From Barnes & Noble

The Barnes & Noble Review
AppleScript is the kind of programming language you’d expect from Apple: elegant and easy. Want to display a dialog box? The command is “display dialog.” Want to repeat a statement five times? The command is “Repeat 5 Times.” This is a language anyone can learn -- including you, with help from Beginning AppleScript.

Using plenty of examples, Stephen Kochan gently introduces variables, classes, expressions, decisions and loops, strings, lists, records, files: all the stuff you’d expect in a programming language, only easier. Next, he turns to the specifics of scripting applications -- including a full chapter on scripting iLife. Whether you’re a user or administrator, this book will give you more control over Mac OS X than you ever thought you’d have. Bill Camarda, from the January 2005 Read Only

From the Publisher

What is this book about?

Geared toward programmers with no prior development knowledge, Beginning AppleScript serves as a comprehensive guide to using AppleScript on the Mac OS X platform.  This title introduces the reader to AppleScript, and then illustrates how to efficiently start writing scripts through sample programs as each concept is introduced. Exercises at the end of each chapter allow the reader to test and demonstrate their knowledge on how to write functional scripts. The appendices include a list of other resources for additional developer information, and a summary of the language suitable for reference.

Product Details

• Table of Contents
• Read a Sample Chapter

Table of Contents

Read a Sample Chapter

Beginning AppleScript

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

There's no point in wasting time. You are reading this book because you want to learn how to write programs in AppleScript. So instead of wading through theory and terminology, I want you to begin by typing an AppleScript program, running it, and looking at the results. I introduce terminology as it is necessary along the way. If you begin this way, you'll have more fun and you won't get overwhelmed.

Starting with Script Editor

Your Mac OS X system comes with some preinstalled tools that you'll be using in this book. One of the most useful ones (as far as AppleScript programming goes) is an application called Script Editor. This application allows you to enter, compile, debug, and run your AppleScript programs in an interactive environment. It is a simple and effective tool.

The Script Editor application is stored in your Applications folder inside a subfolder called AppleScript. Its icon looks like the one shown in Figure 1-1.

Locate the Script Editor application and double-click it to start it. You should get a window on your screen that looks similar to the one shown in Figure 1-2. This window is where you type your AppleScript program. I show you how in the following Try It Out.

Try It Out

Typing Your First Program

Click inside the Script Editor window and type the following:

100 * pi

Your window should look like Figure 1-3.

Compiling and Running Your Program

Try It Out

Running Your First Program

After typing the indicated line in the window, move your pointer to the top of the window and click the button labeled Run, as depicted in Figure 1-4.

You'll notice that two things change in your Script Editor window, as depicted in Figure 1-5.

The first thing you may have noticed is that the color of your text changed in the window. Previously, when you typed the line

100 * pi

the text appeared in purple. After you clicked the Run button, the number 100 and the asterisk character * changed to black, and the word pi changed to blue. You may have noticed that the font changed as well, from Courier to Verdana.

This book is printed in black and white, so you obviously can't see the colors in Figure 1-5 or in any screen shots in this text. But if you're following along, you should see these color and font changes on your screen.

Script Editor automatically displays any special words, known as keywords, in blue by default (you can select other colors to use if you like). This is done to visually aid you when you look at your program. As you'll see later, other colors and font styles are used to indicate program elements such as comments, variables, and operators.

At the bottom of the window, you should see the number 314.159265358979 (or something very close to it). Congratulations, this number represents the output (or the result) from running your first AppleScript program!

Make sure that the Result tab button is highlighted at the bottom of the window. If it isn't, click it so that the result of the operation can be seen.

How It Works

When you start up Script Editor, a window labeled Untitled is automatically created for you. In this window you can enter your AppleScript program. In the simplest case, a program can simply be an expression to evaluate, as in

100 * pi

This expression uses the multiplication operator, which is the asterisk (as it is in every other programming language I know of) to multiply the number 100 by something called pi. Recalling your high school mathematics, pi or [pi] (as it's written using mathematical notation) is a number frequently used when performing calculations with circles. It's roughly equal to the value 3.14159. As you learn in greater detail in Chapter 2, the keyword pi is used in AppleScript as an approximation of the value of [pi].

So the expression

100 * pi

is an AppleScript expression that multiplies 100 by the value specified by the keyword pi, which explains the result you obtained.

