Send iMessages from the Command Line

README.md

imsg

Send iMessages from the Command Line

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Install

Just run the following in your shell:

$ curl https://raw.github.com/gist/2376590/imsg.rb > ~/bin/imsg
$ chmod +x ~/bin/imsg

The same command will update the script if/when I update it. It also assumes that ~/bin is in your path.

Usage

$ imsg <recipient e-mail/phone no.> <message>

imsg.rb

#!/usr/bin/env macruby

# imsg - Send iMessages from the command line.
#
# Usage: imsg <recipient e-mail/phone> <message>

framework 'ScriptingBridge'

# Scripting Bridge is hella cool.
messages = SBApplication.applicationWithBundleIdentifier('com.apple.iChat')
buddies = messages.buddies

buddy = buddies.find do |b|
  b.id.include? ARGV[0]
end

unless buddy
  warn "Error: No buddy with that address."
  exit 1
end

msg = ARGV[1..-1].join(" ")
messages.send msg, :to => buddy

# Hide the opened application.
command = "'tell application \"System Events\"\nset visible of process \"Messages\" to false\nend tell'"
system "osascript -e #{command}"

Howdy! After installing I get a Permission denied when trying to execute that command. Any suggestions?

chmod a+x /path/to/imsg

Thanks @sodabrew, I'll update the instructions.

good stuff, thanks.
curl ended up with an empty file, so I used the github 'raw' link:

curl https://gist.githubusercontent.com/xoebus/2376590/raw/4b8e05ee6f2b65622b6a3ea0dbfc30fa44db738f/imsg.rb > imsg

The last two lines can be simplified as

command = 'tell application "System Events" to set visible of process "Messages" to false'
system "osascript", "-e", command

If you want to tell a single command with AppleScript, you don’t need

tell <application>
  …
end tell

You can instead do it in a single line with

tell <application> to …

I get the error:
/usr/bin/env: ‘macruby’: No such file or directory