Swing Hacks

Control iTunes Under Windows #83

Chapter 11, Native Integration and Packaging

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421

HACK

} catch (IOException ex) {

System.out.println("exception : " + ex.getMessage( ));

ex.printStackTrace( );

}

}

The line:

tell app "iTunes" to artist of current track as string

will call the artist method on the current track. It will return the artist as a

string and print it to standard out. You can get the standard output by

reading from

proc.getInputStream( )

. The code then prints the string as a

single line, so you can easily read it with the

readLine( ) method on a

DataInputStream

. Once you have the string back, you can print it, put it in a

JLabel, or do whatever else is appropriate for your program.

Apple has more information available on the iTunes AppleScript API at http://

www.apple.com/applescript/itunes/. With this API, you can do almost any-

thing. For example, you can get the name of a playing song:

tell app "iTunes" to name of current track as string

You can also get the album name:

tell app "iTunes" to album of current track as string

Muting the volume is also a piece of cake:

tell application "iTunes" to set mute to true

In the same vein, you can obtain the current volume:

tell application "iTunes" to sound volume as integer

Take a look at the API and see what other interesting things you can do.

Many of the other programs that come with Mac OS X can be controlled

with Apple Events as well, so there