Re: Accessing Child Elements of Property List Records or Lists
Re: Accessing Child Elements of Property List Records or Lists
- Subject: Re: Accessing Child Elements of Property List Records or Lists
- From: Grant Erickson <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 16 Aug 2009 13:33:37 -0700
- Organization: Nuovation System Designs, LLC
- Thread-topic: Accessing Child Elements of Property List Records or Lists
On 8/15/09 5:51 PM, red_menace wrote:
> On Aug 15, 2009, at 1:00 PM, Grant Erickson wrote:
>> I am attempting to use the Property List Suite of the System Events
>> dictionary to customize window views using a property list of attributes for
>> those customizations (bounds, view style, view options, etc.).
>>
>> I seem to be able to successfully access all the top-level items from the
>> property list using:
>>
>> on GetObjectForKeyInFile(inFile, inKey)
>> tell application "System Events"
>> tell property list file inFile
>> tell contents
>> return value of property list item inKey
>> end tell
>> end tell
>> end tell
>> end GetObjectForKeyInFile
>>
>> with examples such as:
>>
>> set theBoolean to my GetObjectForKeyInFile(thePlist, "Tool Bar")
>>
>> if theBoolean is not {} then
>> set toolbar visible to theBoolean
>> end if
>>
>> However, when retrieve a dictionary (record) and then get a child of them
>> it:
>>
>> on GetObjectForKeyInRecord(inRecord, inKey)
>> tell application "System Events"
>> tell property list item inRecord
>> return value of property list item inKey
>> end tell
>> end tell
>> end GetObjectForKeyInRecord
>>
>> with an example such as:
>>
>> set theBounds to my GetObjectForKeyInFile(thePlist, "Bounds")
>> set theHeight to my GetObjectForKeyInRecord(theBounds, "Height")
>>
>> I get an error of:
>>
>> System Events got an error: Can¹t get property list item {|X|:10,
>> |Y|:10, |Width|:480, |Height|:320}. Invalid index. (-1719)
>>
>> Any insights? I am certain there is some "of..." or "as..." syntax I am
>> missing here; however, various combinations of "as record", etc. have proved
>> fruitless.
>
> Each property list item can also contain other property list items. In your
> example,
> you are using the value of one property list item (a record) as the key for
> getting
> another property list item. You just need to break down each key/subitem - I
> use
> a list of items to build a reference to the desired property list element:
>
> to GetPlistElement from PlistItems
>
> For your example, the usage would be my (GetPlistElement from {thePlist,
> "Bounds", "Height"})
Dave:
Thanks for the insight and prompt reply. It would appear, in my case, that I
was simply making things more complicated than necessary. Once I get a
top-level item from GetObjectForKeyInFile, I can simply treat them as the
list or record composition that they are and access them that way:
set theBounds to my GetObjectForKeyInFile(thePlist, "Bounds")
set theHeight to |Height| of theBounds
set theWidth to |Width| of theBounds
or:
set theItems to my GetObjectForKeyInFile(thePlist, "Items")
repeat with theItem in theItems
local theName, thePosition
set theName to |Name| of theItem
set thePosition to |Position| of theItem
try
set position of item theName to {|X| of thePosition, |Y| of
thePosition}
end try
end repeat
Thanks again,
Grant
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