Current Network Extension Attribute

This can likely be handled a few different ways, but one way might be to also check the model of the Mac its being run on and adjust the "en" accordingly.

Try this to get model info quickly without using system_profiler:

ioreg -c IOPlatformExpertDevice | awk '/model/{print $NF}' | sed -e 's/"//g' -e 's/[<>]//g'

You can drop that into a $var and grep for "Air" for example to see if the script is being run against a MacBook Air and then do an if/then/else in your script to set the Ethernet to check against to "en0" or "en1", depending on what it finds.

As I said though, there are most likely better ways to figure out what the active Airport port actually is. Someone else may know that and chime in here.

Ok, so here's another possible way to get what Airport is assigned to. I don't necessarily like invoking system_profiler since its a bit slow, but this may help.
Also, I don't have a MacBook Air handy I can test this against, so I have no idea if this will work on those. Try it out though.

system_profiler SPNetworkDataType | grep -A 1 "AirPort" | awk '/BSD/{ print $4 }'

On my MacBook Pro it returns "en1" I assume it would return "en0" on an Air.

Edit: Aaaand, yet a 3rd way! This one doesn't use system_profiler, it uses 'networksetup' instead, which may be a little more efficient. Pick your poison :)

/usr/sbin/networksetup -listallhardwareports | grep -A 1 Wi-Fi | awk '/Device/{ print $2 }'

I got this to work.

#!/bin/sh

# Determine the OS version since the networksetup command differs on OS
OS=/usr/bin/sw_vers -productVersion | /usr/bin/colrm 5
# Determine the WiFi interface since different hardware has different EN designation
EN=/usr/sbin/networksetup -listallhardwareports | grep -A 1 Wi-Fi | awk '/Device/{ print $2 }'

if [[ "$OS" < "10.5" ]]; then # Ensure that the networksetup link exists on 10.4 and earlier if [ -f /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/networksetup ];then result=/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/networksetup -getairportnetwork | sed 's/Current AirPort Network: //g' else result=The networksetup binary is not present on this machine. fi
elif [ "$OS" == "10.5" ]; then result=/usr/sbin/networksetup -getairportnetwork | sed 's/Current AirPort Network: //g'
else result=/usr/sbin/networksetup -getairportnetwork "$EN" | sed 's/Current AirPort Network: //g'
fi

# Ensure that AirPort was found
hasen1=echo "$result" | grep "Error"

# Report the result
if [ "$hasAirPort" == "" ]; then echo "<result>$result</result>"
else echo "<result>No AirPort Device Found.</result>"
fi

I know this an older discussion.

Not sure if this helps anyone but I changed my EA to display all interface detection on Mac OS 10.10.1. I simply adjusted the following:

I left this in the script: #!/bin/sh
OS=/usr/bin/sw_vers -productVersion | /usr/bin/colrm 5
I adjusted this:
if [[ "$OS" < "10" ]]; then

That ended up working good for me. I am using that in both my active network interface and network service list EA. I am sure you can add to display any interface you want specifically. I needed this to work from my clients running 10.10 and 10.10.1. It had been blank for some time displaying the error "The networksetup binary is not present on this machine."
Now all is good.

@dvasquez thanks for sharing your fix it worked great for me.

Very cool glad to help.

This works exactly as stated. Edit your current EA if your scripts results are "The networksetup binary is not present on this machine."

Edit this line:
if [[ "$OS" < "10" ]]; then

Thanks again for posting.

@k12techman — Hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty of cleaning up the bash script you posted slightly. Here's what I did:

• Set env to bash.
• More robust OS X version detection.
• Using $(..) to assign the output of a command to a variable.
• Tabbing and whitespace cleanup to make it more readable.

Revised "Current wi-fi SSID" bash script

#!/bin/bash

# Determine the OS version since the networksetup command differs on OS
OS_major=$(/usr/bin/sw_vers -productVersion | awk -F . '{print $1}')
OS_minor=$(/usr/bin/sw_vers -productVersion | awk -F . '{print $2}')

# Determine the WiFi interface since different hardware has different EN designation
EN=$(/usr/sbin/networksetup -listallhardwareports | grep -A 1 Wi-Fi | awk '/Device/{ print $2 }')

if [[ "$OS_major" -eq 10 && "$OS_minor" -lt 5 ]]; then

    # Ensure that the networksetup link exists on 10.4 and earlier
    if [[ -f /System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/networksetup ]]; then
        result=$(/System/Library/CoreServices/RemoteManagement/ARDAgent.app/Contents/Support/networksetup -getairportnetwork | sed 's/Current AirPort Network: //g')
    else
        result="The networksetup binary is not present on this machine."
    fi

elif [[ "$OS_major" -eq 10 && "$OS_minor" -eq 5 ]]; then

    # 10.5
    result=$(/usr/sbin/networksetup -getairportnetwork | sed 's/Current AirPort Network: //g')

else

    # 10.6+
    result=$(/usr/sbin/networksetup -getairportnetwork "$EN" | sed 's/Current AirPort Network: //g')

fi

# Ensure that AirPort was found
hasen1=$(echo "$result" | grep "Error")

# Report the result
if [ "$hasen1" == "" ]; then
    echo "<result>$result</result>"
else
    echo "<result>No AirPort Device Found.</result>"
fi

exit 0

The revised bash script seems to work well for me in limited testing.

However, we actually use a Python script on our production servers to pull this information. Here's the script we use:

"Current wi-fi SSID" python script

#!/usr/bin/python

import re
import subprocess

AIRPORT = '/System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport'
NETWORK_SETUP = '/usr/sbin/networksetup'


def get_wireless_interface():
    '''Returns the wireless interface device name, (e.g., en0 or en1).'''
    hardware_ports = subprocess.check_output([NETWORK_SETUP,
                                              '-listallhardwareports'])

    match = re.search("(AirPort|Wi-Fi).*?(en\\d)", hardware_ports, re.S)

    if match:
        wireless_interface = match.group(2)

    return wireless_interface


def get_current_wlan(interface):
    '''Returns the currently connected WLAN name.'''
    wireless_status = subprocess.check_output([AIRPORT,
                                               '-I',
                                               interface]).split('
')

    current_wlan_name = None
    for line in wireless_status:
        match = re.search(r' +SSID:s(.*)', line)
        if match:
            current_wlan_name = match.group(1)

    return current_wlan_name


def print_current_wlan():
    '''Prints the currently connected WLAN in a <result></result> tag.'''

    wireless_interface = get_wireless_interface()
    current_wlan = get_current_wlan(wireless_interface)

    if current_wlan:
        print '<result>%s</result>' % current_wlan

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print_current_wlan()

The Python script has been working well for us for a while now. Open to suggestions if anybody sees a way to make it even better/more reliable.

I had a script I was using as an extension attribute for this that broke with 10.10.

I tried this one : https://jamfnation.jamfsoftware.com/viewProductFile.html?id=135&fid=750

But I could not get it to work. I tried the Python one posted by @elliotjordan above and it works very well. I even tested it with a 10.11 machine and that worked fine as well. Thanks @elliotjordan