pass and receive values between python script and applescript

Question

I\'m very new to python and applescript. I have a python script which is calling 2 applescripts. I would like to define few global variables in python and pass to applescript 1

Answer 1

os.system(): Execute the command (a string) in a subshell. This is implemented by calling the Standard C function system(), and has the same limitations.

Changes to sys.stdin, sys.stout are not reflected in the environment of the executed command. The return value is the exit status, not the osascript output.

Use subprocess.Popen:

import os, sys, commands
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE

var1 = sys.argv[1] 
var2 = sys.argv[2] 
(var3, tError) = Popen(['osascript', '/Setup.scpt', var1, var2], stdout=PIPE).communicate()
print var1
print var2
print var3

The osascript command always returns a string. if the AppleScript return a list, the string in python will be separated by a comma and a space.

Answer 2

You have to return something from the "on run" handler in applescript otherwise the returned result is only the result of the last line of code. So you'll want to do something like this...

on run argv
    set returnList to {}

    if (item 1 of argv starts with "x") then
        set end of returnList to function1(item1 of argv)
    else
        set end of returnList to function2(item 1 of argv)
        set end of returnList to function3(item 2 of argv)
    end if

    return returnList
end run

Also your functions will need to look something like this if you want the user to supply something. Note that I'm telling the Finder to show the dialog. That's because you are running this from python and it will error if some application doesn't handle the user interaction.

on function1(var)
    tell application "Finder"
        activate
        set var to text returned of (display dialog "Enter a value" default answer "")
    end tell
    return var
end function1