Contents

AMAction

An abstract class that defines the interface and general characteristics of Automator actions.

Declaration

class AMAction

Overview

Automator is an Apple app that allows users to construct and execute workflows consisting of a sequence of discrete modules called actions. An action performs a specific task, such as copying a file or cropping an image, and passes its output to Automator to give to the next action in the workflow. Actions are currently implemented as loadable bundles owned by objects of the AMBundleAction class, a subclass of AMAction.

The critically important method declared by AMAction is run(withInput:). When Automator executes a workflow, it sends this message to each action object in the workflow (in workflow sequence), in most cases passing in the output of the previous action as input. The action object performs its task in this method and ends by returning an output object for the next action in the workflow.

Subclassing AMAction is not recommended. For most situations requiring an enhancement to the Automator framework, it is sufficient to subclass AMBundleAction.

Topics

Initializing and Encoding

Controlling the Action

Initializing and Synchronizing the Action User Interface

Performing Logging

Updating Action Parameters

Getting Action Information

Performing Cleanup Operations

Initializers

See Also

Actions