robinadr

Update: This has been made obsolete by the much-improved plugin.

Courtesy of Joey Brooks, a.k.a. tunicwriter, here is an AppleScript script for X-Chat Aqua that you can use to show your currently playing iTunes song to the rest of the IRC chatroom. Of course, if iTunes isn’t running, a message is shown to that effect.

I want to make it clear that none of it is my code — all Joey’s. Direct all complaints to him¹.

tell application "System Events"
    if exists process "iTunes" then
        tell application "iTunes"
            set theCurrentState to player state
            if theCurrentState is paused then
                "Now Playing: Nothing, iTunes is currently paused."
            else if theCurrentState is stopped then
                "Now Playing: Nothing, iTunes is currently stopped."
            else
                "Now Playing: " & artist of current track & " - " & name of current track & " (Album: " & album of current track & ")"
            end if
        end tell
    else
        "Now Playing: Nothing, iTunes is not open."
    end if
end tell

Here are some brief instructions:

1. Open up Script Editor (Applications — AppleScript — Script Editor). Paste that code in there, and save it someplace safe.
2. In X-Chat Aqua, open up the User Commands preference list (X-Chat Aqua — Preference Lists — User Commands…).
3. Click the “+” button, and change the command name to NP and set the area for text on the right to something like exec -o osascript /Users/yourusername/path/to/xchat/script.scpt. Of course, change the path to where you saved the script file in step 1.
4. Press Ok, go to a channel window, type /np and press enter. It should output something simliar to Now Playing: Hoobastank - The Reason (Album: The Reason).

Notes

An area where this script could be improved is to use an action (the /me command), which makes a lot more sense. Unfortunately neither Joey or I have been able to find a way to use AppleScript to get X-Chat Aqua to use the /me command, but if you do find a way, please do let me know as I’ve been searching for a while.

And, no, putting “/me” in the command itself doesn’t work. Already tried that. Would be nice if that worked, though.

1. Sort of kidding… ↩