How can I have a shell command run when a user clicks a Button in my Cocoa GUI?
I would like to have a button that when pressed, runs the command caffeinate to keep the computer awake.
I do not know how to code this function and have googled.
You run command line commands via NSTask. You create an NSTask, set the path to the command you want to run, set up the arguments and then call the task. If you google how to use NSTask I'm sure you'll find some example code.
Here is the Apple Developer documentation for NSTask: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/foundation/nstask?language=occ
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I want to start a program from VB.net and have control over it later(i want to show the window when i want, and minimize it after 5 seconds).
Now to start the program, it first needs to run a .bat file with a bunch of CALL- and SET- commands and it defines some variables and then the last command is the
START "Title App" /B ....
Now i am able to run this bat script with the process.start method from inside the vb.net app, but then i lose control over the started application (which gets started on top of my vb.net application).
My question is:
Is there a way to let vb.net run these commands (call ..., SET ...) from the batch file first, and then start the application with the process.start method?
To control the last command in a batch, you'll need to emulate the shell yourself.
The SET commands need to be replaced with calls to Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable, or manipulation of ProcessStartInfo.EnvironmentVariables.
Then you can call Process.Start as wanted.
There this AppleScript
tell application "Google Chrome" to set index of window 1 to 1
do shell script "open /Volumes"
Which opens a directory in Finder without bringing every onther Finder windows to the front.
Currently I'm using :
[[NSWorkspace sharedWorkspace] openURL:fileURL];
But it has the flaw to bring every Finder windows on the top of others.
Any idea how I could achieve the same behaviour as the AppleScript ?
You can always use NSAppleScript to run applescript code in Objective-C if Cocoa doesn't provide the functionality you want.
At a guess, -[NSWorkspace openURL:] also sends the application an activate event whereas the open process does not.
I'd recommend looking into the LaunchServices API. It's what both NSWorkspace and open use behind the scenes, but gives you more control than NSWorkspace's limited API.
--
p.s. If you do have to call out to open (or any other command line tool) from ObjC, you should use Cocoa's NSTask. (AppleScript's do shell script command is just its [crappy] equivalent of NSTask.)
I have a Windows program that has a GUI which also uses a command line interface (a cmd Window) as a debugging console. Basically, when it is double clicked, it launches a command line window and then the program creates all the GUI windows. Then you'd have two Windows: the main GUI and a debugging console.
I'm trying to port this pogram to OS X. Because OS X (and all Unix OSs for that matter) doesn't automatically launch a command line window when you run a command line application. So, I obviously need another way to port this application.
My initial thought was simply to import the source code into a XCode project, redirect standard input and output and then port the GUI. The GUI and console would run side by side just like in Windows. I don't think this is the most optimal solution since that would mean I'd essentially have to write a terminal emulator.
My other thought would be to port the application as a command line application which creates its GUI just like in Windows. The application would then have to be run from Terminal.app which could handle all the I/O. Unfortunately, I don't think you can use the Cocoa framework without using a NSApplication loop.
Any ideas how I could approach this?
You can of course create a run loop from a terminal-launched app. But that generally isn't what you want to do.
It sounds like on Windows, the CLI is just being used as a shortcut to creating a real debugging console window. So the simplest answer is to create a debugging console window. It's pretty easy to create a window which contains just a multi-line text or list view. (If you want something fancier, consider borrowing code from iTerm2 or other open source projects instead of trying to build a complete terminal.) If your debug information is being printed with some fancy macros, just change the macros to log to your list view.
If you're directly doing something like fprintf or syslog to do your logging, it might be simpler to create a wrapper app that launches the main app, and the wrapper creates the debugging console window and displays the main app's stdout and/or stderr. (This might be as simple as using popen.)
I want to write test_application for MacOS which will show whether IM client is running. This test_application also will have ability to start and kill IM Messenger (checkbox on/off)
I understand how to run / kill application with the help of push-buttons and now i want to show status of IM (is it running or not) and show checkbox ON or OFF depending on it
I suppose, i need to use some system call like "ps -aux processname" and parse it or use some API from Cocoa - but i can't understand how to get that information to test_application and how to do it outside any method (i want test_application to load initial information at it start, so if i open test_application it looks whether IM Messenger is running and makes checkbox ON or OFF without any clicks)
You can have a look at GetBSDProcessList and the Process Manager Reference to get running processes and daemons.
You could also use NSAppleScript and some AppleScript to launch the application or NSTask along with ps -aux processname and grep
I'm writing a standard Cocoa application, and I've just started implementing AppleScript support for it. I've defined and implemented a property called testprop for my top-level application scripting class, and accessing it works just fine: if I launch an instance of my app and run the following AppleScript in Script Editor, I get the output I expect:
tell application "MyApp"
testprop
end tell
However if I run this very same AppleScript in the Script Editor when my app is not running, it returns the last known value for this property, and continues to return it for subsequent calls. I don't see an instance of my app getting started anywhere in the GUI.
After I noticed this, I ran "ps xawww | grep MyApp" in the shell, which told me that a process had been created using my app's main executable, with an argument that looks something like this: -psn_0_323663 (the number at the end changes each time this process is started -- I gather that it's the "process serial number" that AppleScript (among others) uses to keep track of and control processes).
What is going on here? How can I prevent this from happening (i.e. launch my app as a full, proper GUI-enabled instance when AppleScript "tell" commands for it are run)?
Edit:
The above seems to occur only on my laptop. When I try exactly the same thing on my Mac Mini (the OS version is the same on both: 10.5.8), I simply get an error message:
$ osascript -e "tell application \"MyApp\"" -e "testprop" -e "end tell"
26:40: execution error: The variable testprop is not defined. (-2753)
I don't think it's running a "non-GUI" instance, it just hides the app. You could add the line "activate" to the applescript to get the app to become active, in which case you'll see the windows and menu.