nodeautomation

#nodeautomation

NodeJS ↔ Apple event ('AppleScript') bridge (experimental)

About

NodeAutomation is a Node.js module that allows 'AppleScriptable' applications to be controlled directly from JavaScript.

For example, to get the value of the first paragraph of the document named 'README' in TextEdit:

app('TextEdit').documents.named('README').paragraphs[0].get()

This is equivalent to the AppleScript statement:

tell application "TextEdit" to get paragraph 1 of document "README"

Or to create a new "Hello World!" document in TextEdit:

app('TextEdit').make({new: k.document, 
                      withProperties: {text: "Hello World!"}})

Install

$ npm install nodeautomation

Usage

$ node
> require('nodeautomation/repl');
> const finder = app('Finder');
> finder.home();
app('Finder').startupDisk.folders.named('Users').folders.named('jsmith')

Documentation

Documentation is preliminary, being a quick and dirty translation of the original appscript manual. Documentation is included in the nodeautomation package and online:

https://hhas.github.io/nodeautomation/

Tools

ASDictionary and ASTranslate tools:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/appscript/files/

Status

Caution: This is an experimental release. There will be bugs and rough edges.

E&OE. No warranty given. Use at own risk. Etc.

See also: https://appscript.sourceforge.io/status.html

Dependencies

• @hhas01/objc -- https://github.com/hhas/objc (forked from lukaskollmer/objc)
• @napi-ffi/ffi-napi -- https://github.com/napi-ffi
• @napi-ffi/ref-napi
• @napi-ffi/ref-struct-di
• libxmljs2

Known issues

Depends on some deprecated CoreServices/Cocoa APIs, for which macOS may or may not provide replacements.

WARNING: The libxmljs2 dependency is no longer maintained and insecure.

TO DO: Switch to libxmljs which appears to be actively maintained again.