File: ReadMe.txt
Abstract: readme file for the SBSendEmail sample.
Version: 1.0
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Introduction
This file details the steps involved in putting together a project that uses
Scripting Bridge to send Apple events to the Mail application for the purposes
of automatically sending emails. The following details the steps involved in
creating this sample.
1. Start with a new Cocoa application.
In this sample we're going to use the Mail application to send email so we'll
call our sample 'SBSendEmail'. The techniques we are demonstrating in this
sample can be used in any Cocoa Application. We used a simple one window Cocoa
application for this sample to keep it simple.
This project comes with the Interface Builder .nib file and the Controller
object to support that already set up. It is assumed that the reader is
familiar with those parts of Cocoa programming so the mechanics of putting those
parts together are not discussed in this readme.
2. Add a Scripting Bridge build rule to the project.
The first thing to do is to set up Xcode to automatically generate the
Scripting Bridge source for the application you would like to target. The
following steps describe how you can do that:
(a) Turn down the "Targets" tab in the "Groups & Files" list on the left hand
side and select the main target. In this sample, select the "SBSendEmail"
target.
(b) With the "SBSendEmail" target selected, open the information panel (by
clicking on the Info icon, or by control- or right-clicking on the target name
and selecting "Get Info" from the pop-up menu).
(c) In the info window, click on the Rules tab and then click on the + button
at the bottom to add a new rule.
(d) Set up the new rule as follows:
Process 'Source files with names matching:' *.app
using: 'Custom Script'
set the script field to:
sdef "$INPUT_FILE_PATH" | sdp -fh -o "$DERIVED_FILES_DIR" --basename
"$INPUT_FILE_BASE" --bundleid `defaults read "$INPUT_FILE_PATH/Contents/Info"
CFBundleIdentifier`
click on the "+" icon below the 'with output files:' field, and then set the
field to contain:
$(DERIVED_FILES_DIR)/$(INPUT_FILE_BASE).h
NOTE: if you're typing this rule in by hand, note that it should all be one
one line, and it must be typed exactly as shown above. If you have difficulty
entering the above command, then copy and paste the command from the readme into
the rule.
(e) All done. You can close the info window. Xcode is now set up to
automatically generate Scripting Bridge source for any applications you add to
your project.
NOTE: this rule uses the sdef and sdp command line tools. To learn more about
these tools, use the following commands in the Terminal window:
man sdp
man sdef
3. Select a target application.
To do this, drag and drop the application you would like to target into the
project files group inside of the "Groups & Files" list in the project window.
You can drop the application among the source files you are using for your
application. Because of the build rule we added in step 2, Xcode will treat the
Mail application as if it were one of the source files during the build.
You should uncheck the 'Copy items into destination group's folder (if needed)'
option so the application is not copied into your project directory. In this
sample we have selected 'Absolute Path' as the reference type so we can easily
move the project around from machine to machine without invalidating the
reference (so long as the Mail application is present in the
System/Library/CoreServices folder, Xcode will be able to find it).
In this case, we are adding the Mail to our project. The Mail application is
located in the /System/Library/CoreServices folder.
4. Add the target application to the Compile Sources.
After you have added the target application to your project, you must also add
it to the main target's Compile Sources. You can do that by adding the
application to the 'Compile Sources' build phase under the main target. In the
"Groups & Files" list, open the "Targets" and the "SBSendEmail" target and the
Compile Sources build phase items by clicking on the arrows to the left of them.
Then, drag the Mail.app from the project files group into the Compile Sources.
5. Add the Scripting Bridge framework to your project.
Turn down the "Frameworks" group in the Groups & Files area, and then
control-click (or right click) on the "Linked Frameworks" sub-group. Select
"Add > Existing Frameworks..." from the pop-up menu. Then, add the
"ScriptingBridge.framework"
(/System/Library/Frameworks/ScriptingBridge.framework) to the project.
6. Add a minimum system version Info.plist key.
Since the ScriptingBridge.framework is necessary for this application to run
and that framework is not present on previous system versions, you should add
the following key/value pair to the Info.plist file for the application. If
someone tries to run this application on a system earlier than Mac OS X 10.5,
then they will receive a notice from launch services letting them know that the
application is meant to be run on a later version of Mac OS X.
<key>LSMinimumSystemVersion</key>
<string>10.5</string>
You can edit the Info.plist file by either clicking on its icon in the
resources section, or by clicking on the SBSendEmail target, clicking on the
Info icon, selecting the Properties tab, and then clicking on "Open Info.plist
as File".
7. Make sure the Target SDK is set to Mac OS X 10.5
You won't have to change this setting for this project, but if you are adding
Scripting Bridge to another project that you started an earlier version of the
Mac OS than Mac OS X 10.5, then you will need to update the Target SDK for the
project. In the Groups & Files view, select the SBSendEmail project icon at the
top of the list and then open the information window. Under the General tab,
change the Cross-Develop Using Target SDK: setting to Mac OS X 10.5.
8. Build your project.
If you have followed the steps above, Xcode will generate the Scripting Bridge
source for your project. They will be put inside of your build folder in a
place where the linker and compiler can find them.
The build rule that we installed will create a .h file with the same name as
the application. For example, if you added Mail to our project, then the build
rule will create Mail.h. The files will be created inside of the build
directory in the DerivedSources directory where the compiler can find them.
