How to create GUI for a perl script on MAC?/Apple Script and Perl?

[hary536]

Hello,

I have a perl script which accepts command line arguments like folder locations and some other yes/no switches. It is meant for MAC users.

I want to create some kind of simple GUI so that you can enter those command line arguments in the GUI instead of running the perl script from command line.

I came across Platypus, but seems, I can't pass multiple arguments using platypus. I don't know Objective-C or Cocoa. I know a bit of AppleScript.

I am wondering, is there a way to get user input through AppleScript and then pass that input as arguments to my perl script? I know, you can get user inputs through Apple Script, but don't know how to pass them as arguments to my perl script.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

Example of how my script accepts command-line arguments:

MyScript.pl -s PathToSoruceFolder -t PathtoDestinationFolder -c PathtoSettingsFolder -b Filenamestartswith -1 "YYYY/MM/DD HH:MM"(process files created after this time) -R 1 -W 1 -S 0 -E 1 Where 0 & 1 are switches for different things in my script.

[tobyink]

If you can persuade the Wx module to install on your system (WxWidgets does work on Mac, so it should theoretically, and according to the CPAN testers service there are successful install reports from Mac OS X), then you could investigate my Ask module. It's as simple as:

use Ask qw( file_selection info );

my $file = file_selection("Please choose a file!");
info("You chose: $file");

Then Ask does the rest. If the user has run your script through the Mac terminal, Ask should detect this, and to input and output via the terminal. If they've launched your script by, say, double clicking it in Finder, it will notice there's no terminal and interact with the user via dialog boxes.

I do keep meaning to write a blogs.perl.org post about Ask.

Update: blog post written... Ask not what your user can do for you...

[karlgoethebier]

I don't know how often i failed to install Wx on different platforms...

Last try:

Read more... (4 kB)

It's slightly annoying...

Best regards, Karl

[Anonymous Monk]

It's slightly annoying...

:) if you ain't gonna look at the logs and figure it out, just get the binaries :)

http://code.activestate.com/ppm/Alien-wxWidgets/ ( foolish timeout Timeout (max run time is 1200s) )

http://www.citrusperl.com/

[Anonymous Monk]

see http://www.cavapackager.com/, http://www.citrusperl.com/ and https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/Applescript/Conceptual/AppleScriptX/Concepts/work_with_as.html

[karlgoethebier]

Like this:

AppleScript

set theWindowTitle to "PerlMonks"
set theOption to text returned of (display dialog "Enter a Source fold
+er:" & return default answer "" with title theWindowTitle)
set thePerlScript to quoted form of (POSIX path of ((choose file with 
+prompt "Select a script:") as Unicode text))
set theResult to do shell script thePerlScript & " -S " & theOption
display dialog "Result: " & theResult with title theWindowTitle

Perl

#!/usr/bin/perl
use strict;
use warnings;
use Getopt::Long;
Getopt::Long::Configure("ignore_case");
my %options;
GetOptions(\%options, "SourceFolder=s");
print $options{SourceFolder};

Update: see also Getopt::Long

Regards, Karl

[hary536]

Thanks Karl, I didn't notice your post until later today. I spent quite a bit of time on friday and saturday researching for my problem solution. Came across this Apple tech note, which helped some. http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2065/_index.html Then I wrote following code to see if it will work:

set cfgfolder to choose folder with prompt "Choose the Configs folder:
+" default location alias "MacHD:Folder1:Folder2:Configs:"
set cfgposix to POSIX path of cfgfolder

set sourcefolder to choose folder with prompt "Choose the  source fold
+er:" default location alias "MacHD:Folder3:Folder4"
set sourceposix to POSIX path of sourcefolder

set targetfolder to choose folder with prompt "Choose the Target folde
+r location:" default location alias "MacHD:TargetFolder"
set targetposix to POSIX path of targetfolder

do shell script "/usr/bin/perl /PathToPerlScript &> '/Logs/Reprocesslo
+g.txt'" & " -t " & targetposix & " -s " & sourceposix & "-c" & cfgpos
+ix

set nextdate to do shell script "date" & " +%y%m%d_%H%M%S"

# some more code will go here to open the log file in console, so that
+ one can see the log updates in real time.

Now, I can pass the arguments to my script, but it doesn't run in background. Hence, the next AppleScript statement doesn't execute until the perl script finishes execution.

Since, then I have tried several quote combinations to make it work and I thought, I succeeded yesterday night but today morning, couldn't figure out what I did that made it work.

Now, after several trials, I only face two outcomes:

Either perl script runs in background(but doesn't accept the arguments passed to it) or it accepts the arguments passed to it, but doesn't run in background.

Have hit a roadblock.

Also, there is one more challenge with this method and that is I can run multiple instances of this script and each instance will create it's own log file. I want to be able to kill/stop any instance out of the several running ones. Challenge is how to do to it via Applescript so that user can select the exact instance that they want to stop.

Any help/advice from anyone is appreciated. Thanks. PS: My perl script is not using Getopt:Long as of now, but I will look into it.

[karlgoethebier]

This snippet reads a option, does the backgrounding and reads the pid of the current perlscript for killing it...

set theWindowTitle to "PerlMonks"
set theOption to text returned of (display dialog "Enter a sourceFolde
+r:" & return default answer "" with title theWindowTitle)
set thePerlscript to quoted form of (POSIX path of ((choose file with 
+prompt "Select a script:") as Unicode text))
set cmd to thePerlscript & " -S " & theOption & " &> /dev/null" & " & 
+ echo $!"
display dialog "Command: " & cmd with title theWindowTitle
do shell script cmd
set pid to the result
display dialog "PID: " & pid with title theWindowTitle
display dialog "Kill the proccess (" & pid & ")" buttons {"OK"} with t
+itle theWindowTitle
do shell script ("kill " & pid)

I hope this helps a little bit to work it out...

Best regards, Karl