Creating a touch bar widget inside of a group

[kimaldis]

Checking out the example clock-widget.js, is it possible to create, say, a button widget inside of a group in the Touch Bar?

[Worie]

Do you need to create a button in the runtime by JS? What's the usecase?

Basically this library will do anything that BTT allows. And there's no action for creating widgets/button on the fly afair. Maybe there were some APIs for that but to be honest I'm not But you can create a button within a group and manage it later, yes.

There's add_new_trigger in BTT docs (link), but there's no add_new_button or add_new_widget. You can ask on https://folivora.ai/ directly whether it's possible to cover such case with intergrated webserver - if so, then this library will be able to do it as well, but not until it's enabled on BTT end.

Thanks for your interest in the library!

[kimaldis]

I'm creating groups containing buttons with very similar actions. It would be a lot quicker to do this using a config array or file, creating buttons on the fly when BTT starts.

I came to your library from https://community.folivora.ai/t/dynamically-generated-widgets/2316 which seems to imply dynamically creating widgets is possible, then to the last few lines in clock-widget.js below. How am I misunderstanding this?

// you could also create a new widget on the fly, in the runtime!
const widgetPromise = btt.Widget.create({
...

[Worie]

ah yes sorry. I'm not sure about placing them in groups though, I don't think this is the case I've handled. I'll look around and let you know, though don't expect a clean solution for now, more like a hacky-but-maybe-working one :)

[kimaldis]

I'll make some enquiries with BTT.

[kimaldis]

Grabbing the JSON for a group of buttons seems to contain button data. I may have been looking at this from the wrong end. I'll play some more, let you know what I find.

[Worie]

You'd have to create a new group on the fly or update existing one. You can use btt.do method to do direct calls to BTT built in webserver.

For example:

