Distributing and updating Sketch Libraries

mathieudutour

Ah yes, forgot to update this. You can add a remote library using:

const sketch = require('sketch')

sketch.Library.getRemoteLibraryWithRSS(
  URLToRSS,
  (err, library) => {
    if (err) {
      // handle error
    }
    console.log(library.name)
  }
)

dimitrieh

@mathieudutour say you publish your library through a custom rss feed and it is imported by others. How soon is a change propagated to the other users?

In other words, how does the polling mechanism work? How often does sketch check if there is a newer version of the sketch library online at that custom url?

dimitrieh

I do get a notification of updates when I delete the library and reimport it again ?

mathieudutour

I believe it's once per hour

ale

Indeed, we're currently checking once per hour (but are open to fine tune that, or use other polling mechanisms if the need is there).

Meanwhile, you can use these two workaround for faster updates:

Use this plugin I made to force an update check immediately.
Set the hidden preference checkForLibraryUpdatesPeriod to the number of minutes you want to wait between checks (i.e: defaults write com.bohemiancoding.sketch3 checkForLibraryUpdatesPeriod -int 10 will check every 10 minutes)

Hope it helps!

devwow

ale Thx!! 😄

dimitrieh

Thanks so much! @ale @mathieudutour I think this will be helpful to add to the official documentation!

dimitrieh

@ale the plugin does not seem to be doing much ?

when reimporting the library I have instant results

Ariel

dimitrieh the plugin is an example of how to check for updates, it is doing it only when you start Sketch, but you could create your own plugin that uses that lines to check for updates when you need to check for updates

Ariel

dimitrieh I just checked the plugin, there should be a menu "Check For Library Updates" that will trigger the check (every time you use that menu option)

romannurik

Some feedback on the UI @ale @mathieudutour : it'd be great to show the version number in the libraries prefs pane, and have a less transient notification to users that an update is available (right now it appear as a macOS notification, instead of something like a library update for your doc, or plugin update, notification)

Also getting some weird behavior when using the API vs. the sketch:// URL protocol:
1) using the API it doesn't auto-download the library
2) after removing the library from the prefs pane, running the command again doesn't add it back until restarting Sketch

romannurik

romannurik FYI on using the API, I got the UI to update by calling NSApp.delegate().reloadAssetLibraryPreferencesTableView(); but for the life of me I can't figure out how to start the download. Looks like there's a startDownloadingAssetLibrary_progressHandler_downloadCompletionHandler_completionHandler but that requires calling with blocks ?

ale

Just to clarify: the plugin triggers the same code that is used when Sketch starts, and it does that every time you run the plugin manually. I'm not sure why it's not working, will try to do some checks here!

dimitrieh

ale great! Would love to learn your findings!

tijmenvangurp

ale Just a quick question here. Except for the sparkle:version="3" in the xml feed do you need to edit anything else to let sketch update the library?

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/tijmenvangurp/5c108d6bdb20a65f1b75b88352535ba5/raw/40d8eef8e127f74db8ded2d1e9df2f66eeb449e4/example-feed.xml

I tried to use https://medium.com/@almonk/how-to-automatically-update-your-sketch-libraries-using-rss-1a6b6be3d72f

And your plugin. But I don't get updates of the libraries to work.

romannurik

One more issue with the API to follow up from the ones I posted 2 days ago:

3) The first time I run getRemoteLibraryWithRSS, the callback is called with an error. On subsequent calls, it gets called with the library successfully. (i.e. the "if the library exists, return it" code path works, but the "return the library after adding it" path doesn't seem to?)

mathieudutour

yeah my bad, I didn't notice that it wasn't starting the download. I'll fix it on the next Sketch version

romannurik

mathieudutour thanks! if there's a workaround in 51, that'd be great too!

Davyd

mathieudutour Has this fix been applied yet? It doesn't seem to download it in v71.2

mathieudutour

you could maybe use NSWorkspace.sharedWorkspace().openURL(NSURL.URLWithString("sketch-beta://add-library?url=http%3A%2F%2F127.0.0.1:8000%2Fappcast.xml")) and poll the list of libraries until you get the one you want :/

romannurik

Any updates on programmatically adding RSS-based libraries?

mathieudutour

Ah yes, you can use

const sketch = require('sketch')
sketch.Library.getRemoteLibraryWithRSS(URL_TO_LIBRARY_APPCAST, (err, library) => {
  ...
})

https://developer.sketchapp.com/reference/api/#get-a-remote-library-from-an-rss-feed-url

romannurik

mathieudutour FWIW I'm still not getting reliable behavior with the callback, i.e. the callback isn't called with a library object, only called if the lib already exists, causes the Run Script dialog to run stale code when pressing Run, etc. Basically no real improvement on this in 52 vs 51. The sketch://add-library method is working great though, although it's not silent/background-only.

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