, but I'm not getting the access errors. I am getting different errors though, -600 or -10010 depending on if I use System Events or the Finder. Using the list on this page: Nicholas Reilingh AppleScript Error Codes I find that with System Events I get an error -600 which means the application isn't running. That's no surprise, I'm trying to open it. When I use the Finder instead of System Events, I get an error -10010 which the list indicates is "Handler can’t handle objects of this class." So, there's progress, but I'm still stumped.
UPDATE 4 To further clarify/simplify, I tried running a simple script to open iTunes on the Office Mini locally on that machine and it worked fine.
tell application "iTunes" to activate
Substituting the "quit" for "activate", and trying this syntax with several different applications all worked quite well and very fast. I tried the same script and variations on the Dora machine with the same, successful results.
I then tried to make that syntax work remotely with this code:
set OfficeMini to "eppc://10.0.1.196"
tell application "iTunes" of machine OfficeMini to quit
I got this error message in the event log:
tell application "iTunes" of machine "eppc://10.0.1.196"
quit
--> error number -927
Result:
error "iTunes got an error: Unable to authenticate user." number -927
So, since OSX Server isn't running on the Office Mini, this seems to eliminate that as a culprit for the error. I tried altering the code with another variant I saw online that uses "epps" in place of "eppc" which results in a similar error message: "iTunes got an error: Remote access isn’t allowed." number -905. I did not get dialog boxes requesting credentials. When I've seen the "epps" string used online, it was formatted as "epps://username:password#location" so I used "epps://adam:slajdlll#10.0.1.196" and received the same error message. I even tried "Adam" in place of "adam" with no change in the results.
Yes, step 1 is to try to make your script as simple as possible to narrow down the point of failure.
I have copied your minimal script onto my machine & gotten it to work:
set Dora to "minipuppy.local"
try
tell application "iTunes" of machine Dora to quit
end try
A few notes:
I used "minipuppy.local" (the Bonjour linklocal name) rather than your eppc stuff, because I know what the former is, but not the latter. (You can get the link local name from the Sharing prefs panel* where it says "Computers on your local network can access your computer at:XXXXX"
An authentication dialog popped up saying that I needed to enter the username and password for the target machine - but it did have
an eppc address in the dialog (I didn't take a screenshot :-( )
After entering the username/password my script did nothing. Interestingly, I could not get it to print out a log as yours has?
I fixed this by going to the target Mac's System Preferences & enabling "Remote Apple Events" in the Sharing panel*. After turning that on, my script worked.
I'm hoping enabling "Remote Apple Events" is the ultimate solution to your simplified problem.
*Apple Menu -> System Preferences -> Sharing
How can you instruct an application or the printer to only print the first page, a page range or just odd or even pages of a file? I attempt this with the help of the Preview app, which looks promising:
set theFile to "[file-path/file]""
tell application "Preview"
activate
print theFile with properties {target printer:"Printer", ending page:1} without «class pdlg»
--these properties isn't available for the printer app, here just limiting amount of printed pages
quit
end tell
But with this I'm bitten by the sandboxd process that tells me the file can't be opened for printing and I get a deny file-read-data result in the log.
In the CUPS suggestion by adamh I encounter issues with umlauts and have other execution issues as well, possibly also because of sandbox rules. The code works from the command line, but not when called in automated fashion.
I tried to look up useful examples of the print command in a reference, in my books and tried searching the online Apple references, but I can't seem to find many examples fitting to the present day situation with sandbox, if any.
You could script printing by command line tool lp & lpr.
These talk to CUPS, Common Unix Printing System
To target pages / ranges:
lp -o page-ranges=2-4 "my_great_document.pdf"
To call it from applescript use do shell script
e.g,
do shell script "lp -o page-ranges=2-4 'my_great_document.pdf'"
For more ideas see: http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/options.html
I want to use ShellExecute iexplore.exe (with an html file name as a command line arg), even if iexplore isn't associated with html files.
Assuming the user hasn't uninstalled it, how safe is it to do so without supplying a path to the program. This works on my machine, i.e. the default Windows search path contains a path to iexplore.exe. Is it reasonable to expect this on all recent Windows (XP+) machines?
Is there a safer way to ShellExecute iexplore.exe?
(Delphi XE2)
(Although this question stands alone, I'll giving the user the option to run IE in the context of this SO question I asked at the same time: Detect Chrome as browser associated with html files in Windows)
'iexplore.exe' is not in the default search path. It's path is registered in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\App Paths\IEXPLORE.EXE key. If this key, for any reason, is missing or pointing to a wrong location, your approach won't work. I would think the probability of this happening would be quite low.
As one alternative, you can use Internet Explorer object. With a broken registry or similar, this may also fail, but it sounds like a more official way to me.
ie := CreateOleObject('InternetExplorer.Application');
ie.Visible := True;
ie.Navigate('http://example.com');
IE Object reference here.
