What's wrong with this Applescript?

Question

My app has some rudimentary applescriptability. There is one method (receivedInstantMessage) that takes a single parameter (message) and passes it to my app which then processes it.

The following applescript:

tell application "MyApp"
    receivedInstantMessage "This is a message"
end tell

Works perfectly. My app presents a dialog containing the message ("This is a message").

I'm trying to set it up so that when I send an IM to iChat, it runs an applescript that will send the contents of the message to my app. I have told iChat to run a script when a message is received and I know that part is working. The script I am now using does not work:

using terms from application "iChat"
    on message received theMessage from theBuddy for theChat
        tell application "MyApp"
            receivedInstantMessage theMessage                
        end tell
    end message received
end using terms from

Nothing happens when I receive a message. Even if I substitute the message variable (theMessage) from iChat and use an arbitrary string it still does nothing.

What am I doing wrong. I'm quite new to applescript (being a REALbasic coder normally).

[Update]: This seems to work now. A simple restart of the Mac fixed things. Very odd...

Answer 1

just a semantic detail: Consider the scripter is sending messages to your app, not receiving them. Yes, your app is receiving them, but the terminology you chose "receivedInstantMessage" is from the point of view of your app, not the scripter.

Additionally, it is considered naff to have terminology in camel case. AppleScript terminology can (and often should) contain spaces. And if you really want to do it properly you should separate the terminology into nouns and verbs. (Where nouns are properly-modelled objects, with properties, and verbs are commands for manipulating them. In this case you probably want something like send message "bla", where a message is an object with properties like sender, recipient, channel etc. and send is a command which takes a message object as a parameter - check the dictionary of Snak for a quite nice - but not perfect - implementation).

Sorry if this sounds anal. I have been applescripting for many years, and while I really appreciate it when developers add applescript support, I know I speak for all applescripters when I say that poorly constructed dictionaries, and poor terminology choices are frustrating and irritating, especially as the app gets more mature and the developer starts to say things like "I know the applescript interface needs a complete overhaul but I don't want to break existing scripts!". ALL applescripters prefer it if the scripting interface gets better, even if it breaks existing scripts. So: Do it wrong now, but be prepared to fundamentally improve it later. :)

Even Apple has some lousy terminology, for example in iTunes there is an updatePodcast and updateAllPodcasts command. This is just wrong, according to their own technote 2106 - pay particular attention to the section on naming rules.. They should have a podcast object and an update command, so that you could also do things like "delete every podcast whose name contains "Ann Coulter". ("Whose" clauses are one of the coolest features of appleScript!)