For the Debug build, the Mail.h file will be located in this sub folder of the
build directory:
/build/SBSendEmail.build/Debug/SBSendEmail.build/DerivedSources/Mail.h
For the Release build, the Mail.h file will be located in this sub folder of
the build directory:
/build/SBSendEmail.build/Release/SBSendEmail.build/DerivedSources/Mail.h
A convenient way for you to open and inspect these files is to use the 'Open
Quickly' command in the file menu. For most purposes, the .h file will contain
most of the interesting information so to view that file you open the 'Mail.h'
file.
In some cases, depending on what frameworks are in your project, the 'Open
Quickly' command may open the system's 'Mail.h' file that includes constants and
definitions used by the file system and the Mail application. If that happens
for you, then you will need to navigate into the build folder to find the
correct header file.
9. Add in the Mail's Scripting Bridge header.
In the file Controller.m, we have added the import statement '#import "Mail.h"'
near the top of the file below '#import "Controller.h"'. This will include all
of the Scripting Bridge definitions for the Mail.
Here is the imports section in our Controller.m file:
#import "Controller.h"
#import "Mail.h"
In your own application, of course, you would import the Mail.h file in the
file where you intend to call it from. In this sample, we are using the
Scripting Bridge interface inside of three methods in our Controller class so
that is why we are importing it into Controller.m.
10. The email sending code
So far, the preceeding steps have described how to set up a project to use
Scripting Bridge to target the Mail application. This sample illustrates how to
send an email and the code to do that is relatively simple. In this section,
we'll talk about the code in the -sendEmailMessage: method of the Controller
class.
Here is the method itself:
- (IBAction)sendEmailMessage:(id)sender {
/* create a Scripting Bridge object for talking to the Mail application
*/
MailApplication *mail = [SBApplication
applicationWithBundleIdentifier:@"com.apple.Mail"];
/* create a new outgoing message object */
MailOutgoingMessage *emailMessage =
[[[mail classForScriptingClass:@"outgoing message"] alloc]
initWithProperties:
[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
[self.subjectField stringValue], @"subject",
[[self.messageContent textStorage] string], @"content",
nil]];
/* add the object to the mail app */
[[mail outgoingMessages] addObject: emailMessage];
/* set the sender, show the message */
emailMessage.sender = [self.fromField stringValue];
emailMessage.visible = YES;
/* create a new recipient and add it to the recipients list */
MailToRecipient *theRecipient =
[[[mail classForScriptingClass:@"to recipient"] alloc]
initWithProperties:
[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
[self.toField stringValue], @"address",
nil]];
[emailMessage.toRecipients addObject: theRecipient];
/* add an attachment, if one was specified */
NSString *attachmentFilePath = [self.fileAttachmentField stringValue];
if ( [attachmentFilePath length] > 0 ) {
/* create an attachment object */
MailAttachment *theAttachment = [[[mail
classForScriptingClass:@"attachment"] alloc]
initWithProperties:
[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
attachmentFilePath, @"fileName",
nil]];
/* add it to the list of attachments */
[[emailMessage.content attachments] addObject: theAttachment];
}
/* send the message */
[emailMessage send];
}
Interesting points to note:
a. We add the newly created outgoing method to the Mail application's
outgoingMessages just after creating it. This forces Scripting Bridge to send
apple events over to the Mail application asking it to create an actual
scripting object for the Scripting Bridge proxy object. After that, we can set
properties on the scripting object through our proxy object without any trouble.
b. When creating new objects the property name in the dictionary providing the
properties for the new object is specified using the Objective-C key name. For
example, when creating a new attachment, we used the Cocoa key "fileName" for
the AppleScript "file name" property.
c. When creating new objects, we do not specify the Cocoa key value for the
class name. For example, when creating an outgoing email message, we used the
AppleScript name "outgoing message" for the class.
d. Inside of the -chooseFileAttachment: method, the NSOpenPanel is set to allow
directory selections (via the call to -setCanChooseDirectories:). When you
attach a directory to an outgoing mail message in the Mail application, Mail
takes care of bundling up the contents of the directory as a single .zip file
attachment that is sent with your message.
e. In this application we only provide facilities for adding a single
attachment to an outgoing email message. This is on purpose to keep the user
interface simple. However, it is not too difficult to revise the
-sendEmailMessage: method to add more than one attachment.
First, suppose that the UI was revised to provide an NSArray of path names
referring to attachment files. For illustration, we'll use this NSArray
definition:
/* files to be sent as attachments */
NSArray *attachmentPaths =
[NSArray arrayWithObjects:
@"/tmp/one.gif",
@"/tmp/two.jpg",
@"/tmp/three.pdf",
nil];
Then, given that we have the NSArray attachmentPaths, the following code could
be used to add them as attachments to the email message.
/* iterate through the list of files */
for ( NSString* nthPath in attachmentPaths ) {
/* create an attachment object */
MailAttachment *theAttachment = [[[mail
classForScriptingClass:@"attachment"] alloc]
initWithProperties:
[NSDictionary dictionaryWithObjectsAndKeys:
nthPath, @"fileName",
nil]];
/* add it to the list of attachments */
[[emailMessage.content attachments] addObject: theAttachment];
}
11. Where to next?
Documentation for Scripting Bridge can be found in the Scripting Bridge Release
Note at this address:
http://developer.apple.com/releasenotes/ScriptingAutomation/RN-ScriptingBridge/index.html
There are man pages available for the Scripting Bridge command line tools. To
access those pages, enter the following commands into the Terminal window:
man sdp
man sdef
There are some other Scripting Bridge samples available including
ScriptingBridgeiCal and ScriptingBridgeFinder showing how to use Scripting
Bridge together with the Apps named in their titles.
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