How to Growl trigger an shell script or AppleScript (NOT vice versa!)

applescriptcustomizationgrowlscript

When a Growl notification gets issued I want to trigger an AppleScript. I had a look at the "Actions" in the Growl preferences, and you can trigger things like an email or a text-to-speech call, but not an arbitrate shell script or AppleScript.

Any idea how to do this? Does a Growl plugin for this exists? I searched the net for it, but could only find solutions for the other way around (i.e. issuing a notification from a script).

Many thanks in advance!

Best Answer

Growl 2.1 does support ScriptActions, but it doesn't seem to be documented anywhere but a google group thread. Below is a simple example from the thread. You create a script file with the content, place it in ~/Library/Application Scripts/com.Growl.GrowlHelperApp, and then set it up inside Growl as described in the same thread.

using terms from application "Growl"
    on perform action with notification
        ignoring case
            if notification's app name is "test growl" then
                activate me
                display dialog "goodbye" with icon 1
            end if
        end ignoring
    end perform action
end using terms from

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How to growl be used with syslog

According to man syslog.conf, Mac OS X's syslog.conf can handle messages only by writing to a file, sending to a remote host's syslog, and send them to users' consoles.

Your best option is probably to send to a file, and write a daemon or a periodically running script that consumes this file and calls growlnotify with what it reads from the file, something like the following:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
while read line
do
    /usr/local/bin/growlnotify "Your App" -m "$line"
done < /path/to/file
echo -n > /path/to/file

Either keep this running all the time by wrapping in a loop, or start it every few seconds using a launchd job and the StartInterval directive. man launchd and man launchd.plist can help you here.

AppleScript and Growl: How to choose the display style

Each Applescript you use Growl with registers itself as a different application with Growl.

After the first time you use a script, you can go to Growl's settings. Look for the application name you registered the script as. (This is configurable in the register as application "Application Name" line when scripting Growl.)

Once you've used the script once, it should show up in Growl's settings. In there you can customize the display location and style specifically for that script, or as Growl calls it, that "application".

If you need more info about using Growl with Applescript, I have a blog post here, which explains how it works and provides a pre-built Applescript handler that you can drop into your scripts and call with a single line of code.

Best Answer

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How to growl be used with syslog

AppleScript and Growl: How to choose the display style

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