runShellScript JavaScript transformer Symlinks

Discussion & Questions
1

Hey! I am having some issues with the runShellScript.

I figured out to run command from my computer, I need the full path. so node is /usr/local/bin/node - I got that by running which node in the cli.

For another command, npx, get /usr/local/bin/npx but thats a symlink to /usr/local/lib/node_modules/npm/bin/npx-cli.js

You can get this full path with readlink -f which npx

But then I get more errors:

env: node: No such file or directory

But if I run the command in my shell, it works.

Should this follow symlinks? If not, how do I run commands that installed on my machine?

async (clipboardContentString) => {
  const shellScript = `/usr/local/bin/node --version`;

  const shellScriptWrapper = {
    script: shellScript, // mandatory
    launchPath: `/bin/zsh`,
  };

  const result = await runShellScript(shellScriptWrapper);
  return result;
};
2

easiest just do an

echo $PATH in your Terminal, then use the whole path that is returned from there and provide it with PATH= in the environmentVariables property (probably only a small subset is needed though).
I think for npx you could also just pass PATH=/usr/local/bin/
On my machine I had to use PATH=/usr/local/bin/:/Users/andi/.nvm/versions/node/v14.18.1/bin/ because I'm using nvm

async (clipboardContentString) => {
  const shellScript = `/usr/local/bin/node --version`;
  const yourPATH = `result from echo $PATH prefixed by PATH=`
  const shellScriptWrapper = {
    script: shellScript, // mandatory
    launchPath: `/bin/zsh`,
    environmentVariables: yourPATH
  };

  const result = await runShellScript(shellScriptWrapper);
  return result;
};

Then you don't need to use the full paths to your binaries anymore.

3

thank you! That did it - I appreciate it. Making a cool paste transformer for TypeScript

1 Like
4

Nice! What does it transform?

5

I often have TypeScript that I want to paste into the browser console, so It will just take the TS, strip the types and paste as JS

6

Ah interesting, basically running tsc on your TypeScript before pasting?

7

Yep - using SWC because it's much faster and keeps the comments

8

didn't know about SWC, need to check that out :slight_smile:

9

Yeah, Generally people use TSC for type checking, and then SWC or ESBuild to do a much faster strip types during dev mode.

SWC is inside Parcel, ESBuild is inside Vite

1 Like
10

@Andreas_Hegenberg what is the best way to pass the clipboardContentString to a CLI? just via the command? Env? I thought it would be piped in via stdin - but I was wrong

11

Ha good point. The escaping could be problematic.

Maybe something like

const toTransform = btoa(clipboardContentString);
const shellScript = `echo '${toTransform}' | base64 --decode | npx swc -f "test.ts"`
12

thanks - ended up being able to use this function:

  function encode(str) {
    return encodeURIComponent(str).replace(/[!'()*]/g, (c) => `%${c.charCodeAt(0).toString(16)}`);
  }
13

:+1:
I always fall back to base64 if I don't want to think about all the possible ways a unescaped string can break stuff :sweat_smile:

Btw. if you are using this with the "Transform & Replace Selection With Java Script" action - I just found a bug that can crash BTT, at least on Ventura. Will upload a fixed alpha in a few minutes.

14

Hahah you are too fast - I just came back here to say it's crashing when I try it use from the clipboard manager.

15

It seems to work fine here now with 3.9991 (get via "Check For Alpha Version Updates", I only tested the base64 variant )

16

It works! Thanks a ton! GitHub - wesbos/clipboard-ts