Rewrite with ScriptingBridge (was Rewrite with PyXA)

[RhetTbull]

This looks like a much better way of interacting with Notes: PyXA

As an example:

>>> import PyXA
>>> app = PyXA.Application("Notes")
>>> print(app.notes().name())

Prints titles of all notes instantly

[RhetTbull]

Actually, might be able to implement this with ScriptingBridge without the overhead of PyXA (which looks awesome but still immature and has some weird dependencies: python==3.11, numpy, all of pyobjc)

python
^[[APython 3.11.0 (main, Dec 25 2022, 14:21:02) [Clang 12.0.0 (clang-1200.0.32.29)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import ScriptingBridge
>>> from ScriptingBridge import SBElementArray
>>> app = ScriptingBridge.SBApplication.alloc().initWithBundleIdentifier_("com.apple.Notes")
>>> notes = app.accounts()[1].notes()
>>> len(notes)
394
>>> import AppKit
>>> predicate = AppKit.NSPredicate.predicateWithFormat_("name contains[cd] %@", "cocktail")
>>> predicate
name CONTAINS[cd] "cocktail"
>>> results = notes.filteredArrayUsingPredicate_(predicate)
>>> len(results)
4
>>> names = [results.arrayByApplyingSelector_("name")]
>>> names
[(
    "You\U2019ve Never Heard of One of the Bahamas\U2019 Most Popular Cocktails",
    "Watermelon Mint Mojito Cocktails - Creative Culinary",
    "Gin Basil Smash cocktail",
    "Tequila Sunrise Cocktail"
)]
>>> ids = [results.arrayByApplyingSelector_("id")]
>>> ids
[(
    "x-coredata://BA47E88C-3599-48BE-88DD-5CBC118E9CE6/ICNote/p1038",
    "x-coredata://BA47E88C-3599-48BE-88DD-5CBC118E9CE6/ICNote/p1030",
    "x-coredata://BA47E88C-3599-48BE-88DD-5CBC118E9CE6/ICNote/p659",
    "x-coredata://BA47E88C-3599-48BE-88DD-5CBC118E9CE6/ICNote/p661"
)]
>>> note = notes.filteredArrayUsingPredicate_(AppKit.NSPredicate.predicateWithFormat_("id == %@", ids[0][0]))
>>> len(note)
1
>>> note[0].name()
'You’ve Never Heard of One of the Bahamas’ Most Popular Cocktails'
>>>

[RhetTbull]

Making progress on this but looks like I can't get rid of the AppleScript completely.

There are some conditions (e.g. using selection on Catalina or using a predicate) where the ScriptingBridge sets the object ID to 0. I haven't been able to figure out why but in this case, the id can be determined by examining the string representation of the object which looks like this:<SBObject @0x7fd721544690: <class ''> id "x-coredata://19B82A76-B3FE-4427-9C5E-5107C1E3CA57/IMAPNote/p87" of application "Notes" (55036)>

Using this, I can get the Note ID then use the existing AppleScript calls to get the note details. This isn't elegant but works in all cases I've been able to test.

[SKaplanOfficial]

Making progress on this but looks like I can't get rid of the AppleScript completely.

There are some conditions (e.g. using selection on Catalina or using a predicate) where the ScriptingBridge sets the object ID to 0.

I just looked into this for PyXA (thanks for the feedback btw!). It seems to be an issue with how PyObjC's lazy evaluation of SBObjects works when using predicates -- it ends up evaluating the object at its index within the result of the filtered array. E.g., if filtered_array is the result after applying a predicate, then filtered_array[0] will effectively evaluate as [the object with ID 0 of [filtered array]]. HOWEVER, there is a workaround! Call get() on the filtered array prior to retrieving a specific index. This will force evaluation of the list but (to my knowledge) not the SBObjects within it. Then filtered_array[0] effectively becomes [the first SBObject in [list of SBObjects]].

[RhetTbull]

@SKaplanOfficial Thanks. I saw that you did call get() in PyXA and tried it but wasn't able to reliably make it work. Part of that may be that I do some of my development on Catalina (because I still use an old MB Pro laptop that won't run newer OS) and Catalina's Notes AppleScript interface is horribly broken. I may drop Catalina support if I can make this work reliably on newer versions of macOS. In the meantime, I built a very hacky but working work-around that evaluates the string representation of the SBObject (which will include the ID in form: <SBObject @0x7fd721544690: <class ''> id "x-coredata://19B82A76-B3FE-4427-9C5E-5107C1E3CA57/IMAPNote/p87" of application "Notes" (55036)> from which I can extract the ID with a regex. Not elegant but it works.