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Building an Apple Event

This chapter provides an overview of Apple event data structures and describes how to build an Apple event.

An Apple event is capable of describing complex commands and the data necessary to carry them out. For example, an Apple event might request that a database application return data from records that meet certain criteria. An event sent by the Mac OS might request that the receiving application print a specified list of documents. The Apple Event Manager provides a relatively small number of Apple event data structures that together can be used to represent commands of great complexity.

Your application typically works with Apple events and the data they contain when:

• It receives an Apple event and must extract information to figure out what to do with the event.

• In response to a received Apple event, it must add information to a reply event to return to the sender.

• It creates an Apple event from scratch for internal communication or to request data or services from another application.

Working effectively with Apple events in these cases requires some knowledge of the data structures and organization of an Apple event, as well as familiarity with the Apple Event Manager functions you use to create Apple events and manipulate their data.

Contents:

About Apple Event Data Structures
Apple Event Building Blocks
Two Approaches to Creating an Apple Event

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