How to bring an application to front based on some condition (OS X) with AppleScript

Question

I'm trying to find a way to automate bringing a web browser to the front (ie - give it focus, make it visible on the screen) based on an event that happens in a web page. I have full control over the webpage, so I can make it do whatever I need to in order to trigger this.

I need to have several apps open with a web page in the background which is monitoring some video cameras. When a video camera has motion, I need the web browser window to come to the front so it's visible instead of whatever app was being used.

I was thinking something similar to what this guy was trying to do : How to bring application to front every 15 minutes on Mac OS X Lion?

I was thinking of using AppleScript to run in a continuous loop, and once a second check the open page in Safari, scan for some change and then send "activate" command to Safari to bring it to the front. Is this how I should go about this, or is there a better way?

score 1 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 24 '18 at 11:36

I'd probably just use launchd or cron instead of running the script as a background process.

Save a script like this somewhere in AppleScript Editor:

try
    tell application "Safari"
        tell document 1 where name starts with "Webcam" to do JavaScript "--"
        if result is "--" then activate
    end tell
end

Save a property list like this ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.superuser.443513.plist

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple Computer//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN"
"http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
    <key>Label</key>
    <string>com.superuser.443513</string>
    <key>ProgramArguments</key>
    <array>
        <string>osascript</string>
        <string>/Users/username/Library/Scripts/script.scpt</string>
    </array>
    <key>StartInterval</key>
    <integer>5</integer> <!-- every 5 seconds -->
</dict>
</plist>

launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.superuser.443513.plist

Could you just use curl to check the condition? You could run it every other minute by editing the crontab with EDITOR=nano crontab -e and adding a line like this:

*/2 * * * * [[ -n "$(curl -L http://superuser.com/questions/443513 | grep automate)" ]] && open http://example.com

How to bring an application to front based on some condition (OS X) with AppleScript

1 Answers1