Node-iMessage – Query iMessage from terminal and Node.js | Hacker News Reader

Node-iMessage – Query iMessage from terminal and Node.js

github.com

81 pointsnicolagreco24 comments

I wrote a little bash script to allow for the sending of iMessages and made a little API in Node so I could send service status messages across all my devices easily.

It's probably not possible to do this in pure Node but if it's of interest here is the gist: https://gist.github.com/roldershaw/7311547

Now I can see iMessage chatbots being made :P

You could probably do this with node-applescript[0].

EDIT: ...which appears to be a simple wrapper around osascript.

[0]: https://github.com/TooTallNate/node-applescript

There's now also the official Javascript for Automation[1], however I'm not sure how much that ties in with node.

[1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/releasenotes/Interap...

Totally different runtime. There's no way (short of IPC) you can interface between node.js and Javascript for Automation. I suppose you could write a CommonJS Modules-compatible shim for Automation, but libraries assuming a node-like environment just wouldn't work.

Yeah, that's what I assumed. I guess it might make 'developing' slightly easier thought, keeping in the same language with Node + Automation, rather than Node + AppleScript.

Cool, I have something similar cobbled together: http://www.aktau.be/2014/02/12/send-imessages-via-the-comman...

The gist version should even be able to handle input from stdin: https://gist.github.com/aktau/8958054

Like this: ./imessage <number> < notes.txt

I use it quite often :). The most difficult thing to me was getting it to work even when Messages.app wasn't started. Applescript is quite frustrating for someone who's never dealt with it before. This was on Mavericks though, not sure if that's still a problem on Yosemite. Does your version have problems with that?

That's pretty cool, I never bothered handling actually starting the Messages app because I was just running it in a VM and assumed it would always work on startup.

I don't use this anymore because I've ditched my iPhone.

Thanks everyone for the support. Not sure about `innovation`, but hope this abstracts iMessage nicely for developers that want to focus on the main product ;) or want to do quick and dirty little hacks, My 2c.

Genuine question: I'm seeing a lot of innovation coming from Node.js projects, some of them useful, some of them not, but even though when not, they're really creative.

I'm new to programing and I'm wondering if this happened in the past for other technologies when they were released. Did they reached the same spectrum?

Best regards.

Reading SQLite database is innovation?

Well, I can't answer your question. What I can say is I found this thread on Hacker News first page.

I'm curious what you mean by that. This is basically a wrapper around the iMessage SQLite database – it could equally well have been implemented in Ruby, or Python, or Go. Projects like this always seem to be implemented in whatever environment the developer wants to use, which is great, but not really relevant.

I don't see any particularly interesting innovation from Node.js projects when compared with any other similar community.

I know what you mean when something could have been implemented in X, Y, or Z language, but I too, have noticed some really interesting projects in Node.js.

One of my favorites is torrent-mount. It allows me to use virtual machines directly from a torrent stream, rather than first downloading the entire vm.

https://github.com/mafintosh/torrent-mount

JavaScript happens to be hip-of-the-day language.

For example, torrent-mount's idea isn't something novel. It was voiced[1] and implemented[2][3] a number of times before, and the links are what I got just by a single Google query. It's just that Node is a trending platform today (although some may say it's popularity peak had passed already), so the surrounding chatter's more active and thus you're likely to find out about those.

Or, possibly, there's even some bias like when you're looking for interesting projects on resources where JS-favoring people gather.

[1] http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.file-systems.fuse.deve... [2] https://github.com/rkfg/BTFS [3] http://btslave.sourceforge.net/

NPM has a very innovative approach to package management

How so? Nothing about it has struck me as being particularly unusual.

Node uses hierarchical dependencies so different dependencies can get their own version of a particular package. I'd agree that this is hardly innovative, but definitely a lot more user friendly than Ruby. npm is great but would agree that attributing Node's popularity to it is unfounded.

It's a blessing and a curse. When a package is tied to a buggy version of a dependency, it's not a lot of fun to try to get the upgraded version in without either forking your dependencies or trying to get everything fixed upstream.

On the flip side, it is nice when (compared to ruby) you have two dependencies that depend on incompatible versions of the same library.

Other languages certainly had their share of creative hacks.

But I think Node's packages are coming in at a faster rate, and they're more publicized.

I've been programming since the early 2000s and I would say that Node's growth/popularity is unmatched. There are a combination of things that makes that a reality though: you have JavaScript's growth on the back of what Google shown Ajax could do, then you have Github, then you have Nodejs itself which allowed more people to participate because of the "ease" of JavaScript.

From my vantage point, Node is poised to replace Java as the write-once, run anywhere platform. Well, as long as that platform has Webkit running.

how does this work? How does it get the iMessage data from let say an iPhone? Or is this for Mac users only?

Looks like iMessage for Mac stores the messages it receives in an SQLite database. This app simply reads and queries that database. See here: https://github.com/nicola/node-imessage/blob/master/index.js...

Shouldn't be asking people to upvote in the README.

You have a good point, updated.

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