38.4. aetypes — AppleEvent objects

The aetypes defines classes used to represent Apple Event data descriptors and Apple Event object specifiers.

Apple Event data is contained in descriptors, and these descriptors are typed. For many descriptors the Python representation is simply the corresponding Python type: typeText in OSA is a Python string, typeFloat is a float, etc. For OSA types that have no direct Python counterpart this module declares classes. Packing and unpacking instances of these classes is handled automatically by aepack.

An object specifier is essentially an address of an object implemented in an Apple Event server. An Apple Event specifier is used as the direct object for an Apple Event or as the argument of an optional parameter. The aetypes module contains the base classes for OSA classes and properties, which are used by the packages generated by gensuitemodule to populate the classes and properties in a given suite.

For reasons of backward compatibility, and for cases where you need to script an application for which you have not generated the stub package this module also contains object specifiers for a number of common OSA classes such as Document, Window, Character, etc.

The AEObjects module defines the following classes to represent Apple Event descriptor data:

class aetypes.Unknown(type, data)

The representation of OSA descriptor data for which the aepack and aetypes modules have no support, i.e. anything that is not represented by the other classes here and that is not equivalent to a simple Python value.

class aetypes.Enum(enum)

An enumeration value with the given 4-character string value.

class aetypes.InsertionLoc(of, pos)

Position pos in object of.

class aetypes.Boolean(bool)

A boolean.

class aetypes.StyledText(style, text)

Text with style information (font, face, etc) included.

class aetypes.AEText(script, style, text)

Text with script system and style information included.

class aetypes.IntlText(script, language, text)

Text with script system and language information included.

class aetypes.IntlWritingCode(script, language)

Script system and language information.

class aetypes.QDPoint(v, h)

A quickdraw point.

class aetypes.QDRectangle(v0, h0, v1, h1)

A quickdraw rectangle.

class aetypes.RGBColor(r, g, b)

A color.

class aetypes.Type(type)

An OSA type value with the given 4-character name.

class aetypes.Keyword(name)

An OSA keyword with the given 4-character name.

class aetypes.Range(start, stop)

A range.

class aetypes.Ordinal(abso)

Non-numeric absolute positions, such as "firs", first, or "midd", middle.

class aetypes.Logical(logc, term)

The logical expression of applying operator logc to term.

class aetypes.Comparison(obj1, relo, obj2)

The comparison relo of obj1 to obj2.

The following classes are used as base classes by the generated stub packages to represent AppleScript classes and properties in Python:

class aetypes.ComponentItem(which[, fr])

Abstract baseclass for an OSA class. The subclass should set the class attribute want to the 4-character OSA class code. Instances of subclasses of this class are equivalent to AppleScript Object Specifiers. Upon instantiation you should pass a selector in which, and optionally a parent object in fr.

class aetypes.NProperty(fr)

Abstract baseclass for an OSA property. The subclass should set the class attributes want and which to designate which property we are talking about. Instances of subclasses of this class are Object Specifiers.

class aetypes.ObjectSpecifier(want, form, seld[, fr])

Base class of ComponentItem and NProperty, a general OSA Object Specifier. See the Apple Open Scripting Architecture documentation for the parameters. Note that this class is not abstract.