The general question from my specific problem is how to interact WITH a running Applescript without leaving the program you a currently in. Its kind of the opposite question of how to USE Applescript to interact with other programs.
I need to go through a lot of web pages and input information from them into a spreadsheet. I have somewhat automated the process with an Applescript that takes an webpage as input and then opens its relevant links one by one, waiting for a click in a dialog box before proceeding to the next.
If you want to run the script, use http://www.resultat.dk/tennis/challenger-singler/champaign/resultater/ as input to the dialog box
--Let the user input the the main webpage
display dialog "Linkzor" default answer ""
set tunering to text returned of result
--get the javascript of the web page
tell application "Safari"
tell window 1
open location tunering
end tell
delay 5
tell front document to set ¬
startText to {name, do JavaScript "window.document.documentElement.outerHTML"}
end tell
set listen to {}
set teksten to startText as string
--Gets all the relevant link variables of the web page
repeat with i from 1 to 500
set forekomst to text (nthOffset(teksten, "g_2_", i) + 4) thru (nthOffset(teksten, "g_2_", i) + 11) of teksten
if nthOffset(teksten, "g_2_", i) = 0 then exit repeat
set punkt to "http://www.resultat.dk/kamp/" & forekomst & "/#kampreferat"
set listen to listen & punkt
end repeat
set lengde to count of listen
--opens the links one by one
repeat with x from 1 to lengde
tell application "Safari"
tell window 1
set URL of document 1 to item x of listen
end tell
end tell
--set question to display dialog "luk vinduet?" buttons {"Ja"}
--set answer to button returned of question
set question to display dialog "forsæt?" buttons {"Ja", "nej"} default button 1
set answer to button returned of question
if answer is "nej" then exit repeat
end repeat
on nthOffset(myText, subString, n)
set astid to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to subString
-- There will be one more text item than there are instances of the substring in the string, so:
if (count myText's text items) > n then
-- There are at least n instances of the substring in the text.
-- The first character of the nth instance comes immediately after the last
-- character of the nth text item.
set o to (count text from text item 1 to text item n of myText) + 1
else
-- There isn't an nth instance of the substring in this text.
set o to 0
end if
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to astid
return o
end nthOffset
Now I would like to automate it a bit further so I didn´t have to leave the spreadsheet to click the dialog box when going to the next webpage. Is there a way to force the Applescript proceed without me actually clicking the dialog box? I have tried to save the script as an application (“hent2”) and made another script to sent an “enter” keystroke to it while it is running (and then activate the new script through some kind of hotkey):
tell application "System Events"
tell application "hent2" to activate
key code 36
end tell
It does´t do anything.
Any suggestions on how to proceed? Either with the “sent keystroke to Applescript” or a more elegant solution?