AppleScript + macOS Photos Documentation needed

Question

Hello!

I would like to ask for some guidance on development documentation for writing a simple script for accessing my photos library using an apple script.

I want to go through albums AND folders but I'm not very familiar with apple script nor photos objects. I only have this script which used to iterate through all my albums regardless the folder they were living in.. but apparently since Catalina, albums inside folders are no linger visible through the albums array/list/whatever.

I have this fragment:

Code Block tell application "Photos"
		log "		Inside Photos App"
		set albumsCount to count every album
		log "			There are " & albumsCount & " albums in your Photos library"				
		set albumIndex to 1
		repeat with albumObject in albums

But it only shows one album which is the only album in the root of the library that is not inside a folder.

I would love if you could point me in the right direction to fix and continue my work.

Thank you.
Angel.

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Posted by

Mat060

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Answer 1

Photos distinguishes between albums and folders. Folders can contain other folders and they can also contain albums. Albums just contain photos (well, media items :-). So, this:

Code Block  tell application "Photos"
		name of every album
end tell

returns a list of albums at the top level, while this:

Code Block  tell application "Photos"
		name of every folder
end tell

returns every folder at the top level. I have a folder called Web Photo Galleries so I write this to get all the albums in it:

Code Block  tell application "Photos"
		name of every album of folder "Web Photo Galleries"
end tell

and this to get the nested folders:

Code Block  tell application "Photos"
		name of every folder of folder "Web Photo Galleries"
end tell

If you want to find an album by name within this hierarchy, you can do a recursive search:

Code Block  on albumNamedIn(albumName, parentRef)
		using terms from application "Photos"
				tell parentRef
						repeat with i in albums
								set a to contents of i
								if name of a is albumName then
										return a
								end if
						end repeat
						repeat with i in folders
								set f to contents of i
								if name of f is not "iPhoto Events" then
										my albumNamedIn(albumName, f)
										if result is not missing value then
												return result
										end if
								end if
						end repeat
				end tell
		end using terms from
		return missing value
end albumNamedIn
on albumNamed(albumName)
		albumNamedIn(albumName, application "Photos")
end albumNamed

Note that I explicitly exclude searching into the iPhoto Events folder because it has way too many children.

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—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@apple.com"

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eskimo

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AppleScript + macOS Photos Documentation needed

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