1 2 .. _mac-scripting: 3 4 ********************* 5 MacPython OSA Modules 6 ********************* 7 8 This chapter describes the current implementation of the Open Scripting 9 Architecture (OSA, also commonly referred to as AppleScript) for Python, 10 allowing you to control scriptable applications from your Python program, 11 and with a fairly pythonic interface. Development on this set of modules has 12 stopped. 13 14 For a description of the various components of AppleScript and OSA, and to get 15 an understanding of the architecture and terminology, you should read Apple's 16 documentation. The "Applescript Language Guide" explains the conceptual model 17 and the terminology, and documents the standard suite. The "Open Scripting 18 Architecture" document explains how to use OSA from an application programmers 19 point of view. In the Apple Help Viewer these books are located in the Developer 20 Documentation, Core Technologies section. 21 22 As an example of scripting an application, the following piece of AppleScript 23 will get the name of the frontmost :program:`Finder` window and print it:: 24 25 tell application "Finder" 26 get name of window 1 27 end tell 28 29 In Python, the following code fragment will do the same:: 30 31 import Finder 32 33 f = Finder.Finder() 34 print f.get(f.window(1).name) 35 36 As distributed the Python library includes packages that implement the standard 37 suites, plus packages that interface to a small number of common applications. 38 39 To send AppleEvents to an application you must first create the Python package 40 interfacing to the terminology of the application (what :program:`Script Editor` 41 calls the "Dictionary"). This can be done from within the :program:`PythonIDE` 42 or by running the :file:`gensuitemodule.py` module as a standalone program from 43 the command line. 44 45 The generated output is a package with a number of modules, one for every suite 46 used in the program plus an :mod:`__init__` module to glue it all together. The 47 Python inheritance graph follows the AppleScript inheritance graph, so if a 48 program's dictionary specifies that it includes support for the Standard Suite, 49 but extends one or two verbs with extra arguments then the output suite will 50 contain a module :mod:`Standard_Suite` that imports and re-exports everything 51 from :mod:`StdSuites.Standard_Suite` but overrides the methods that have extra 52 functionality. The output of :mod:`gensuitemodule` is pretty readable, and 53 contains the documentation that was in the original AppleScript dictionary in 54 Python docstrings, so reading it is a good source of documentation. 55 56 The output package implements a main class with the same name as the package 57 which contains all the AppleScript verbs as methods, with the direct object as 58 the first argument and all optional parameters as keyword arguments. AppleScript 59 classes are also implemented as Python classes, as are comparisons and all the 60 other thingies. 61 62 The main Python class implementing the verbs also allows access to the 63 properties and elements declared in the AppleScript class "application". In the 64 current release that is as far as the object orientation goes, so in the example 65 above we need to use ``f.get(f.window(1).name)`` instead of the more Pythonic 66 ``f.window(1).name.get()``. 67 68 If an AppleScript identifier is not a Python identifier the name is mangled 69 according to a small number of rules: 70 71 * spaces are replaced with underscores 72 73 * other non-alphanumeric characters are replaced with ``_xx_`` where ``xx`` is 74 the hexadecimal character value 75 76 * any Python reserved word gets an underscore appended 77 78 Python also has support for creating scriptable applications in Python, but The 79 following modules are relevant to MacPython AppleScript support: 80 81 .. toctree:: 82 83 gensuitemodule.rst 84 aetools.rst 85 aepack.rst 86 aetypes.rst 87 miniaeframe.rst 88 89 90 In addition, support modules have been pre-generated for :mod:`Finder`, 91 :mod:`Terminal`, :mod:`Explorer`, :mod:`Netscape`, :mod:`CodeWarrior`, 92 :mod:`SystemEvents` and :mod:`StdSuites`. 93
