Groovy - COM Scripting

Introduction

Scriptom is an optional Groovy module developed by Guillaume Laforge leveraging the Jacob library (JAva COm Bridge). Once installed in your Groovy installation, you can use a wrapper to script any ActiveX or COM component from within your Groovy scripts. Of course, this module can be used on Windows only.

Scriptom is especially interesting if you are developing Groovy shell scripts under Windows. You can combine both Groovy code and any Java library with the platform-specific features available to Windows Scripting Host or OLE COM automation from Office.

Installation

Zip bundle

The easiest way for installing Scriptom is to unzip the Zip bundle in your GROOVY_HOME directory.


The distribution contains the jacob.jar and jacob.dll, and the scriptom.jar. The DLL needs to be in the bin directory, or in your java.library.path to be loaded by jacob.jar.

Building from sources

If you are brave enough and prefer using the very latest fresh version from CVS Head, you can build Scriptom from sources. Checkout modules/scriptom, and use Maven to do the installation automatically. If your GROOVY_HOME points at the target/install directory of your groovy-core source tree, just type:

maven

Otherwise, if you have installed Groovy in a different directory, you have two possibilities, either you change the property groovy.install.staging.dest to your GROOVY_HOME directory in the project.properties file, and run maven, or you can type:

maven -Dgroovy.install.staging.dest=%GROOVY_HOME%

Usage

Let's say we want to script Internet Explorer. First, we're going to import the ActiveX proxy class.
Then, we're going to create a GroovyObjectSupport wrapper around the ActiveXComponent class of Jacob. And now, we're ready to use properties or methods from the component:

import org.codehaus.groovy.scriptom.ActiveXProxy

// instanciate Internet Explorer
explorer = new ActiveXProxy("InternetExplorer.Application")

// set its properties
explorer.Visible = true
explorer.AddressBar = true

// navigate to a site by calling the Navigate() method
explorer.Navigate("http://glaforge.free.fr/weblog")

Note however that explorer.Visible returns a proxy, if you want to get the real value of that property, you will have to use the expression explorer.Visible.value or explorer.Visible.getValue().

Limitations

For the moment, Scriptom is in a beta stage, so you may encounter some bugs or limitations with certain ActiveX or COM component, so don't hesitate to post bugs either in JIRA or on the mailing lists. There may be some issues with the mappings of certain objects returned by the component and the Java/Groovy counterpart.

An important limitation for the first release is that it is not yet possible to subscribe to events generated by the components you are scripting. In the next releases, I hope I will be able to let you define your own event handlers with closures, with something like:

import org.codehaus.groovy.scriptom.ActiveXProxy

explorer = new ActiveXProxy("InternetExplorer.Application")
explorer.events.OnQuit = { println "Quit" }

But for the moment, event callbacks are not supported.

Samples

If you checkout the Scriptom sources, you will find a few samples in the src/script directory.
I will show you some samples in the following sub-sections.

Scripting Internet Explorer

import org.codehaus.groovy.scriptom.ActiveXProxy

// instanciate Internet Explorer
explorer = new ActiveXProxy("InternetExplorer.Application")

// set its properties
explorer.Visible = true
explorer.AddressBar = true

// navigate to a site
explorer.Navigate("http://glaforge.free.fr/weblog")
Thread.sleep(1000)
explorer.StatusText = "Guillaume Laforge's weblog"
Thread.sleep(2000)

// quit Internet Explorer
explorer.Quit()

Scripting Excel

import org.codehaus.groovy.scriptom.ActiveXProxy

// create a proxy for Excel
xls = new ActiveXProxy("Excel.Application")
xls.Visible = true

Thread.sleep(1000)

// get the workbooks object
workbooks = xls.Workbooks
// add a new workbook
workbook  = workbooks.Add()

// select the active sheet
sheet = workbook.ActiveSheet

// get a handle on two cells
a1 = sheet.Range('A1')
a2 = sheet.Range('A2')

// sets a value for A1
a1.Value   = 123.456
// defines a formula in A2
a2.Formula = '=A1*2'

println "a1: ${a1.Value.value}"
println "a2: ${a2.Value.getValue()}"

// close the workbook without asking for saving the file
workbook.Close(false, null, false)
// quits excel
xls.Quit()

Warning: on my machine (WinXP Home), there is still an Excel.exe process running. I have no clue why Excel is still running.

Mixing VBScript or JScript with Groovy

import org.codehaus.groovy.scriptom.ActiveXProxy

// invoke some VBScript from Groovy and get the results!
sc = new ActiveXProxy("ScriptControl")
sc.Language = "VBScript"
println sc.Eval("1 + 1").value

Scripting the Windows Shell object

import org.codehaus.groovy.scriptom.ActiveXProxy

// showing the current directory
cmd = new ActiveXProxy("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
println cmd.GetAbsolutePathName(".").value

sh = new ActiveXProxy("Shell.Application")

// minimizing all opened windows
sh.MinimizeAll()

// opens an Explorer at the current location
sh.Explore(cmd.GetAbsolutePathName(".").value)

// choosing a folder from a native windows directory chooser
folder = sh.BrowseForFolder(0, "Choose a folder", 0)
println folder.Items().Item().Path.value

wshell = new ActiveXProxy("WScript.Shell")
// create a popup
wshell.popup("Groovy popup")

// show some key from the registry
key = "HKEY_CURRENT_USER\\Software\\Microsoft\\Windows\\CurrentVersion\\Internet Settings\\User Agent"
println wshell.RegRead(key).value

net = new ActiveXProxy("WScript.Network")
// prints the computer name
println net.ComputerName.value

Scripting Windows Media Player

import org.codehaus.groovy.scriptom.ActiveXProxy
import java.io.File

// create a proxy for the Shell object
sh = new ActiveXProxy("Shell.Application")

// use a Windows standard folder chooser
folder = sh.BrowseForFolder(0, "Choose a folder with wav files", 0)

// get the folder chosen
folderName = folder.Items().Item().Path.value
println "Playing Wav files from: ${folderName}"

// create a Windows Media Player (from its Class ID)
player = new ActiveXProxy("clsid:{6BF52A52-394A-11D3-B153-00C04F79FAA6}")

// for each file in the folder
new File(folderName).eachFile{ |file|
    if (file.name.endsWith("wav")) {
        println file
        player.URL = file.absolutePath
        // play the wav for one second
        control = player.controls.play()
        Thread.sleep(1000)
    }
}

// close the player
player.close()

When event callbacks are supported, you will be able to subscribe to the player.statusChange event, so that you can play the wav entirely, before loading a new sample (instead of listening only to the first second of each sample).