Upgrading our naming policy

[shiggi]

(seriously amateur scripter) looking to upgrade how we manage device naming.

Our naming policy is not complicated, Department-Building-Tag#, and our current script requires us to maintain a separate list of data to populate a dialog box that lets the user select from the available options:

set Department to (choose from list {"AAA", "BBB", "CCC", "DDD", etc.

But that means anytime there is a change in department structures, we need to update the Jamf>Network>Departments information, as well as the script.

I am hoping to use API commands to grab the current list of departments when the Naming Policy is triggered something like:

departmentList=$(curl -su username:password\
"https://url/JSSResource/departments" \
-H "accept: xml/text" \
| xmllint -format - \
| awk '/name/ {print}' \
| awk -F '[><]' '{print $3}')

This gets me the data in a list, but I can't figure out how to (or if it is possible to) prompt the user to select from a list just by calling the variable:

...

set Department to (choose from list $departmentList \    

for example.

Is it possible to do this?

[Mauricio]

AppleScript (osascript via shell/bash script) would be a possibility

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomatio...

[shiggi]

Exactly what I am thinking! 

The trick seems to be that: 

set theFruitChoices to {"Apple", "Banana", "Orange"}

Requires the choices to be enumerated, and I am hoping to replace that with something more like:

set theFruitChoices to {"$fruitOptions"}

I am sure that (either this is just not possible with osascript, or) there is a step that I am missing.

Best results I get is a prompt appearing with no options, sometimes an error that shows 'List is empty'.

[Mauricio]

Hello, 

When you get the list of Departments that will be in new lines.

To make that work in the AppleScript a change is required:

departmentList=$(curl -su username:password\
"https://url/JSSResource/departments" \
--header 'Accept: application/xml, application/json' \
| xmllint --format --xpath "//department/name/text()" - \
| sed 'N;s/^/"/;s/\n/","/;s/$/"/'

The --xpath will extract the name of the Department in a newline format without the markup text

Then we use sed to add " around the values and replace the new line with comma separated values.

I hope this helps

Regards