Bitbar: Text input, e.g. for web search

[JayBrown]

Hi there, love BitBar. I've just started using the href option, but what's missing (for me at least), is a combination of href and a text input field, so you can search on certain user-defined websites or webpages, e.g. add a "search-item" in the BitBar menu—possible format would be | search=URL—, click on it, a window pops up, or (better) a text input field opens within the BitBar menu, and you can enter a term like "bit bar", and it will be added as "bit+bar" to a search URL that the user has predefined for that menu item (see example below), and the full URL is then sent to the default browser. I guess you could concoct a workaround, e.g. call a shell script instead that runs an osascript which opens a window where you can input your search term, but that kinda defeats the purpose of BitBar. ;)

Another possibility would also be to listen for click&ALT… if you click on a menu item, then it's just a standard href, if you click on it and press ALT, you get the search function.

Full format e.g. (for click _and_ click&ALT, with in this case @@@ as string for the search term):
$ echo "GitHub | href=https://github.com search=https://github.com/search?utf8=✓&q=@@@ color=whatever"

PS: If possible, an additional feature could be that if you press ALT the text changes, in this example from "GitHub" to "Search GitHub"… don't know how you could implement it, though.

[JayBrown]

Updated the above post: CMD > ALT, and added @@@ for the search term string.

[mm2270]

its possible to do this now with an Applescript call in the same plug-in script based on a param and passing the text result entered to a search, like Google, etc. Example:

#!/bin/sh

function getSearchText ()
{

searchString=$(/usr/bin/osascript << EOF
set theString to text returned of (display dialog "What are you searching for?" default answer "" buttons {"Search","Cancel"} default button 1)
EOF)

if [ ! -z "$searchString" ]; then
    textToSearch=$(echo "$searchString" | perl -MURI::Escape -wlne 'print uri_escape $_')
else
    exit
fi

}

if [ "$1" == "search" ]; then
    getSearchText
    open https://www.google.com/#q=$textToSearch
fi


echo "Web Search
---
Go to Google| href=https://www.google.com
Search Google| alternate=true terminal=false bash=$0 param1=search"

I know it would be better somehow built in, but the above is pretty self contained since its not trying to call an external script to do the text input.

[iosdeveloper]

@mm2270 Nice! I could really use this for my downloads plugin.

[frakman1]

Is there any chance that the above script could be translated to python?
Thank you!

[JayBrown]

You can run AppleScript within a python script, so that shouldn't really be a problem:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2940916/how-do-i-embed-an-applescript-in-in-a-python-script

[frakman1]

Unfortunately, it is posing quite a problem. When I run my script from the terminal with the right parameter, it works as expected and I get the text input dialog box:

However, when I run it from within the plugin, the dialog box is wrong:

The examples in the link didn't make any sense so I am using this form:

import subprocess

def run_script(script):
    return subprocess.Popen([script], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True).communicate()[0].strip()

cmd = "osascript -e 'set T to text returned of (display dialog \"Message to Send?\" buttons {\"Cancel\", \"OK\"} default button \"OK\" default answer \"\")'

print run_script(cmd)

As you can see, nowhere in my script do the words "This a dialog popup" show up. Again, this works when running in Terminal, but not through the BitBar plugin.

@iosdeveloper @JayBrown @mm2270

[frakman1]

I found out what was going on. Apparently, the bash handler/parser can't handle ANSI codes which was causing the problem. Instead of terminal=false, I was getting terminal is: false\^[[0m

class bcolors: 
   GREEN = '\033[32m'
   ENDC = '\033[0m'

print "---- " + bcolors.GREEN + "<Custom Message> | image="+str(imsgicon).encode("utf-8") + " bash=%s param1=-t param2=%s terminal=false" % (sys.argv[0], d['Mobile']) + bcolors.ENDC

I had to add a + " " + before the bcolors.ENDC before it would finally work.
UPDATE
Putting the + bcolors.ENDC after the <Custome Message> and before the | image is the better way to do it.

[frakman1]

On this same topic, and using the sample code above to get user input, I always get an error when a user types an apostrophe in the message being inputed. So Typing I'm always causes this error when I print the return value of run_script(cmd):

I'm on my way
/bin/sh: -c: line 0: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `"'
/bin/sh: -c: line 1: syntax error: unexpected end of file

It looks like a shellcheck thing but I don't know how to resolve it in python. Is there a standard way to sanitize user input that is retrieved using a dialog box?

[frakman1]

I was able to work around this issue by replacing the apostrophe ' with the angled apostrophe ’ at the end of the function like this:

def run_script(script):
    return (subprocess.Popen([script], stdout=subprocess.PIPE, shell=True).communicate()[0].strip()).replace("'", "’")