How to tell an app's file navigator to go to a folder and select specific images?

Walter Rowe

Moderator

• December 31, 2023 16:10

I have this idea for how to get Affinity Photo 2 to create a focus stack document from selected "processed" images. I can successfully tell it to create the focus stack document that pops up a window where you "add" images to a list. I can tell it to click the "add" button. That opens a file navigator window. At that point I am stuck.

I tried sending CMD+SHIFT+G to have it ask for a folder path. It pops up the window. I am unsuccessful in sending it a string for the path. It only sends the first character.

In the script below where I "keystroke homeDir" it only sends the initial "/" of "/Users/<myusername>".

Any ideas?

on run
    set theAppName to "Affinity Photo 2"
    
    chooseMenuItem("Affinity Photo 2", "File", "New Stack…")
    
    tell application "System Events"
        set homeDir to (get POSIX path of (path to my home folder))
        tell process theAppName
            click button "Add" of window "New Stack"
            keystroke "g" using {shift down, command down}
            keystroke homeDir
        end tell
    end tell
    
end run


on chooseMenuItem(theAppName, theMenuName, theMenuItemName)
    try
        -- Bring the target app to the front
        tell application theAppName
            activate
        end tell
        
        -- Target the app
        tell application "System Events"
            tell process theAppName
                
                -- Target the menu bar
                tell menu bar 1
                    
                    -- Target the menu by name
                    tell menu bar item theMenuName
                        tell menu theMenuName
                            
                            -- Click the menu item
                            click menu item theMenuItemName
                        end tell
                    end tell
                end tell
            end tell
        end tell
        return true
    on error
        return false
    end try
end chooseMenuItem

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• 

  Walter Rowe

  Moderator

  • January 29, 2024 01:29
  • Edited

  

  I figured out how to do this for Affinity Photo. If you write a simple Apple Script that "tells" system events to tell a specific application, then you can query that application's UI using "entire contents of ...". This will tell you the UI element hierarchy. If an app has a pop-up window, you can query just that window. If that window has a "sheet" you can query just that sheet of that window.

  For example I was able to get the UI elements of the file list pop-up dialog within Affinity Photo after choosing the File > New Focus Merge… menu option and press the "Add" button that brings up the file chooser.

  tell application "System Events"
      tell process "Affinity Photo 2"
          entire contents of sheet 1 of window "New Focus Merge"
      end tell
  end tell

  This provided me valuable information about the UI elements of the file chooser making it easy to interact with it.

  If you target a specific UI element you also can ask for its properties.

  You also can query System Events for conditions about these elements such as whether they exist yet, whether a button is enabled (responds to "return"), etc. This makes it easier to build intelligent pauses into your scripts that wait for a specific UI condition to be true before it continues.

  0

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