PRB: Visual FoxPro Mac Cannot Understand Apple Object Types

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This article was previously published under Q151637

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SYMPTOMS

Microsoft Visual FoxPro for Power Macintosh does not support the Apple Object Model. Apple Objects such as "paragraph" , "word", "range", etc., cannot be passed directly or indirectly to Visual FoxPro for Power Macintosh.

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WORKAROUND

You can cast or change the object, or a property of the object, into a simple data type that Visual FoxPro understands.

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STATUS

This behavior is by design.

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MORE INFORMATION

The following examples illustrate the problem and the workaround:

Enter the script:

   -- Save this script as "Excel2VFP"
   tell application "Microsoft Excel"
      Activate
      set Range "R1C1" to "Data to go to Visual FoxPro"
      get Range "R1C1"
      --get Value of Range "R1C1"
      set myVar to the result
   end tell

   tell application "Microsoft Visual FoxPro"
      Activate
      Do Script "SET DEFAULT TO HOME()"
      Do Script "DO TEST WITH '"& myVar &"'"
   end tell

Enter the Visual FoxPro program:

   * Save this program as "Test" in the Visual FoxPro folder
   PARAMETER MyVar

   LenMyVar = LEN(MyVar)
   =MessageBox("The length of the data from Excel is ";
    +LEFT(STR(LenMyVar)))

Run the script and note that you get the following error message:

Can't make {...} into a string

What you attempted to do was try to pass an Excel "Range" to Visual FoxPro, which does not understand what a range of cells is. To work around this behavior, comment out the line [get Range "R1C1"] and uncomment the line [--get Value of Range "R1C1"].

Save the script, run it, and note that the process works properly because Visual FoxPro understands the "Value of" simple string type that is passed.

Following is another example of an attempt to pass data to Visual FoxPro. This example also fails initially, but returns a different error message.

Enter the script:

   -- Save this script as "STE2VFP"
   tell application "Scriptable Text Editor"
      activate
      open file "Macintosh HD:TestText"
      get contents of document 1
      -- get contents of document 1 as string
      set myVar to the result
      quit
   end tell

   tell application "Microsoft Visual FoxPro"
      Activate
      Do Script "SET DEFAULT TO HOME()"
      Do Script "DO TEST2 WITH '"& myVar &"'"
   end tell

Enter the Visual FoxPro program:

   * Save this program as "Test2" in the Visual FoxPro folder
   PARAMETER MyVar

   LenMyVar = LEN(MyVar)
   =MessageBox("The length of the data from Scriptable Text Editor is ";
    +LEFT(STR(LenMyVar)))

Enter the Scriptable Text Editor file 'TestText':

This is a test of VFP and AppleScript.

After you create the files and you run the script, STE2VFP, you will get the following error message:

Microsoft Visual FoxPro got an error: "do test2 with 'This is a test of VFP and AppleScript.' doesn't understand the Do Script message.

Once you have cleared the error message, edit the script STE2VFP. Comment out the line [get contents of document 1] and uncomment the line [-- get contents of document 1 as string]. Save the script and run it. You will get a dialog window from Visual FoxPro displaying the number of characters in the string that was passed.

NOTE: You cannot pass a string longer than 255 characters to Visual FoxPro in this manner. If you attempt to pass a longer string, Visual FoxPro appears to hang on the Do Script command used to pass the variable to Visual FoxPro. To pass strings longer than 255 characters, use an ASCII text file that Visual FoxPro can append into a memo field or that can be read using low-level file I/O.

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