I need to make a small modification to an existing Flash library (Fusion Charts Free) written in AS1 with Flash 6 as its publish version. My change uses ExternalInterface, which requires Flash 8, so I opened Publish Settings and changed the version to 8. No other changes were made.
Now the swf loads, but encounters some error part-way through its operation. If I change the publish version back to 6, it works again. Changing it to 7 breaks it. My questions:
Is there a complete list of changes between Flash 6 and 7 that affect existing AS1 code?
Is there any way to get real debugging output from an swf, to determine what has happened? It's frustrating that there doesn't seem to be any sort of log or console whatsoever. I've seen a few solutions that involve using ExternalInterface to log to Firebug or such, but obviously that isn't useful to me, given that my whole problem centers around exporting to Flash 8.
the externalInterface is probably not the reason for errors.. i tested myself to ensure.. (with flash8 + AS1).
1) maybe you accidentally selected AS2 instead..
2) the error is while compiling? or during it's running?
3) the error happens when you run it from the application? or as standalone? (when it's standalone the ExternalInterface might raise an exception because there's no "external interface".
4) what's the error?
5) try to put "try" block on the ExternalInterface part if the error is not while compiling..
6) if the error is while its running, then you have a debugger.. just press Ctrl+Shift+Enter
Having completed this project, I'll share my experience. Virtually all incompatibilities fell into three categories, described in this very useful article:
Flash 7 variables names are case-sensitive, so xPos and xpos are now separate variables and can't be used interchangeably. You would never do this anyway, if you were writing good code, but if you're trying to port some third-party code, as I was, this is the #1 problem to look out for.
Undefined variable values have changed. In Flash 6, numbers were initialized to zero and strings were empty. In Flash 7, a number is NaN and a string is undefined.
String boolean equivalents are different. In Flash 6, empty strings, or strings other than "1" evaluate to false. In Flash 7, a string with any contents evaluates to true; only empty strings evaluate to false.
Is is possible to open a text file and read the contents while another application is updating the file, in such a way that it does not cause a lock conflict?
I need to monitor a log file from one application which is updated by another application each time an event occurs.
I do check if the file is in use before I try to read it, but that does not seem to work in all cases.
Thanks, Pieter
it depends on how the first app open that file.
i.e when calling CreateFile API to open a file, there is dwShareMode param which tells the api how to open it (if this was given 0, it can't be accessed from other applications IIRC).
otherwise there should be no problem with reading from that file.
if im not mistaken, to check if that file is being opened read only u can call
something like
CreateFile(pchar(fName), GENERIC_READ or GENERIC_WRITE, 0, nil, OPEN_EXISTING, FILE_ATTRIBUTE_NORMAL, 0) ;
Download Process Monitor from Sysinternals.
Open the filter dialog and add a "path" filter for your log file.
Start the log-writing application (I'll call this "logwriter").
Look for and click on the event where logwriter does a CreateFile.
Under "Detail", it should have "Desired Access: Generic Write". And it should have "ShareMode: Read", which corresponds to FILE_SHARE_READ in the call to CreateFile. What it means is, "I, logwriter, permit others to read my file".
Now run your log-reading application ("logreader"), and do the same exercise.
The Detail should have "Desired Access: Generic Read". And it should have "ShareMode: Read, Write", which means, "I, logreader, permit others, including logwriter, to read and write to the log file".
Those are the most sensible values, I think, and they will prevent locking. Other combinations may be permissible. There is a table here.
Now, you haven't said what happens when it "does not seem to work in all cases". What to do next will really depend on the details. Hopefully the above will give you enough information to work out what is going wrong.
You won't get a lock conflict because the writing application is very unlikely to have locked the file. Doing what you suggest generally works without problems (it's what the UNIX tail -f command does) and those minor glitches that do occur can be ignored. I've written a couple of log monitoring apps in te past that worked like this, with no problems.
Try using FileSystemWatcher to get events when a file is updated.
A more delphi friendly link
Quite apart from getting the file sharing to work right which may be impossible depending on what the other program requests, some programs will close the file between accesses.
I have had success in the past with my program waiting for the file to become available, then quickly opening it, grabbing the needed data and closing it. At least in DOS an attempt to access a locked file caused a few retries, and I bumped up this setting, so that if the other program tried for the file while I had it they would simply be delayed and never see an error.
I was even able to update the file (I made sure NOT to close it in between!) without the other program ever knowing a thing.
Ugly as sin but we couldn't change the other program so it was the only way to get the job done. It was deployed in-house for years, I never heard a peep from the users of that system. It finally went away when the machinery the other program controlled was retired.
XpoLog will do the trick without changing your env or code, XpoLog log monitor
Avar is right - you are at the mercy of the writing program here. If they are locking the file, then there are a couple of things you can do:
1 - Check for a change in the "last modified" date time - if that changes, then you know something has happened.
2 - If the mod datetime did change, then (depending on the size of the file) it might be good enough to create a copy of the file and check that.
we use "Tail for win32",
i know its not delphi but it might be useful
http://tailforwin32.sourceforge.net/