After you type your program into Script Editor, you click the Run button. Clicking that button initiates the following actions:

Analyzes your AppleScript code to make sure it conforms to the rules for writing commands and expressions. (This process is described in detail throughout this book and actually involves more than just a conformance check.) The result of this compilation process is the translation of your AppleScript program into another format that is more optimal for execution

Indents your AppleScript code according to certain stylistic rules

Changes the color of your words, operators, and expressions according to certain rules

Runs your program and displays the result in the lower portion of your window, provided no errors are detected during the compilation phase.

Now that you've run your first program, you should save it. The following Try It Out walks you through doing just that.

Try It Out

Saving Your First Program

Even though this was an extremely simple first program, you should save it anyway.

1. Go to the menu bar at the top of your screen and choose File [right arrow] Save. A dialog box like the one shown in Figure 1-6 appears.

2. Your dialog box may look a little different based on the files stored on your system and which version of OS X you're running. In any case, in the box labeled Save As, replace the name Untitled with a more meaningful name such as My First AppleScript Program.

3. The other settings in the dialog box should remain as shown in Figure 1-6. After entering the file name, click the Save button. This causes your program to be saved to the specified file name.

When you go to save your program, Script Editor tries to compile it before saving. In that respect, it forces you to correct any errors before you can save your program to a file.

Later, if you want to make changes to your program, you can double-click the file name in the Finder to launch Script Editor with the specified file open. Alternatively, if Script Editor is already running, you can open the file for editing by choosing File -> Open.

You now know how to start the Script Editor application, type an expression (which represents a complete AppleScript program), compile and run the program, view the results, and save the program to a file.

Extending Your First Program

You're not quite finished with your first program. In this section, you see how Script Editor reports errors. Then you learn how to add a description to your program and how to use a command that opens a simple dialog box.

Reporting Errors in Your Programs

First, let's see what happens if you make a mistake. Erase the contents of your window (one way is by highlighting all the text using your mouse and pressing the Delete key).

Now type the following into an empty window:

100 * pie

Click Run to compile and run your program, as you did previously. A dialog box like the one shown in Figure 1-7 should appear.

The Script Editor application is telling you that it doesn't know about a variable called pie; that is, pie is not defined. You learn about variables shortly; but essentially, a variable is a place in memory that you assign a name to and use for storing data. For now, just click OK to dismiss the dialog box. Your window should now look like the one shown in Figure 1-8.

Notice that pie is highlighted. That's where the error occurred. Unlike the keyword pi, the word (or variable) pie does not have a special meaning in AppleScript, thus explaining the error message. In this case, you can simply delete the trailing e in pie and run the program again to remove the error.

Sometimes it's easy to decipher the error messages reported by Script Editor. At other times, the messages can seem quite cryptic. With experience, you will be able to readily understand the messages and the types of errors that cause them.

In the following Try It Out, you practice adding a description to your program.

Try It Out

Adding a Description to Your Program

You may be wondering about the purpose of the two other tabs that abut the Result tab at the bottom of your window. One is labeled Description, and the other is labeled Event Log, as you can see in Figure 1-8. I describe the Event Log tab in Chapter 2. You can use the Description tab to enter a description about what your program does, that is, to add notes about its operation.

1. Click the Description tab and then click in the lower pane of your window. Script Editor waits for you to enter your description.

2. Type the following line into the pane:

This is my first AppleScript program to multiply two numbers.

Your window should now resemble the one shown in Figure 1-9.

3. Now save your program by choosing File[right arrow]Save, and the description you entered is saved along with it.

You've already given your program a name (you called it My First AppleScript Program when you initially saved it), so you can simply choose File[right arrow]Save to subsequently save any changes you make under the same name.

In Chapter 3, you see how the description you entered can be automatically displayed when you run your program as an application.

An AppleScript Command to Display a Dialog

Your first program shows the result of the expression evaluation in the Result pane. You use this Result pane (and the Event Log pane) to examine results throughout this book. However, to create an AppleScript program to talk to the user or to interactively display information, you need to do more. The simplest way to do this is to use an AppleScript command called display dialog.

For your second program, you put up a dialog box that says Programming in AppleScript is fun. If you still have your first program open in Script Editor, close the window by selecting File->Close or by simply clicking the red dot in the top-left corner of the window. If you've made any changes to the program since the last time you saved it, Script Editor gives you a chance to save the changes before closing the window.

