[Zim]

I want to have a simple Applescript (called from Terminal) that will go in to Address Book and print out a record for a person with name matching the passed-in parameter

ie. osascript myScript person_name

I have the basics of such a script working with the name hard-coded... am coming up empty so far on how to pass in this paramater.

As a side note... other than "return" is there a way to print to the Terminal (stdout). I've tried "say" and other things without luck.

LOL, or should I give up and hack the db with a perl script instead?

Thanks,
Mike

[Brass]

Originally posted by Zim:
I want to have a simple Applescript (called from Terminal) that will go in to Address Book and print out a record for a person with name matching the passed-in parameter

ie. osascript myScript person_name

I have the basics of such a script working with the name hard-coded... am coming up empty so far on how to pass in this paramater.

As a side note... other than "return" is there a way to print to the Terminal (stdout). I've tried "say" and other things without luck.

LOL, or should I give up and hack the db with a perl script instead?

Thanks,
Mike

From the man page for osascript in OS 10.2.6:

Code:
BUGS
     osascript does not yet provide any way to pass arguments to the script.

[Mithras]

Great idea for a command-line app.

There's a workaround:
call osascript -e 'set thename to '$1 -e 'load script "/path/to/script"' -e 'look_up_name(thename)'

i.e., dynamically compile a short script that sets a variable with the value you want to pass. Then load your script (hafta check; i don't remember that syntax exactly), and call a subroutine with the variable you created.

It's imperfect, but it works, and I've used it before. Loading the precompiled script is much faster than recompiling the whole applescript each time you run the script.


But really, you should be writing a command-line C or objective-C program to do this.

See this topic at cocoaddev and this macdevcenter article for lots of help doing that.

[Brass]

Originally posted by Zim:
I want to have a simple Applescript (called from Terminal) that will go in to Address Book and print out a record for a person with name matching the passed-in parameter

ie. osascript myScript person_name

Any particular reason why you want this called from the Terminal?

[Zim]

Originally posted by Brass:
Any particular reason why you want this called from the Terminal?

b/c I am very often remotely logged in over an SSH connection.

And also b/c I don't really need a reason

Mike

[Zim]

Originally posted by Mithras:
Great idea for a command-line app.

There's a workaround:
call osascript -e 'set thename to '$1 -e 'load script "/path/to/script"' -e 'look_up_name(thename)'

i.e., dynamically compile a short script that sets a variable with the value you want to pass. Then load your script (hafta check; i don't remember that syntax exactly), and call a subroutine with the variable you created.

It's imperfect, but it works, and I've used it before. Loading the precompiled script is much faster than recompiling the whole applescript each time you run the script.


But really, you should be writing a command-line C or objective-C program to do this.

See this topic at cocoaddev and this macdevcenter article for lots of help doing that.

Thanks for the tips. I'm coming at this with a good background in perl/cgi scripting, but NO experience at Applescript, and having not written Apple-specific code since, um, 1992 (helped with Arashi a little)

But I think I understand where you are going with the suggestion and will give that a shot.

I considered this a reasonable hack to do my first Applescript. (a language is just a language after a certain point, and to some extent you get lazy about it b/c you know what you EXPECT it to be able to do, the frustration is in finding the correct syntax, not in figuring out the algorithm)

One unanswered question still... for a script called from a shell... how does one send the equivalent of prints back to stdout? So far I am only using "return", but that will allow me only one shot, and is not the equivalent of multiple "print 'reached point A'".. "print 'reached point B'" debug statements. I've been skimming the online docs, and the impression I get is that support for GUI output is much stronger (ie. I could be popping up dialog boxes if I intended to run this sitting in front of my Mac, but I intend to be running it remotely over a text-based ssh connection). I think I've tried "say" and "display" so far without luck.

Off to do some more research

Cheers,
Mike

[Zim]

Ok, success at the "alpha" stage.

Code:
#!/bin/sh
# filename: find_me 
# usage from Terminal prompt: find_me "Last First"

osascript -e "set the_name to \"$1\"" -e 'on find_me (the_name)
   tell application "Address Book"
     set the_people to every person
     repeat with this_name in the_people
          if name of this_name contains the_name then 
             set result to name of this_name & "\n" 
             repeat with e_info in emails of this_name
               set result to result & value of e_info & " "
             end repeat
               set result to result & "\n"
             repeat with p_info in phones of this_name
               set result to result & value of p_info & " "
             end repeat 
             return result
         end if
     end repeat
   end tell
end find_me' -e 'find_me(the_name)'

(constructive suggestions welcomed)

Now to pretty up (and add more to) the output.

Alas the Apple on-line docs all seem to be from 1999

Mike