Tuesday, December 2, 2014

JavaScript for Automation

Alex Guyot:

Since JXA is so new, there obviously was not much information to go by. I've never gotten around to learning AppleScript, so articles based on the classic OS X automation language were not much help either, although I’m not sure how much they would apply anyway. The result was quite a few wasted hours trying to figure out some of the most basic parts of JXA, such as proper syntax of method calls, which method calls worked with which apps, and how to identify UI Elements in order to trigger them with UI automation. Eventually I was able to figure these things out, so now I'm back to share what I learned.

Late Night Software:

Script Debugger 5 does not support the new JavaScript for Automation feature introduced by Apple in Yosemite (Mac OS X 10.10).

Ironically, we once offered our own JavaScript implementation for Script Debugger versions 2 and 3 and discontinued it due to lack of interest. We are watching how much adoption Apple’s JavaScript for Automation receives. Offering debugging for Apple’s JavaScript implementation is non-trivial so this isn’t something we can easily add back into Script Debugger.

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