Validate Access to Files and Network in After-Effects

A quick way to validate and / or condition access to files and network in After-Effects. For example, if your entire script depends on a licensing system / a local options file, you can use this to validate access to the file before proceeding. Note that newer versions of After-Effects automatically show a user friendly dialog, consider whether you actually need to implement this or not

What is this good for?

Mostly user friendliness.

A palette (unlike a dialog) lets the user interact with the rest of the application while it is open. This makes it easier for the user to find the preference option and change it. They can then click "Check Again" to go ahead and run the script without having to relaunch it from the window menu.

The biggest downside however is that unlike a dialog, the palette does not pause the execution of the script and relies on a callback to run the main script code.

Preview

An example of the palette shown to the user when access is not granted:

The path to where the preference option is located changes depending on the OS.

• MacOS - After Effects > Preferences > Scripting & Expressions

• Windows - Edit > Preferences > Scripting & Expressions

Installation

1. Clone this repository into your project folder.
2. Import $FSAccessValidator into your project using #include ./FSAccess/$FSAccessValidator.jsx and initialize it (See examples below)

Usage

// index.jsx

(function(scriptUIPanelToken) {
   #include './FSAccess/FSAccess.jsx';
    var $accessValidator = new $FSAccessValidator();


    function main() {
        // main script code goes here, anything that depends on the access validation

    };

    /* 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀 */
    $accessValidator.conditionWithPalette(main, {
        toolName: 'Your Tool Name'
    })

})(this);

We import the $FSAccessValidator class and initialize a new instance of it. At the end of the script we call conditionWithPalette and pass it the main function of our script. This function will automatically be called if access is already granted, or if the user grants access after the palette is shown.

$FSAccessValidator

conditionWithPalette(callback, options)

• callback - The main function of your script, or whatever function you want to run after the access validation is complete.

• options - An object that lets you customize the palette shown to the user.

  • • toolName - The name of your tool (Default: undefined)
  • • title - The title of the palette window (Default: Allow Scripts to Write Files and Access Network)
  • • intro - The first line of text in the palette (Default: For this tool to work properly, it needs to be able to write files and reach the internet.)

  If only the toolName is provided, intro will automatically include it as part of the default intro, and the title will be set to it.

hasAccessToFilesAndNetwork()

Returns a boolean indicating whether the script has access to files and network.