Scripting creation of smart playlists in iTunes

Thanks. UIElementInspector is returning the following for the pop up button I would like to control, but I'm not sure what sense to make of it. There are no numbers showing to identify which group, window, scoll area, etc:

<AXApplication: “iTunes”>

<AXWindow: “Smart Playlist”>

<AXScrollArea>

<AXGroup>

<AXPopUpButton>

Attributes:

AXRole: “AXPopUpButton”

AXRoleDescription: “pop up button”

AXHelp: “(null)”

AXEnabled: “1”

AXFocused (W): “0”

AXParent: “<AXGroup>”

AXWindow: “<AXWindow: “Smart Playlist”>”

AXTopLevelUIElement: “<AXWindow: “Smart Playlist”>”

AXPosition: “x=415 y=192”

AXSize: “w=149 h=17”

AXValue: “Artist”

AXChildren: “<array of size 0>”

Actions:

AXShowMenu - show menu

AXPress - press

Thanks,

That worked well. The final script is as follows:

set theArtist to "Bob Dylan"

tell application "iTunes" to activate

tell application "System Events" to tell process "iTunes"

keystroke "n" using {option down, command down} -- New Smart Playlist…

delay 0.5

tell application "System Events"

tell process "iTunes"

tell window "Smart Playlist"

tell scroll area 1

tell group 1

tell pop up button 1

click

tell menu 1

click menu item "Artist"

end tell

end tell

delay 0.5

keystroke theArtist & return

end tell

end tell

end tell

end tell

end tell

delay 0.5

keystroketheArtist & return-- to rename the playlist

end tell

Now I don't suppose it's possible to script adding the smart playlist to a certain folder?? That would probably be asking too much, given that the only way of doing this manually appears to be drag and drop.

Nick

Thanks Jacques.

I tried that and got an error:

iTunes got an error: Can’t get user playlist id 968299 of source id 84.

Nick

Doh! I thought I had the correct playlist folder in place. Sorry, it's late here! 😕

Thanks again Jaques (and twtwtw). Automated Smart Playlists. Very neat.

Nick

Oh, one more question, if that's not too cheeky. Is there a way of building in a check to see if a smart playlist with the same name already exists in the playlist folder before creating it?

I have a script that checks to see if certain tags are already in the comments field of each track selected in iTunes. If not it adds these tags, based on text entered in dialog boxes. I would then like the script to add a new smart playlist based on the tags entered, but only if it doesn't already exist.

So, for example, one tag would be for subgenres, and there would be a playlist folder called 'subgenres'. If the subgenre entered for a particular track doesn't already have a smart playlist in this folder, I would like the script to generate a new smart playlist.

Thanks, but I seem to have hit another snag. When I wrap the script in the if statement, the keystroke "n" is applied to my script editing program which creates a new file for a new script!

set theLabel to "Jockey"

tell application "iTunes"

if not (existsuser playlisttheLabel) then

tell application "System Events" to tell process "iTunes"

keystroke "n" using {option down, command down} -- New Smart Playlist…

delay 0.5

tell application "System Events"

tell process "iTunes"

tell window "Smart Playlist"

tell scroll area 1

tell group 1

tell pop up button 1

click

tell menu 1

click menu item "Comments"

end tell

end tell

delay 0.5

keystroke "label:" & theLabel & return

end tell

end tell

end tell

end tell

end tell

delay 0.5

keystroketheLabel & return-- to rename the playlist

delay 0.5

end tell

move (get view of front browser window) tofolder playlist "labels"

end if

end tell

Thanks. I have it all working now, though I needed to add:

tell application "System Events"

tell process "iTunes"

before:

tell window "Smart Playlist"

to get the keystroke to apply to iTunes. Without this it applied to whatever application was currently in use/focus.

Thanks for your help with a very neat/handy script.

Nick