Perhaps you’ve come to native plug-in development from a more script-based background, or perhaps you have some existing script code you want to reuse in a new plug-in project. Whatever your background, it’s really handy to be able to run a script from a native plug-in, and it’s also surprisingly easy.
The code below works out of the box so you can copy and paste as much as you please.
#include "IScriptManager.h"
#include "IScriptEngine.h"
#include "IScriptRunner.h"
#include "IScriptUtils.h"
#include "JavaScriptID.h"
InterfacePtr<IScriptManager> scriptManager(Utils<IScriptUtils>()->QueryScriptManager(kJavaScriptMgrBoss));
if (!scriptManager)
{
return;
}
InterfacePtr<IScriptEngine> scriptEngine(scriptManager->QueryDefaultEngine());
if (!scriptEngine)
{
return;
}
InterfacePtr<IScriptRunner> scriptRunner(scriptEngine, UseDefaultIID());
if (!scriptRunner)
{
return;
}
RunScriptParams params(scriptRunner);
scriptRunner->RunScript("alert('hello, world!');", params);
The above code uses JavaScript but you may use any script manager you like, including kAppleScriptMgrBoss for AppleScript and kOLEAutomationMgrBoss for Visual Basic. For a complete list of available scripting managers see ‘Script managers’ in chapter 10 ‘Scriptable Plug-in Fundamentals’ of the Programming Guide Volume 1 included in the plug-in SDK (available at http://www.adobe.com/devnet/indesign/sdk.html).