Applescript for Safari AUTOMATION -- any advice, information, tip etc --

Question

PreNote: I am open and hungry for any information, advice, tip etc.

Hello Everyone!

I am trying to create automation with applescript. This is my first personal applescript task but I have some valuable questions. Basically I am trying to catch live notifications from a website and display them in mac os notification.

I am trying to build process for a few days but I don't want to give a mess to you :) so I have roughly explained my process below.

(* Variables used in whole process

set $webToCheck > This is Safari webpage which I want to run my script on it. It won't be front window, script should be run with its name or other property.

set $theClass > This is class name of DOM element to check if it is exist or not. This class is not always exist on DOM of $webpage. It comes with notifications so when use it in "do Javascript" I got error "variable is not defined"

set $num > number of class to use in "do Javascript"

set $input > variable to assign HTML text

set $modifiedInput > Text of input seperated from HTML tags

*)


        -- Step 1

tell application "Safari"

work on $webToCheck

        -- Step 2

repeat until $input is not empty

set input do Javascript

document.getElementsByClassName > $theClass, $num of $webToCheck

end repeat

        -- Step 3

modify text of $input to seperate from RAW HTML -- For example: <a class="" value=""> TEXT to be seperated </a>

Display notification $modifiedInput

        -- Step 4

Go back to step 1 or 2 to check and display notification again

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Jan 13 '23 at 14:57

First of all, here are some general tips though:

Applescript won't accept $ at the start of variable names.
The variable assignment you are looking for is set {variable} to {value}. You can optionally at the end of it clarify the variable's class using as {class} at the end of the assignment.
Focusing a certain website does not happen with work on {URL} but as with most object oriented things in Applescript with the tell-statement. It will be shown in the full solution.
Text concatenation in Applescript happens with &. So something like "Hello " & "World" is the standard way to do it.
Modification of most things in Applescript happens with set.
It is easier to use innerText instead of innerHTML as splitting text in Applescript is a bit of a pain.
There is no goto but you could wrap the first few steps into a function, which are declared with on or to in Applescript.

Here is the full code with some documentation sprinkled in there:

global webToCheck, theClass, num, input --This says that all variables can be used even in functions.

set webToCheck to "youtube.com" --Strings can only use double quotes.

set theClass to "style-scope yt-alert-with-actions-renderer" --I will use an actual demo to prove that it is working

set num to 0 as integer -- This is the type declaration I was talking about. For numbers we have integer, real(float) and number.

set input to "" -- You don't have define everything at the top, but I will do so for this.

on displayNotification()
    tell application "Safari"
        tell window 1 -- This will target only the first window. For multiple windows you would have to write a repeat with-loop(for-loop), which I'm not going to do, for the sake of simplicity.
            tell (first tab whose URL contains webToCheck) -- This targets just the first tab which contains the webToCheck variable.
                set input to do JavaScript "document.getElementsByClassName('" & theClass & "')[" & num & "].innerText" -- This is the way I would go about writing the Javascript. I think you had something different in mind, but this works for my example.
                display notification (paragraph 1 of input) with title webToCheck -- This displays the first line of my input since that is the relevant part. I also set a title so I doesn't just say "Script Editor"
            end tell
        end tell
    end tell
end displayNotification


repeat 4 times -- I think this is quite obvious. Adjust this to your needs.
    displayNotification()
    delay 4
end repeat

Running this while having not used youtube on Safari in a while it displays this:

Note that this isn't the most elegant solution, but I think it is readable and it (hopefully) works for your needs.

Applescript for Safari AUTOMATION -- any advice, information, tip etc --

1 Answers1