Swift Scripting (Part 4) – The Exciting Conclusion

Previously, we’ve covered the groundwork necessary to use Swift to control scriptable applications. (See parts one, two, and three.) Now we get to the payoff. We’ll have a look at a sample script that leverages the scripting interfaces of the Finder and the Image Events helper application.

Preliminaries

To run the sample script on your own system, you’ll need to build and install the ScriptingUtilities, FinderScripting, and ImageEventsScripting frameworks. If you don’t want to create all of these from scratch, you can find ready-to-build Xcode projects in the SwiftScripting project on GitHub. Whichever path you choose to build the frameworks, be sure to install them in /Library/Frameworks.

Shrinking Images

The sample script operates on the current selection in the Finder. The result of running the script will be the creation of half-scale versions of any images that were selected. Any non-image in the Finder selection will be ignored. The “test” for images will solely rely on file extension, so we’re not talking about a fool-proof form of input verification.

Here’s the script

#!/usr/bin/swift -F /Library/Frameworks

// Image Events sample script.
// Operates on selected images in the Finder
// Outputs half-scale images in same folder as originals

import Foundation
import FinderScripting
import ImageEventsScripting
import ScriptingUtilities

let imageExtensions = ["png", "jpg", "jpeg", "tif", "tiff", "gif"]

let finder = application(name: "Finder") as! FinderApplication
let imageEvents = application(name: "Image Events") as! ImageEventsApplication

for item in (finder.selection!.get() as! NSArray) {
    if let file = item as? FinderFile {
        let fileExtension = file.nameExtension!.lowercaseString
        if imageExtensions.contains(fileExtension) {
            let fileURL = NSURL(string: file.URL!)
            let outputDirectory = fileURL!.URLByDeletingLastPathComponent!
            let outputFilename = "\((file.name! as NSString).stringByDeletingPathExtension) (half-scale).\(fileExtension)"
            let outputURL = outputDirectory.URLByAppendingPathComponent(outputFilename)
            
            let image = imageEvents.open!(fileURL!) as! ImageEventsImage
            image.scaleByFactor!(0.5, toSize: 0)
            
            image.closeSaving!(.Yes, savingIn: outputURL.path!)
        }
    }
}

The code is straight forward. On lines 14 and 15, the application function supplied by the ScriptingUtilities framework is used for convenience when assigning the finder and imageEvents constants. The work of the script occurs inside the for loop and we’re able to take full advantage of Foundation classes along side the scripting API of the Finder and Image Events. Go ahead and enter the above script into a text file and give it the name Scale Image by Half.swift. Remember to make the script executable using the chmod

chmod +x 'Scale Image by Half.swift'

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Script Menu

While you could run the Scale Image by Half.swift script from anywhere on the system, it would be awkward to select some images in the Finder and then bring up a Terminal window to invoke the script. A better solution is to use the system-wide Script Menu to host your bits of automation. You enable the Script Menu via the Preferences of the Script Editor application.

With the Script Menu enabled, you now have a place to put all of your scripts and keep them organized by application. I like to configure the Script Menu such that the scripts for the frontmost application are displayed at the top of the menu. The screenshot below shows the Script Menu as it appears on my system with the Finder frontmost.

If you select the Open Finder Scripts Folder option from the Script Menu, a Finder window will be opened at the appropriate location. This is where you want to put the Scale Image by Half.swift script. Once the script is placed in this location, it will be available as a menu option when the Finder is frontmost. To exercise the script, select one or more images in the Finder and then choose the Scale Image by Half.swift option from the Script Menu. If all goes well, you should see half-scale images appear alongside the originals.

Happy Scripting!