Overview

DCOURLGrabber uses AppleScript to get the URL from most popular browsers.

It monitors when the user switches apps and takes note of which browser was last active. When asked, it then returns the URL from the active tab of that browser.

Features

• Works with Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Opera & Chrome Canary.
• Easy to extend using AppleScript.

Status

DCOURLGrabber is used in Tapetrap.

Setup

Manually

Clone this repo and add both the source files and AppleScripts to your project.

Usage

Get URL from specific bundle ID

To simply retrieve the URL from a browser (Chrome) you have running, use the following:

DCOURLGrabber *grabber = [[DCOURLGrabber alloc] init];
NSURL *url = [grabber grabURLFromBundleID:@"com.google.Chrome" withError:&grabError];
if(grabError) {
    NSLog(@"Failed to retrieve URL: %@", grabError);
} else {
    NSLog(@"Got URL: %@", url.absoluteString);
}

Retrieve URL by monitoring app switches

First setup monitoring like this:

DCOURLGrabber *grabber = [[DCOURLGrabber alloc] init];
[grabber startMonitoring];

Then simply grab the URL when you want, like so:

NSURL *url = [grabber grabURLWithError:&grabError];
if(grabError) {
    NSLog(@"Failed to retrieve URL: %@", grabError);
} else {
    NSLog(@"Got URL: %@", url.absoluteString);
}

Known Issues

• Firefox only supports a rather unelegant way of getting the URL via AppleScript.

Contributions and things to add

A way to extend supported bundle IDs

AppleScripts are loaded by checking the app bundle for some.bundle.id.scpt. Simply adding a new file to your app bundle should add it to DCOURLGrabber as well.

Adding a method to expand the list of supported bundle IDs should take care of the rest.

License

New BSD License, see LICENSE for details.