Now open a new window by choosing File[right arrow]New. You get a new empty window. Inside that window, type the following text:

Display Dialog "Programming in AppleScript is fun."

Your window should look like the one shown in Figure 1-10.

Now, instead of clicking the Run button, click the Compile button. This has the effect of analyzing your program and reporting any errors to you without actually running your program. Notice that the colors and formatting are changed by Script Editor, as depicted in Figure 1-11.

The display dialog command changes to blue and also to all lowercase letters. The blue color indicates special keywords, just as the keyword pi was displayed in blue earlier. And the conversion to all lowercase is done because, in general, AppleScript does not distinguish between upper- and lowercase letters. In later examples you see how, after compiling your program, Script Editor not only performs this case conversion, but it also may change and even rearrange some words in your commands! Finally, as noted before, the font of your small program changes from Courier to Verdana.

No error messages resulted from compiling your program, so you can now run the program by clicking the Run button.

So that you don't get confused, remember the Compile button compiles your program but does not run it. The Run button also compiles your program if it has changed since the last time it was compiled. Then, if no errors are detected, it runs your program.

When you run your program, the dialog box shown in Figure 1-12 appears on your screen.

As you can see, the phrase Programming in AppleScript is fun. is displayed in the dialog box, without the quotes you typed around those characters. Those double quotes are used to define the beginning and end of your character string. Whatever is contained inside those quotes gets displayed by the display dialog command. You are also shown two buttons, one labeled Cancel, and the other OK. The OK button is highlighted, indicating that the default action that will be taken if you press the Return key. Click the OK button (or press the Return key) to return control back to Script Editor. Notice that the following appears in the Result pane:

{button returned: "OK"}

You see that this window doesn't just display the results of performing arithmetic operations. This time the window tells you that the OK button was clicked. This may not seem important now, but later you learn how to test which button is clicked in your program and how to take appropriate action based on that test. As a quick note, if you click the Cancel button instead of OK, no result is displayed in the Result pane. That's because, unless you take special action, the program is immediately terminated when you cancel it.

Understanding the Buttons Parameter in the display dialog Command

In the example shown in the preceding section, the Cancel button served no purpose. You can get rid of the Cancel button by using a buttons parameter with the display dialog command. The following Try It Out shows you how.

Try It Out

Using the display dialog's Buttons Parameter

Follow these steps to eliminate the Cancel button from the previous dialog box:

1. Go back to the program you saved in the preceding Try It Out and add the following characters to the end of the display dialog command.

buttons {"OK"}

Your complete command line should look like this:

display dialog "Programming in AppleScript is fun." buttons {"OK"}

2. Compile and run the program. You see the dialog box shown in Figure 1-13.

Because of the changes you made to the code, the dialog box no longer contains a Cancel button but just the single button labeled OK.

How It Works

The word buttons that you added to your program is an optional parameter to the display dialog command. AppleScript commands often accept parameters that enable you to extend the functionality of a command.

You can see that AppleScript, unlike any other programming language you probably have used, employs English words in its vocabulary. This allows you to write commands that are easy to read. However, it's also a trap that may mislead you into thinking you can write just about any English sentence in your program. That's not the case; the AppleScript language has a fairly rigid structure and, generally, likes its words to be in the expected places. Through practice, you can learn this syntax and begin to understand where words are acceptable and where they're not.

Following the keyword buttons is the string "OK" enclosed inside a pair of curly braces { and }. These curly braces have special meaning in AppleScript: They define a list. Lists are discussed in full in Chapter 6. Between now and then, however, you learn some basic concepts for working with lists in your programs.

The list in this program contains just one item, which is the character string "OK". You can include additional items in a list by placing them inside the curly braces and separating one item from the next with a comma. For example, here is a list containing seven strings:

{"Sun", "Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat"}

And here is a list containing three numbers:

{1, 2, 3}

Finally, because lists can contain just about anything, here's one that contains a string and three numbers:

{"DOB", 8, 8, 1986}

Changing the Labels on a Button

Your program does not have to have a button labeled OK. In fact, you can choose any labels you want for your buttons. Simply specify the label in the list after the buttons parameter like this:

display dialog "Programming in AppleScript is fun." buttons {"You're so right!"}

When you run a program containing this command, the dialog displays a button with the label You're so right!.

The following Try It Out shows you how to set a default button.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Beginning AppleScript by Stephen G. Kochan Excerpted by permission.
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