Alarm Clock

However, none of them have an option to input the end time when you start the program

What do you mean by this?

Do you want the script to prompt you for a duration and then stop the playback at that time? How do you envision this working? Do you expect an active user input? What if there's no user in front of the system at the time?

Side question: if I were to make such a program, would it run if my MacBook is closed, or does it have to be open and awake to play?

If your laptop is asleep, no script will fire. The laptop will not wake just due to some random calendar event.

If you want the MacBook to wake then you'll have to schedule a wake event in addition to the iTunes play. You can do this via a pmset command via do shell script.

The first part - prompting the user - is trivial. The tricky part is parsing the input to understand the date/time since there are so many possible formats. Since you're on El Capitan you can use Apple Data Detectors to do that part.

Once you have a date you can sit around idle until the specified time. You probably want/need to add some boundaries, so make sure you're not sitting around waiting for some date years in the future.

This is a first-hack at the idea, using Shane Stanley's solution for Data Detectors to parse the date.

It uses a tacky 'delay' approach to pause the script until the specified time - there are other (better?) solutions which you might want depending on what kind of time intervals you're expecting (are you expecting days? hours?)

set theStr to text returned of (display dialog "when?" default answer "2:30pm")

use AppleScript version "2.4"

use framework "Foundation"

use scripting additions

set theDate to my getDatesIn:theStr

-- convert the input to a date object

considering numeric strings

if AppleScript's version < "2.5" then

set theDate to my makeASDateFrom:theDate

else

set theDate to theDate as date

end if

end considering

-- now we have the date, so work out how far away that is

-- first sanity check for past dates

set curDate to (get current date)

if curDate > theDate then

-- user entered a date in the past

display dialog "Can't travel back in time, sorry."

return

end if

-- now work out how far forward this is

set timeOffset to theDate - curDate

if (timeOffset > (2 * days)) then

-- too far in the future

display dialog "Sorry, that's too far in the future"

return

else

-- if we get here we know how far to delay

delaytimeOffset

tell application "iTunes" to play

end if

on getDatesIn:aString

-- convert string to Cocoa string

set anNSString to current application'sNSString'sstringWithString:aString

-- create data detector

set theDetector to current application'sNSDataDetector'sdataDetectorWithTypes: (current application'sNSTextCheckingTypeDate) |error|: (missing value)

-- find first match in string; returns an NSTextCheckingResult object

set theMatch to theDetector'sfirstMatchInString:anNSStringoptions: 0range:{0, anNSString's|length|()}

if theMatch = missing value then error "No date found"

-- get the date property of the NSTextCheckingResult

set theDate to theMatch's|date|()

return theDate

end getDatesIn:

-- required before 10.11

on makeASDateFrom:theNSDate

set theCalendar to current application'sNSCalendar'scurrentCalendar()

set comps to theCalendar'scomponentsInTimeZone: (missing value) fromDate:theNSDate-- 'missing value' means current time zone

tell (current date) to set {theASDate, year, day, its month, day, time} to ¬

{it, comps's|year|(), 1, comps's|month|(), comps's|day|(), (comps'shour()) * hours + (comps'sminute()) * minutes + (comps's|second|())}

return theASDate

end makeASDateFrom:

Hello

Here's a primitive script you may try.

repeat try tell (current date) + 1 * hours set s to short date string & " " & time string end tell set r to display dialog "Enter time which alarm clock is set for" default answer s set t to date (r's text returned) set d to t - (current date) if d > 0 then exit repeat end try end repeat do shell script "sleep " & d tell application "iTunes" to play

H

You're welcome. 🙂

Just in case, here's a stay-open applet implementation of an alarm clock you may explore. This should be far more manageable than the previous primitive skeleton which you'd need to kill to cancel...

(* Stay open applet script *) property _wake : missing value -- (date) time set for alarm clock property _sleep : true -- control flag on run -- set alarm clock if set_alarm_clock((current date) + 60) then reopen else -- cancelled quit end if end run on reopen -- report current alarm setting tell _wake to set s to short date string & " " & time string try display dialog "Alarm clock is set for " & s giving up after 10 on error number -128 -- user cancel run -- reset alarm clock end try end reopen on idle -- sleep or wake if _sleep then set _sleep to false set d to _wake - (current date) if d > 0 then return d return 1 -- fall back else action() quit end if end idle on action() -- alarm action tell application "iTunes" to play end action on set_alarm_clock(t) (* date t : initial date in dialogue return boolean : true if set, false if cancelled *) set {_wake, _sleep} to {missing value, true} repeat try tell t to set s to short date string & " " & time string display dialog "Enter date time when alarm clock is set for" default answer s set t to date (result's text returned) set d to t - (current date) if d > 10 then -- at least 10 seconds ahead set _wake to t exit repeat end if on error number errn if errn = -128 then return false -- cancelled end try end repeat return true end set_alarm_clock

Briefly tested under OS X 10.6.8.

Good luck,

H