Get text of selected field code in Microsoft Word using AppleScript - macos

Question

I'm making a Automator to jump from citation in Word to the reference software(Zotero). But I can't find a AppleScript to extract text of selected field code (the first step).
The field code in Word is
ADDIN ZOTERO_ITEM CSL_CITATION {"citationID":"AFUiwuqi","properties":{"formattedCitation":"[1]","plainCitation":"[1]","noteIndex":0},"citationItems":[{"id":9752,"uris":["http://zotero.org/users/6410528/items/YYTRWPHH"],"itemData":{"id":9752,"type":"article-journal","container-title":"Nature","DOI":"10.1038/s41586-019-1737-7","ISSN":"0028-0836, 1476-4687","issue":"7782","page":"324-329","title":"Controlled flight of a microrobot powered by soft artificial muscles","volume":"575","author":[{"family":"Chen","given":"Yufeng"},{"family":"Zhao","given":"Huichan"},{"family":"Mao","given":"Jie"},{"family":"Chirarattananon","given":"Pakpong"},{"family":"Helbling","given":"E. Farrell"},{"family":"Hyun","given":"Nak-seung Patrick"},{"family":"Clarke","given":"David R."},{"family":"Wood","given":"Robert J."}],"issued":{"date-parts":[["2019",11,14]]}}}],"schema":"https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json"}
Here is the script process:
Extract text from selected field code in Word (This is the question)
Get the uris text(http://zotero.org/users/6410528/items/YYTRWPHH)
Get the item-codes (YYTRWPHH).
Open url (zotero://select/library/items?itemKey=YYTRWPHH)
Now I use VBA to extract field code text, see below. But in this way, the file will be changed. So I want to do this via AppleScript.
Sub GetFiledsCodes()
Dim myRange As Range, myCodes As String
Set myRange = Selection.Range
With myRange
If .Fields.Count = 0 Then
MsgBox "No Code!", vbInformation
Exit Sub
Else
.Fields.Update
.TextRetrievalMode.IncludeFieldCodes = True
.TextRetrievalMode.IncludeHiddenText = True
myCodes = .Text
myCodes = VBA.Replace(myCodes, Chr(19), "{")
myCodes = VBA.Replace(myCodes, Chr(21), "}")
.SetRange .End, .End
.InsertAfter myCodes
.Font.Name = "Times New Roman"
.Font.Size = 12
.Cut
End If
End With
End Sub
PS:
Here is my process in Automator(it can work but using VBA):
Run AppleScript
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Microsoft Word" to activate
tell application "Microsoft Word"
run VB macro macro name "GetFiledsCodes"
delay 0.5
end tell
return input
end run
Get contents from clipboard
Extract URLs from Text
Filter Paragraphs begin with http://zotero.org/users/
Copy to Clipboard
Run AppleScript
set myStr to do shell script "pbpaste"
tell application "Zotero" to activate
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "
"
set myList to every text item of myStr
set zoterocode to ""
set codes to ""
repeat with j from 1 to the length of myList
set itemValue to item j of myList
set zoterocode to (do shell script "sed -E 's#http://zotero.org/users/[0-9]+/items/##g' <<< " & itemValue)
if j = 1 then
set codes to zoterocode
else
set codes to codes & "," & zoterocode
end if
end repeat
tell application "System Events"
key code 18 using {command down, control down, option down}
delay 0.5
set collectionKey to do shell script "pbpaste"
if collectionKey = myStr then
set theurl to "zotero://select/library/items?itemKey=" & codes
else
set theurl to collectionKey & "/items?itemKey=" & codes
end if
open location theurl
end tell

Answer 1

That helps a lot. Okay, so this isn't a turnkey solution for your question but I don't think you really need that as you'd probably end up having to tell me more about how this app works than is really necessary. So this script focuses on your initial question about getting the field codes/result ranges from a merge document.
I put together a simple mail merge consisting of labels and a data file with 8 records, each of which have 5 fields: {"«LastName»", "«JobTitle»", "«Company»", "«City»", "«Web»"}. The latter is the key field.
Basically, the script runs through the data merge document and cycles first through its fields, then the web field, and finally the web addresses.
Based on your script, I can't really determine what you are doing with each address so it finishes by collecting just the final part of each address in a list. The obscure parts for me are the pbpastes, the codes and the whole System Events block. This area would need tweaking.
Incidentally, it's quite likely that you can avoid some of the shell scripts but I can't say how yet. Obviously the script has some redundancies and could be further refined but I think it demonstrates how to extract the information you need. Take a look at it and let me know what issues there are that need addressing.
tell application "Microsoft Word"
set d1 to document "cardo_labels.docx"
set fContents to {} -- list of mergefield
set fResRange to {} -- list of result range, i.e. field merge data
repeat with x from 1 to (count of fields of d1)
set fcs to content of field code of field x of d1 --> " MERGEFIELD LastName "
set frr to content of result range of field x of d1 --> "Smith"
if fcs is not " NEXT " then -- ignore «Next Record»
set end of fContents to fcs
set end of fResRange to frr
end if
end repeat
--> single record example
fContents --> {" MERGEFIELD LastName ", " MERGEFIELD JobTitle ", " MERGEFIELD Company ", " MERGEFIELD City ", " MERGEFIELD Web "}
fResRange --> {"Smith", "President", "Acme Screw & Gear", "Metz", "http://zotero.org/users/1234/items/smith-metz"}
-- NB when not displaying 'merged data', fResRange will appear thusly: {"«LastName»", "«JobTitle»", "«Company»", "«City»", "«Web»"}
set webList to {}
repeat with y from 1 to (count of fResRange)
if item y of fResRange begins with "http://zotero.org/users/" then
set end of webList to (item y of fResRange)
end if
end repeat
--> {"http://zotero.org/users/1234/items/smith-metz"}
--> {"http://zotero.org/users/1234/items/smith-metz", "http://zotero.org/users/4222/items/branson-metz", "http://zotero.org/users/3236/items/house-metz", "http://zotero.org/users/3342/items/kurtz-london", "http://zotero.org/users/12345/items/jones-london"}
set urlPiece to {}
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "/"
repeat with z in webList
set end of urlPiece to last text item of z
end repeat
-- contents of z
--> "http://zotero.org/users/1234/items/smith-metz"
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ""
urlPiece
--> {"smith-metz"}
--> {"smith-metz", "jones-saopaolo", "branson-metz", "house-metz", "kurtz-london", "jones-london"}
end tell

Answer 2

Thanks to ideas from #Mockman.
Combining with the selection, here is the way to extract text from selected field code via AppleScript:
tell application "Microsoft Word"
tell selection
set fcs to content of field code of field of text object
end tell
end tell
fcs