⍚ Sketch Driver

Sketch Driver is a node module to 'drive' Sketch App from javascript.

It allows javascript developers to easily create code to open sketch documents, perform CocoaScript snippets and retrieve information of the current UI and document state.

Sketch Driver makes it easier to develop and run sketch plugins from the outside of Sketch App.

npm install preciousforever/sketch-driver

var sketch = require('sketch-driver');
sketch.run(`context.document.showMessage('Hello World');`});

In contrast to sketchtool

Sketchtool is great when you just want to work with the sketch file itself, e.g.: retrieve information about the objects or export artboards..

In contrast to sketch plugins

Sketch Plugins - accessible from the UI - are great, unless you want to trigger a certain action by code or retrieve a certain information from the outside of Sketch.

State

Sketch Driver is at an early state (at 'sketch' level so to say), a rough concept as personal preparation for Sketch Hackday

Next Up

• [x] relative imports
• [x] improve logging
• [x] simple verbosity options
• [x] Promise based API
• [ ] WIP improve linenumber logging when using import statements
• [ ] upload to npm
• [ ] enable (recursive) relative imports
• [ ] execute files
• [ ] add watch example
• [ ] add server based commuincation in addition to REPL

Using Sketch Driver

Installation

npm install sketch-driver --save

Open Files

var sketch = require('sketch-driver');
sketch.open(path.join(__dirname, 'test.sketch'));

Execute code inside sketch

var sketch = require('sketch-driver');
sketch.run(`context.document.showMessage('Hello World');`});

Retrieve information

Use run(script, callback(err, response, errorMessage)) with a callback function to retrieve information from inside Sketch.

Use the respond method on the injected $SD object inside CocoaScript to respond with information.

var sketch = require('sketch-driver');
sketch.run(`$SD.respond({'artboardCount': context.document.artboards().count()});`, function(err, response) {
    console.log("current sketch document has " + response.data.artboardCount + "artboards");
    })

Imports

You may use imports relative to the javascript file, where you require 'sketch-driver'. Sketch-Driver will fix the imports, so sketch is able to find the files.

/*
Directory Structure
- node_modules
- snippets/count-artboard.cocoascript
    var artboardCount = context.document.artboards().count(); 
- index.js

content of index.js below
*/
var sketch = require('sketch-driver');
sketch.run(`@import 'snippets/count-artboard.cocoascript'
    $SD.respond({'artboardCount': artboardCount});`, function(err, response) {
    console.log("current sketch document has " + response.data.artboardCount + "artboards");
    })

Development

npm install
npm test