Lately, I have been toying with automating some of my common tasks in OS X. I’m taking the same approach as I take to Emacs, which basically amounts to:

• Be aware of what you do.
• Identify patterns of repetitive actions which could be automated.
• Automate them.

I’ve been using iSync for a year or so now, but not very frequently. That changed last week, when I bought a new phone, and started making more use of it’s calender and to-do features. I found that I was synchronizing it more often than I had been before, and I found the process tedious. So I scripted it, instead.

I found a few examples of similar scripts, but none that did what I wanted. That was:

• Run invisibly, in the background.
• Quit iSync if the sync was successful.
• Alert me if the sync was not successful.

So, here is my script, which does just that. It’s under the BSD license.

-- Copyright ©2007, Ian Eure (http://atomized.org/2007/07/applescript-to-sync-with-isync/)
-- All rights reserved.
--
-- Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
-- modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
--     * Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
--       notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
--     * Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright
--       notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the
--       documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
--     * Neither the name of the  nor the
--       names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
--       derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
--
-- THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY  ``AS IS'' AND ANY
-- EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
-- WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE
-- DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL  BE LIABLE FOR ANY
-- DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES
-- (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES;
-- LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND
-- ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT
-- (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
-- SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.

-- Is iSync already running?
tell application "System Events" to set isync_running to (name of processes) contains "iSync"

tell application "iSync"
	activate
	if isync_running is not true then
		-- Hide the app if it wasn’t already open
		tell application "System Events" to set visible of process "iSync" to false
	end if
	synchronize

	-- Busy loop until sync is done
	repeat until syncing is false
		delay 1
	end repeat

	-- Was the sync successful?
	if sync status is 2 then
		if isync_running is false then
			-- Yes, and iSync wasn’t already running - quit it
			-- Otherwise, we do nothing.
			quit
		end if
	else
		-- There was an error - focus iSync so the user can see it.
		activate
	end if
end tell

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 31st, 2007 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Apple, Code. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.