[MacRuby-devel] Scripting Bridge

[Matt Aimonetti]

During my last flight I wrote a 20 lines object-C header parser which dumps
a json structure of the header (kinda weird to convert a XML to a header to
a JSON, I might want to review my approach soon or later).

I'll probably try to write a quick demo app that will load the json
structure and let you browse the API, nothing fancy but enough for someone
to hack around and make the app awesome.

- Matt


On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 5:08 PM, Matt Aimonetti <mattaimonetti at gmail.com>wrote:

> If you call "methods(true, true).grep /export/i" on one of your objects
> and you get a method signature such as:
> exportFormat:to:showingOptions:using:versionComments:forceSave:
>
> That means you need to call it as shown in my example:
> page.exportFormat("tagged text/PDF", to:"/Users/mattetti/tmp/page2.pdf",
> showingOptions: false, using: app.PDFExportPresets.first, versionComments:
> "test", forceSave: true)
>
> Which is like calling a method with a param and a hash of params with the
> keys of the hash being the selector elements (it uses Ruby 1.9's hash
> format).
> exportFormat(param, key: value, key: value, key: value)
>
> If you look at the indesign header file the function signature looks like
> that:
>
> - (void) *exportFormat*:(id)format *to:*(id)to *showingOptions:*(BOOL)
> showingOptions *using:*(inDesignPDFExportPreset *)using_ *versionComments:
> *(NSString *)versionComments *forceSave:*(BOOL)forceSave;  // Exports the
> object(s) to a file.
>
> In blue, you can see the expected type, in bold the method signature and
> in gray the named given to the params (not important).
>
>
> I figure the index numbers means the position of the param in the list.
>> This has not worked perfectly and yours did not seem to match up perfectly
>> or else I am missing something.  How do we figure out syntax for these
>> other
>> than trial and error?
>
>
>
> I opened up a macirb session and used Ruby's introspection tools +
> applescript editor which has some extra hints on the expected params.
> For instance, I got a page object and I did:
>
> >> methods = (page.method(true, true) - Object.new(true, true)).sort
>
> That would give you an array of all the methods available on "page", for
> the params, I referred to header file and the applescript editor dictionary
> doc.
> I can't find the small script I wrote, but writing a simple/dumb parser
> for the obj-c header file that would give you a proper documentation for
> all methods available should be very trivial. (I'm about to take off for a
> long flight, I might work on that if my 16 months daughter decides to sleep
> for most of the trip ;))
>
> The bottom line is that using BridgeScript is harder that it should be
> especially when the provided APIs aren't well designed. Ars Technical has a
> good tutorial on how to script safari and evernote:
> http://arstechnica.com/apple/guides/2011/09/tutorial-os-x-automation-with-macruby-and-the-scripting-bridge.ars
>
> An app that would let you pick a 3rd party app and would run sdef/sdp, let
> you browse the classes/functions, read the comments and generate a BS file
> would be of a huge help.
>
> Another thing that would be great is MacRuby support for OSA
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript#Open_Scripting_Architecture
> http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/AppleScript/Conceptual/AppleScriptX/Concepts/osa.html
>
> I believe this is something Laurent still wants to have in for 1.0.
>
> - Matt
>
>
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 3, 2011 at 4:34 PM, Spencer Rose <dspencerr at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> And now I am reading chapter 8 of your book again because
>> I remembered something about noMethodErrors and selectors.
>>
>> Starting to make sense.  Stay tuned.  :)
>>
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>>
>
>
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