Singletons and the Automation bridge

Question

The type com.sun.star.frame.Desktop is deprecated, and it is recommended to use the com.sun.star.frame.theDesktop singleton instead.

Other language bindings support access to a singleton. In Java, this thread says the following works:

com.sun.star.frame.theDesktop.get(componentContext)

However, the com.sun.star.frame namespace isn't available under the Automation bridge; there is only the single entry point of the service manager:

var objServiceManager = new ActiveXObject('com.sun.star.ServiceManager');

How can I acces this (and other) singletons?

(Originally posted on ask.libreoffice)

Answer 1

Singletons are accessed using the getByName method on the script context, passing in a string path to the singleton:

'/singletons/com.sun.star.frame.theDesktop'

The Automation bridge exposes the script context at the DefaultContext property on the service manager:

var serviceManager = new ActiveXObject('com.sun.star.ServiceManager');
var desktop = serviceManager.defaultContext.getByName('/singletons/com.sun.star.frame.theDesktop');

(I was led to the solution by this post where the author is trying to automate OpenOffice using Delphi.)