Plist modification script

Hey all,

I was wondering if anyone knew a way to write a script to change a value of a entry in a plist file.

the file I am trying to modify is

user/library/presences/com.extensis.suitcase.plist

the entry i want to change is

last server

i need to change whatever is there to "usat-vocmac01"

I am pretty new to apple script ( i'm not even sure if apple script is the best way to do this)

any help would be greatly appreciated

Welcome to Mac-Forums, crash893.

For this you will need Property List Editor.app and I think it is included in the Xcode tools.

Is that something I would have to install per machine?

Or any text editor (TextEdit, BBEdit, TextWrangler, Smultron...)

Right you are tech! I had forgotten about that! I can't remember when I had to modify a plist but I did it once: took the idea from a How To of some kind... I think I used TextEdit.

I think I may have worded my question wrong

I can edit the plist fine on a single machine I have 50 to do so I was wondering if there was a way to automate it

a click here to switch servers.applescript type of deal.

Are you looking for a script that will run on all 50 machines simultaneously?

Are you trying to change some text here?

I just wondered that if you are using something like TextEdit, then couldn't you just use the "Find/Replace With" in the Edit menu?

im looking to email the users a script to run.

I didnt think that the plist were texteditable?

hmm i am not sure about this but this is what i had to do if I wasn't sure If I could trust people on the network to put the file in the right place:

I would write a plist file yourself, send that in a disk image.. inside the disk image put the file and a alias to the folder where the plist belongs and have make the instructions to drag the file to the folder in the same window, similar to how applications you download install to the applications folder.

crash893 said:

I didnt think that the plist were texteditable?

PowerBookG4 said:

I would write a plist file yourself. . .

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Right-click the plist and choose Open With TextEdit, or whatever.

You could make all plists open with TextEdit or whatever by right-clicking a plist, choosing Get Info, choosing the app you want to open it with, then clicking on Change All (or whatever the wording is) under that. So you could open a plist, change it and Save As.

crash893 said:

im looking to email the users a script to run.

I didnt think that the plist were texteditable?

Click to expand...

Brown Study said:

Right-click the plist and choose Open With TextEdit, or whatever.

You could make all plists open with TextEdit or whatever by right-clicking a plist, choosing Get Info, choosing the app you want to open it with, then clicking on Change All (or whatever the wording is) under that. So you could open a plist, change it and Save As.

Click to expand...

again I would really not like to walk to each machine some of which are in different states and do this for each user.

thats why im looking for a way to script it.

Check out MacScripter. It's a gold mine.

Terminal:

cat user/library/presences/com.extensis.suitcase.plist | sed 's/last server/usat-vocmac01/' > /tmp/newplist.plist; mv /tmp/newlist.plist user/library/presences/com.extensis.suitcase.plist

Or whatever the text is you want to change. Stupid UNIX tricks and all.

You may need some extra slashes somewhere in there, but that's the basic idea. Stuff that into a bash shell script, and either have cron or something else execute it when you want to.