I often need to change the network proxies settings frequently due to the need to bypass the GFW when accessing websites that are considered “bad”, and have to set the settings back to not using any proxies when accessing “good” websites.
Doing so in Firefox is easy thanks to the little yet handy plugin called SwitchProxy, but for Safari or other applications which use the global system settings of Mac OS, one has to go through many steps in System Preferences to set them, and then go through the exact steps again to unset them. Too repetitive. I wish there is a way to set and unset proxies easily, but I cannot find one. I bit the bullet and use AppleScript (yuck) to do that, here’s the complete script (beware, this is my first AppleScript program):
set proxyServer to "localhost"
set proxyPort to "30000"
tell application "System Preferences"
activate
set the current pane to pane id "com.apple.preference.network"
get the name of every anchor of pane id "com.apple.preference.network"
reveal anchor "Proxies" of pane id "com.apple.preference.network"
end tell
tell application "System Events"
tell process "System Preferences"
tell window "Network"
tell sheet 1
tell tab group 1
tell group 1
repeat with n from 1 to 3
tell scroll area 1
tell table 1
select row n
tell row n
click checkbox 1
set turnOnProxy to value of checkbox 1
end tell
end tell
end tell
if turnOnProxy is 1 then
tell group 1
set focused of text field 1 to true
set value of text field 1 to proxyPort
set focused of text field 2 to true
set value of text field 2 to proxyServer
end tell
end if
end repeat
end tell
end tell
click button "OK"
end tell
click button "Apply"
end tell
end tell
end tell
ignoring application responses
tell application "System Preferences" to quit
end ignoring
if turnOnProxy is 1 then
say "Proxies are set"
else
say "Proxies are unset"
end if
I hate to use AppleScript as it simply plays back what a human does, and so the speed is slow, which takes about 5 seconds to finish. I tried to do that by shell script but I couldn’t find the right way to do so, having looked at the defaults command but seems it is not capable at what I want. Anybody knows?
