AppleScript : searching for a tab on chrome and saving the tab as a variable

applescriptgoogle-chrometabs

I'm using this script which is finding the tab I want, then bring the tab to focus.

set searchString to "Tab I'm Looking FOR"

tell application "Google Chrome"
    set win_List to every window
    set win_MatchList to {}
    set tab_MatchList to {}
    set tab_NameMatchList to {}
    repeat with win in win_List
        set tab_list to every tab of win
        repeat with t in tab_list
            if searchString is in (title of t as string) then
                set end of win_MatchList to win
                set end of tab_MatchList to t
                set end of tab_NameMatchList to (id of win as string) & ".  " & (title of t as string)
            end if
        end repeat
    end repeat
    if (count of tab_MatchList) is equal to 1 then
        set w to item 1 of win_MatchList
        set index of w to 1
        my setActiveTabIndex(t, searchString)
    else if (count of tab_MatchList) is equal to 0 then
        display dialog "No match was found!" buttons {"OK"} default button 1
    else
        set which_Tab to choose from list of tab_NameMatchList with prompt "The following Tabs matched, please select one:"
        set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "."
        if which_Tab is not equal to false then
            set tmp to text items of (which_Tab as string)
            set w to (item 1 of tmp) as integer
            set index of window id w to 1
            my setActiveTabIndex(t, searchString)
        end if
    end if
end tell
on setActiveTabIndex(t, searchString)
    tell application "Google Chrome"
        set i to 0
        repeat with t in tabs of front window
            set i to i + 1
            if title of t contains searchString then
                set active tab index of front window to i
                return
            end if
        end repeat
    end tell

end setActiveTabIndex

This work fine, but how can I save the tab number as a variable so if I need to do more stuff in this actual tab I can just do something like this (imagining the tab number is saved as "TABNUMBER")

tell application "Google Chrome"
    set myTab to front window's tab TABNUMBER
    set URL of myTab to "https:..."
end tell

Best Answer

Notes on the script

I'm submitting this second "answer" to address some specifics about the code sample you provided in your post. As this doesn't answer your question directly (which my first answer does), and because my first answer is already very long; I felt it sensible to compose this separately.

To start, your on setActiveTabIndex(t, searchString) handler definition specifies an argument t, but then makes not use of the variable anywhere in the handler. The variable t that is utilised actually comes from the repeat with t in tabs of front window loop, where t is sequentially assigned the reference to each tab of the front window. Therefore, you can simply change the handler declaration to on setActiveTabIndex(searchString), and then adjust the rest of the script accordingly wherever the handler is called, i.e. by removing the first argument.

One oddity in the way you implemented the repeat loop in this handler is how you declared a new variable i to serve as a counter, then manually increment its value with each iteration. Instead, you can define i within the repeat construct itself, like this:

    repeat with i from 1 to the number of tabs in the front window
        set t to tab i of the front window
        if title of t contains the searchString then
            set the active tab index of the front window to i
            return
        end if
    end repeat

The rest of the script is okay, but it relies on a lot of manual iterative loops that are not only difficult to read within the script—making it hard to discern what's happening at each stage—but it is also less efficient in execution.

Instead, you could utilise AppleScript's object collections that can be filtered using whose (or where).

For instance, instead of:

    repeat with win in win_List
        ...
        repeat with T in tab_list
            if searchString is in (title of T as string) then
                ...
            end if
            ...
        end repeat
    end repeat

you can use this:

    get every tab in every window whose title contains the searchString
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