Filter a list

Scripting Forums AppleScriptObjC and Xcode
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#1

Ok I have retrieved a list of every album name from every track I have in itunes. Then I take the list and put it into a “choose from list”. The problem is some tracks do not have a name for the album so it shows a blank choice. Second issue is when you retrieve the album of every track, album names repeat in the list because albums have more than one track. I have tried to use ("whose name is not " ") but this returns an error. And I am baffled on how to stop the repeating of the album names.

Any other possible way to get a list of albums other than the way i did it?

tell application "iTunes"
	set all_track_albums to the album of every track as list
end tell
--set filtered_albums to all_track_albums whose name is not ""  -- not working returns the error
set thelist to choose from list all_track_albums with prompt "Pick an Album:"

console:
Can’t get {“(tons of song names listed here)”} whose name of it ≠{“”}. (error -1728)

#2

This example uses a category on NSArray. Meaning it opens up the class NSArray and adds a class method
to it. You can convert this to AppleScriptObjC or use it as is.

You do not need to coerce “as list” for every track since it is already a list.


tell application "iTunes"
	set all_track_albums to the album of every track
end tell
set the_sorted to current application's class "NSArray"'s sortAndRemoveEmpty_(all_track_albums)
set thelist to choose from list (the_sorted as list) with prompt "Pick an Album:"

Adding a category on NSArray.
Add these files to your project.

NSArray+Filter.h

NSArray+Filter.m

#3

Thanks! It worked perfectly!

#4

Hi Craig,

with NSPredicate you can easily filter all occurrences of an empty string

+ (NSArray *)sortAndRemoveEmpty:(NSArray *)array { NSSet *uniques = [NSSet setWithArray:array]; NSArray *sortedArray = [[uniques allObjects] sortedArrayUsingSelector:@selector(caseInsensitiveCompare:)]; NSPredicate *notEmpty = [NSPredicate predicateWithFormat:@"SELF != ''"]; return [sortedArray filteredArrayUsingPredicate]; }

#5

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for the input. I thought about using NSPredicate, but with only one empty string possible, and it always being in the first position, removing that one item seemed the best solution in this case.

I have been using MacRuby more lately and it is making coding much easier. The combination of it and rb-appscript is really awesome.

Here is the code to get the tracks, remove duplicates, empty strings and sort. Two lines of code. Sweet!

#6

How would you go by translating this to applescript?

#7

Something like this (untested):

set uniques to current application's NSSet's setWithArray_(theList)
set sortedList to (uniques's allObjects()'s sortedArrayUsingSelector_("caseInsensitiveCompare:")) as list
if item 1 of sortedList = "" then set sortedList to rest of sortedList

And:

set uniques to current application's NSSet's setWithArray_(theList)
set sortedArray to uniques's allObjects()'s sortedArrayUsingSelector_("caseInsensitiveCompare:")
set notEmpty to current application's NSPredicate's predicateWithFormat_(SELF != ''")
set sortedList to (sortedArray's filteredArrayUsingPredicate_(notEmpty)) as list