btt.do('add_new_trigger',  `
  {
    "BTTTriggerType" : 630,
    "BTTTriggerTypeDescription" : "Group",
    "BTTTriggerClass" : "BTTTriggerTypeTouchBar",
    "BTTPredefinedActionType" : -1,
    "BTTPredefinedActionName" : "No Action",
    "BTTEnabled2" : 1,
    "BTTUUID" : "3B4E8CE2-56CD-40CB-84F8-D552EAF716EF",
    "BTTNotesInsteadOfDescription" : 0,
    "BTTEnabled" : 1,
    "BTTModifierMode" : 0,
    "BTTOrder" : 33,
    "BTTDisplayOrder" : 0,
    "BTTMergeIntoTouchBarGroups" : 0,
    "BTTAdditionalActions" : [
      {
        "BTTTriggerType" : 639,
        "BTTTriggerTypeDescription" : "Apple Script Widget",
        "BTTTriggerClass" : "BTTTriggerTypeTouchBar",
        "BTTPredefinedActionType" : -1,
        "BTTPredefinedActionName" : "No Action",
        "BTTEnabled2" : 1,
        "BTTUUID" : "14260C6B-E5FC-4EE4-BAC8-7D920819E333",
        "BTTNotesInsteadOfDescription" : 0,
        "BTTEnabled" : 1,
        "BTTModifierMode" : 0,
        "BTTOrder" : 0,
        "BTTDisplayOrder" : 0,
        "BTTMergeIntoTouchBarGroups" : 0,
        "BTTTriggerConfig" : {
          "BTTTouchBarButtonColor" : "75.323769, 75.323769, 75.323769, 255.000000",
          "BTTTouchBarItemIconWidth" : 22,
          "BTTTouchBarButtonTextAlignment" : 0,
          "BTTTouchBarItemPlacement" : 0,
          "BTTTouchBarButtonFontSize" : 15,
          "BTTTouchBarScriptUpdateInterval" : 5,
          "BTTTouchBarAlwaysShowButton" : false,
          "BTTTBWidgetWidth" : 400,
          "BTTTouchBarAppleScriptStringRunOnInit" : false,
          "BTTTouchBarAppleScriptString" : "return do shell script \"date\" #example: execute a shell script and use the result",
          "BTTTouchBarButtonWidth" : 100,
          "BTTTouchBarOnlyShowIcon" : false,
          "BTTTouchBarFreeSpaceAfterButton" : 5,
          "BTTTouchBarAppleScriptUsePath" : 0,
          "BTTTouchBarItemIconHeight" : 22,
          "BTTTouchBarItemPadding" : 0
        }
      },
      {
        "BTTWidgetName" : "No Name",
        "BTTTriggerType" : 642,
        "BTTTriggerTypeDescription" : "Shell Script \/ Task Widget",
        "BTTTriggerClass" : "BTTTriggerTypeTouchBar",
        "BTTPredefinedActionType" : -1,
        "BTTPredefinedActionName" : "No Action",
        "BTTShellScriptWidgetGestureConfig" : "\/bin\/bash:::-c",
        "BTTEnabled2" : 1,
        "BTTUUID" : "F1E7B9E8-D32D-478B-8AA5-3CC24CA708B2",
        "BTTNotesInsteadOfDescription" : 0,
        "BTTEnabled" : 1,
        "BTTModifierMode" : 0,
        "BTTOrder" : 1,
        "BTTDisplayOrder" : 0,
        "BTTMergeIntoTouchBarGroups" : 0,
        "BTTTriggerConfig" : {
          "BTTTouchBarButtonColor" : "75.323769, 75.323769, 75.323769, 255.000000",
          "BTTTouchBarItemIconWidth" : 22,
          "BTTTouchBarButtonTextAlignment" : 0,
          "BTTTouchBarItemPlacement" : 0,
          "BTTTouchBarButtonFontSize" : 15,
          "BTTTouchBarShellScriptString" : "#example:\n{ echo \"Current Time: \" & date; }  | tr -d '\\n'",
          "BTTTouchBarScriptUpdateInterval" : 5,
          "BTTTouchBarAlwaysShowButton" : false,
          "BTTTBWidgetWidth" : 400,
          "BTTTouchBarAppleScriptStringRunOnInit" : false,
          "BTTTouchBarButtonWidth" : 100,
          "BTTTouchBarOnlyShowIcon" : false,
          "BTTTouchBarButtonName" : "No Name",
          "BTTTouchBarFreeSpaceAfterButton" : 5,
          "BTTTouchBarItemIconHeight" : 22,
          "BTTTouchBarItemPadding" : 0
        }
      },
      {
        "BTTWidgetName" : "No Name",
        "BTTTriggerType" : 642,
        "BTTTriggerTypeDescription" : "Shell Script \/ Task Widget",
        "BTTTriggerClass" : "BTTTriggerTypeTouchBar",
        "BTTPredefinedActionType" : -1,
        "BTTPredefinedActionName" : "No Action",
        "BTTShellScriptWidgetGestureConfig" : "\/bin\/bash:::-c",
        "BTTEnabled2" : 1,
        "BTTAlternateModifierKeys" : 0,
        "BTTUUID" : "D62C7B04-8413-4BF9-BA2B-97E5D2255082",
        "BTTNotesInsteadOfDescription" : 0,
        "BTTEnabled" : 1,
        "BTTModifierMode" : 0,
        "BTTOrder" : 2,
        "BTTDisplayOrder" : 0,
        "BTTMergeIntoTouchBarGroups" : 0,
        "BTTTriggerConfig" : {
          "BTTTouchBarButtonColor" : "75.323769, 75.323769, 75.323769, 255.000000",
          "BTTTouchBarItemIconWidth" : 22,
          "BTTTouchBarButtonTextAlignment" : 0,
          "BTTTouchBarItemPlacement" : 0,
          "BTTTouchBarButtonFontSize" : 15,
          "BTTTouchBarShellScriptString" : "#example:\n{ echo \"Current Time: \" & date; }  | tr -d '\\n'",
          "BTTTouchBarScriptUpdateInterval" : 5,
          "BTTTouchBarAlwaysShowButton" : false,
          "BTTTBWidgetWidth" : 400,
          "BTTTouchBarAppleScriptStringRunOnInit" : false,
          "BTTTouchBarButtonWidth" : 100,
          "BTTTouchBarOnlyShowIcon" : false,
          "BTTTouchBarFreeSpaceAfterButton" : 5,
          "BTTTouchBarItemIconHeight" : 22,
          "BTTTouchBarItemPadding" : 0
        }
      }
    ],
    "BTTTriggerConfig" : {
      "BTTTouchBarButtonColor" : "75.323769, 75.323769, 75.323769, 255.000000",
      "BTTTouchBarItemIconWidth" : 22,
      "BTTTouchBarButtonTextAlignment" : 0,
      "BTTTouchBarItemPlacement" : 0,
      "BTTTouchBarButtonFontSize" : 15,
      "BTTTouchBarAlwaysShowButton" : false,
      "BTTTBWidgetWidth" : 400,
      "BTTTouchBarButtonWidth" : 100,
      "BTTTouchBarOnlyShowIcon" : false,
      "BTTTouchBarFreeSpaceAfterButton" : 5,
      "BTTTouchBarItemIconHeight" : 22,
      "BTTTouchBarItemPadding" : 0,
      "BTTKeepGroupOpenWhileSwitchingApps" : false
    }
  }
`);

Should theoretically create a new group with 3 buttons. Buttons are the array under BTTAdditionalActions key. So if you modify those, and rerun, you should get different results. Additionaly, there's also a native update_trigger action that allows you to modify existing triggers (in this case - a group).

It should work, may require a little bit of playing around with it but makes sense. I cannot test it though and won't be able to anytime soon :(

[kimaldis]

Thanks. And no worries, you've been more than helpful.

[Worie]

cool! closing for now, feel free to reopen / mention me if you find any obstacles