This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Jared Richardson. Original Post: Scripting OS X Applications with Ruby Feed Title: Agile Artisans Feed URL: http://agileartisans.com/main/rss Feed Description: Jared's Blog Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Jared Richardson Latest Posts From Agile Artisans

I needed to pull some statistics and information out of TextMate but they don't have a formal API. Then a co-worker spotted this project

http://blog.ardes.com/2007/9/14/os-x-textmate-user-free-time-tracker-matewatch

which has an example of the RubyOSA bridge that exposes the Apple events that an application makes available. That is to say, I can get access to tons of applications (including iTunes and TextMate) from a Ruby app.

RubyOSA is easy to use. Here's a quick example that shows the list of your TextMate documents.

require 'rubygems'
require 'rbosa'
tm = OSA.app("Textmate")
tm.documents.each{|doc|
 puts doc.name
}

Another scriptable application is iTunes. You can just as easily type

iTunes = OSA.app('iTunes')
iTunes.pause
iTunes.play

But the question you'll immediately have is what methods are availabe for