SpotlightQuery Class
Used to perform Spotlight searches on Mac OS X 10.4 and above. It does nothing on earlier versions of Mac OS X and all other operating systems.
More information available in parent classes: Object
SpotlightQuery appears in the list of Built-in controls in the IDE, but since it is not subclassed from Control, you can instantiate it via code.
Constructor
Name | Parameters | Description |
SpotlightQuery | [query as String] | The optional query parameter specifies the query. The default is no query. |
Notes
An overview of the Spotlight API is at: http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/SpotlightQuery/index.html
Spotlight works by extracting metadata attributes from files on the user's hard disk. By default, this extraction is done in the background by Spotlight Importers. When an end-user does a Spotlight search, he is actually doing a search on the attributes that have been extracted via the importers. When you use the SpotlightQuery class, you must specify the attribute or attributes you are searching on using Spotlight keywords and syntax.
In other words, you will need to become familiar with Apple's MDQuery language. Each simple query is in the format of attribute=Value, where attribute is a Spotlight metadata attribute and Value is the target value.
Apple's list of searchable metadata attributes is at:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Reference/MetadataAttributesRef/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001689
For example, kMDItemContentType = "*audio*" would find all files that had a content type containing "audio" (case insensitive). The "*" is the wildcard character. You can combine expressions with "&&" (logical "And") and "||" (logical "Or"). For example, to find a file that was Audio and had a artist of Lifehouse, it would look like this: kMDItemContentType = "*audio*" && kMDItemArtist = "Lifehouse".
The complete description of MDQuery syntax is at:
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/SpotlightQuery/index.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40001841
Examples
The following synchronous query populates a ListBox with the list of audio files on the user's computer and the absolute path to each file. You can put the code in a PushButton.
query.Synchronous= True
query.Run
For i as Integer = 0 to query.Count-1
ListBox1.Addrow query.Item(i).File.DisplayName
ListBox1.Cell(i,1)=query.Item(i).File.AbsolutePath
Next
Exception err as SpotlightException
MsgBox "A Spotlight error occurred."
The following asynchronous query uses the search string that the user enters into an EditField and displays the filename and its absolute path in a ListBox. It uses a SpotlightQuery control named "Query" that has been added to the window.
First, add the following method "UpdateList" to the window:
Query.Pause
For i as Integer = 0 to Query.Count-1
ListBox1.Addrow Query.Item(i).File.DisplayName
ListBox1.Cell(i,1)=Query.Item(i).File.AbsolutePath
Next
Query.Resume
In the SpotLightQuery's Changed and Completed event handlers, call the UpdateList method.
In a PushButton, enter the following code in its Action event handler.
Query.Query ="kMDItemDisplayName = ""*"+EditField1.Text+"*"""
Query.Run
Else
MsgBox "Please enter a file name to search for."
End If
Exception err as SpotlightException
MsgBox "A Spotlight error occurred."
The following If statement checks to see if the user is running Mac OS X 10.4 or higher:
If System.Gestalt("sysv",sysversion) and sysversion>= &h1040 then
//you can call SpotlightQuery here
Else
//Don't bother calling SpotlightQuery
End if
See Also
SpotlightException, SpotlightItem classes.