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Mac Forum / Programming / Mac Programming / January 2005Programmatically getting System Profile information
Can someone please answer a Mac newbie programming issue? I would like to be able to write an application to programmatically retrieve a specific subset of the information displayed in the System Profile. I initially thought that the Gestalt function would give me what I want, but it looks like the System Profile has more information than what can be retrieved via Gestalt. Am I mistaken? How is the System Profile populated? Is it available to developers? Regards, todd > Can someone please answer a Mac newbie programming issue? > [quoted text clipped - 4 lines] > than what can be retrieved via Gestalt. Am I mistaken? How is the > System Profile populated? Is it available to developers? I don't know from personal experience, but my guess is that some comes from exploring the file system, some from Gestalt, and some from the device registry. What are you really trying to do? I'm trying to audit the computer. Thus, get hardware information (most I can get from Gestalt), networking information (maybe from Gestalt?) and installed applications (I have no idea how to get this information). Are there APIs to read the device registry? (I'm coming from a Win32 world, so excuse my ignorance) Regards, todd > I'm trying to audit the computer. Thus, get hardware information (most > I can get from Gestalt), networking information (maybe from Gestalt?) [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > Are there APIs to read the device registry? (I'm coming from a Win32 > world, so excuse my ignorance) There exists a command line version of the System Profiler program that should be able to give you that information: /usr/sbin/system_profiler patrick Does this command line version of System Profiler exist in all versions of the Mac OS? Specifically, System 8.1 and forward? Its man page doesn't specify which versions it exists on and whether the XML format, the SPX file, is identifical in different versions of the OS. I appreciate the information on this command_line version. Thanks for any additional info you might have. > Does this command line version of System Profiler exist in all versions > of the Mac OS? > Specifically, System 8.1 and forward? I really don't know the formal answer to your question. However, since there really was no such thing as a 'command line' on Mac OS prior to Mac OS X it is safe to assume that you are out of luck on Classic. Sorry. I'm not even sure when the (original) gui version of system profiler was introduced. That may have been with 8.1, or 8.5. If you'd wan't to interface with those versions of the program, maybe you could use AppleScript, but I know next to nothing about AS... > Its man page doesn't specify which versions it exists on and whether > the XML format, the SPX file, is identifical in different versions of > the OS. I _believe_ the xml export was added in OS 10.2 or 10.3. I'm really not sure, but System Profiler is under (somewhat) active development, so things do change. patrick I didn't realize the command prompt was something new to Mac OS, though it makes sense. I hadn't looked into Applescript as I was planning on doing development via gcc or possibly even REALbasic since it can make standalone executables for 8.1 and later. I guess I'll investigate Applescript. Not coming from the Mac world, I assumed (probably incorrectly) that Applescript was analogous to VBScript on Win32 and thus wouldn't be able to produce executables. Thank you very much for your time and information! Regards, todd > I would like to be able to write an application to programmatically > retrieve a specific subset of the information displayed in the System [quoted text clipped - 3 lines] > System Profile populated? Is it available to developers? > Regards, Either use Apple Script to get the information from System Profiler application, or execute the system_profiler command line tool from your application. If the latter, use the -xml option to make sure that you can parse the output. meeroh  SignatureIf this message helped you, consider buying an item from my wish list: <http://web.meeroh.org/wishlist> |
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