[Pyobjc-dev] Re: [Pythonmac-SIG] pyobjc / cocoa

[Michael J. Barber]

On Wednesday, October 16, 2002, at 04:25  PM, Jack Jansen wrote:

> Something else that might be worthwhile is a helper command that 
> translates ObjC calls to Python. You would then copy [obj setObject: 
> value forKey: key], paste it in your Python script (where it will stay 
> selected) and select the "ObjC methodcall to Python" command to turn it 
> into obj.setObjectForKey(value, key). The only question is how we could 
> get this into Project Builder (into the Python IDE would be easy).

Sounds like a nice thing to do as a service or as a script. Getting it 
into Project Builder is then automatic.

Since I don't know how to write a service, I wrote a basic AppleScript 
for that. And I do mean basic: testing was minimal, nested method calls 
aren't handled correctly, and string arguments containing ":" will cause 
big problems. But, it's a starting point which someone might find 
useful, and doing it correctly would basically require a mini-parser for 
Objective-C, which there's no way I'm going to write in AppleScript! ;) 
Might be quite nice done in Python using Plex, though.

If anyone is interested in using it, copy the Objective C method call 
you want to convert, then run this script. The text will be converted to 
a Pythonic method call on the clipboard, which you can paste as usual. 
Be careful of spurious line breaks in the script when you first save it.

Here it is:

on run
	-- get an Objective C message from the clipboard
	set objcText to the clipboard
	if objcText starts with "[" and objcText ends with "]" then
		set objcText to items 2 through -2 of objcText as string
	end if
	
	set the tokens to split of the objcText at ":"
	set objectName to the first word of the first item of the tokens
	set methodName to {second word of the first item of the tokens}
	set methodArgs to {}
	
	repeat with tok in items 2 through -2 of tokens
		set namePiece to the last word of the tok
		copy namePiece to the end of the methodName
		copy (items 1 through -(1 + (length of namePiece)) of tok as 
string) to the end of methodArgs
	end repeat
	
	copy last item of tokens to the end of methodArgs
	
	--return {tokens, objectName, methodName, methodArgs}
	set the clipboard to objectName & "." & (join of methodName 
by "_") & "(" & (join of methodArgs by ",") & ")"
end run

on split of str at delim
	set oldTIDs to the text item delimiters of AppleScript
	set the text item delimiters of AppleScript to delim
	set tokens to the text items of the str
	set the text item delimiters of AppleScript to oldTIDs
	return the tokens
end split

on join of tokens by delim
	set oldTIDs to the text item delimiters of AppleScript
	set the text item delimiters of AppleScript to delim
	set str to the tokens as string
	set the text item delimiters of AppleScript to oldTIDs
	return the str
end join