Running AppleScript from XPCOM

Question

I've been trying to execute applescript code through XPCOM, but no matter what I do it just doesn't seem to work, the observer tells me that the process finishes without a problem, but nothing happens.

var processArgs = ['-e','\'tell application "iTunes"\'','-e','\'activate\'','-e','\'end tell\''];

var file = Cc["@mozilla.org/file/local;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIFile);
file.initWithPath( '/usr/bin/osascript');

var process = Cc["@mozilla.org/process/util;1"].createInstance(Components.interfaces.nsIProcess);
process.init( file );

var observer = {
    observe: function( subject, topic ) {
        SiteFusion.consoleMessage('DONE ' + topic);
    }
}

process.runAsync( processArgs, processArgs.length, observer );

The output in the console is 'DONE process-finished' so it should have worked, does anyone know why this script refuses to open iTunes?

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Mar 23 '16 at 23:52

Reason is that you use escaped single quotes in arguments, so your actual resulting AppleScript looks like:

'tell application "iTunes"'
'activate'
'end tell'

Which is clearly not valid. Instead, your arguments should look like this:

const processArgs = ['-e', 'tell application "iTunes"', '-e', 'activate', '-e', 'end tell'];

or, alternatively,

const processArgs = ['-e', `
    tell application "iTunes"
        activate
    end tell`];

or, alternatively,

const processArgs = ['-e', 'tell application "iTunes" to activate'];

Running AppleScript from XPCOM

1 Answers1