Legend

Question

TypeScript Enabled CEP Development

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
December 6, 2017
1 reply
1980 views

[Apologies for cross-posting. I only just became aware that this forum even existed.]

For those interested in a more modern approach to Add-On development, take a look at this post which points to this CEP Sample. In short, it provides an example environment where the Premiere Pro sample "PProPanel" was adapted to benefit from a TypeScript-enabled environment (for both the Panel [HTML] and Application [ExtendScript] contexts).

Further, other Adobe application-specific TypeScript Declaration Files have been created by pqiorpa and can be found here.

One major benefit of working in a TypeScript-enabled environment is that you can use modern IDEs and still gain the benefit of Intellisense/Autocomplete features, whether you're writing pure ExtendScript or TypeScript that you will transpile into ExtendScript!

Happy coding!

This topic has been closed for replies.

VespaKoen

Participating Frequently

Hey Sberic,

Just want to thank you for the typings you have created, I plan to integrate them into my bundler soon (Adobe Extension Development Tools · GitHub)

I also wanted to show you the following project that has typings for AE, perhaps you can convince him to integrate the typings into your project? (GitHub - atarabi/aftereffects.d.ts)

It would be great to have them all in one place so we can easily contribute to it.

Lastly, I have got PPRO on my system (2018) and I think I have 2017 running in a VM somewhere, I will run your xml -> d.ts script on them soon and make a PR.

Thanks again for your work, TypeScript on Adobe CC is a reality now, yay!!

- Koen

sbericAuthor

Legend

Hi @vespkoen! No problem! I'm happy to contribute back to the community.

I wasn't previously aware of Atarabi's repository. That's pretty awesome! It looks like we now have three locations for Adobe application Declaration files:

atarabi/aftereffects.d.ts
- After Effects
pravdomil/types-for-adobe
- Audition
- Illustrator (2015.3)
- InDesign (2015.3)
- JavaScript (ECMAScript 3 w/ExtendScript base extensions)
- PhotoShop (2015.5)
- ScriptUI
Adobe-CEP/Samples/TypeScript
- PremierePro (11.1.2)

Unifying these efforts would be excellent, but I honestly believe that we need Adobe support to make it happen properly. Here are the issues that I foresee:

We need a unified way to align declaration file versions to application versions. Adobe occasionally adds/adjusts APIs for applications between application versions. We can't simply have a single Declaration file for "Audition" because CC2018 may have different APIs available than CC2017 did. Perhaps the NodeJS declaration files would make for a good model here...
Not all APIs for all applications are covered by Adobe's XML documentation. The ESTK Object Model Viewer seems to source its API documentation from XML files and some direct connection to the application you're investigating - it seems to discover APIs (see, for example, Premiere Pro). Even then, not all APIs will appear in the ESTK OMV. The APIs found in the Premiere Pro declaration file were sourced from the api_doc.html, the ESTK OMV, and direct conversation with Bruce Bullis. The point is that straightforward XML→Declaration file conversion will only take you so far; you'll likely miss some things.

My efforts to get Adobe buy-in on this have yet to take root...

VespaKoen

Participating Frequently

Adobe occasionally adds/adjusts APIs for applications between application versions

How does that work? Whenever they release something it get's a new version number right??

What's wrong with the current approach you have, organizing them in a folder with the version number (e.g. 2015.3)? it looks fine to me.

2) I just checked out the "reflection" property and wrote a little script to dump all it's information in the whole $.global object.

Unfortunately you can only get some type information from it, no descriptions / helps seems to be filled in.

var handled = []
function unreflect(obj) {
if (!obj) return
var result = {
    methods: {},
    properties: {},
    children: {}
}
if (obj.reflect) {
    for (var i in obj.reflect.methods) {
      try {
        const method = obj.reflect.methods
        result.methods[method.name] = {
          dataType: method.dataType,
          help: method.help,
          description: method.description
        }
      } catch (err) {}
    }
    for (var i in obj.reflect.properties) {
      try {
        const property = obj.reflect.properties
        result.properties[property.name] = {
          dataType: property.dataType,
          help: property.help,
          description: property.description
        }
      } catch (err) {}
    }
}
for (var i in obj) {
    if (typeof obj === 'object' && handled.indexOf(obj) === -1) {
      handled.push(obj)
      result.children = unreflect(obj)
    }
}
return result
}
$.writeln(JSON.stringify(unreflect($.global)))

I guess we could modify one of the OMV scripts in here (on macOS): /Applications/Adobe ExtendScript Toolkit CC/ExtendScript Toolkit.app/Contents/SharedSupport/Required/

And have it dump useful stuff to a file?

Anyways, I agree that ideally we would get the omv XML files for the different apps & versions from Adobe.

Otherwise we will just have to do it by hand I guess

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