将CLI命令添加到Cocoa应用程序？

Question

I am looking for a way to send commands (with arguments) from a command line tool to a running Cocoa app. Is this possible?

If my the Cocoa app is open and running I would like it to receive basic events from the terminal. How can I communicate between a CLI-target and Cocoa-target?

The only way this I have found is to use the AppleScript and add scriptability to the app. Is this the only way to go?

Answer 1

To send commands to your app from the terminal you could use URL Scheme.

Register a scheme in info.plist ("yourScheme" is the scheme identifier in this example), then listen for events:

NSAppleEventManager.shared().setEventHandler(self, andSelector: #selector(handleGetURLEvent(event:withReplyEvent:)), forEventClass: AEEventClass(kInternetEventClass), andEventID: AEEventID(kAEGetURL))

and get the content of an event with

@objc func handleGetURLEvent(event: NSAppleEventDescriptor!, withReplyEvent: NSAppleEventDescriptor!) {
    if let text = event.paramDescriptor(forKeyword: AEKeyword(keyDirectObject)) {
        // you may want to filter the commands here
        if text.contains("yourScheme://doStuff") {

        } else if ...
    }
}

Example from the terminal:

$ open "yourScheme://doStuff"
$ open "yourScheme://doSomethingElse"

Answer 2

I recently created a command-line app for a Swift app that I've distributed on the Mac App Store. I was able to do this by:

1. Making the App scriptable (see Implementing a Scriptable Application )

2. Generating a library to script the app (see Using Scripting Bridge )

3. Creating a separate CLI target using the library embedded from step 2

I've happend to make the code open source (aside from the app which was made scriptable). The scripted library is called EmporterKit , which also includes a Makefile to generate the scripted headers, and the CLI is called emporter-cli , which was built with a library called YDCommandKit , which makes writing CLI apps way easier.

This topic is extremely broad and the options are limited while keeping in step with modern security practices on macOS. Honestly, you should just stick to using URL schemes if possible, but if you want a full-featured command-line app, this is probably the only way to go.