Reading file in AppleScript - applescript

Question

I'm trying to read an html file into a variable in AppleScript, I have the following code.
tell application "Finder"
set theItems to every file of folder folderName
repeat with theFile in theItems
open for access theFile
set fileContents to (read theFile)
end repeat
end tell
Now I get an error like:
Finder got an error: Can’t make document file "index.html" of folder
[...] of startup disk into type «class fsrf».
What am I doing wrong? I followed this example. Are HTML files not recognized as text?

Answer 1

You have to convert the Finder file objects to aliases or text.
read can be used without separate open or close commands. It reads files as MacRoman without as «class utf8» though. (as Unicode text is UTF-16.)
tell application "Finder" to files of folder "HD:Users:lauri:Sites" as alias list
repeat with f in result
read f as «class utf8»
end repeat

Answer 2

Try:
tell application "Finder" to set theItems to every file of folder folderName
repeat with theFile in theItems
set aFile to POSIX path of (theFile as text)
set fileContents to do shell script "cat " & quoted form of aFile
end repeat

Answer 3

Starting from your original code, this should do it:
set folderPath to choose folder
set someData to ""
tell application "Finder"
set theItems to every file of folder folderPath as list
repeat with theFile in theItems
set theFilePath to theFile as text
if characters -5 thru -1 of theFilePath as string is ".html" then
set theFileHandle to (open for access file theFilePath)
set fileContents to (read theFileHandle)
-- for testing, call some function
set someData to someData & return & processHtml(fileContents) of me
close access theFileHandle
end if
end repeat
-- do something with someData here
return someData
end tell
on processHtml(theData)
-- do something with theData here
return theData
end processHtml
As Lauri wrote, you can add "as «class utf8»" to read the file as UTF8. You could also use "as Unicode text" for UTF16. Personally, I like this, because it is vanilla AppleScript and doesn't need shell scripting.

Answer 4

Using open for access is really doing it the hard way.
If you want to read an HTML file with AppleScript, then the best way to do that is to use AppleScript to tell an HTML editor to read the HTML file for you. That is the fundamental way that AppleScript works. That’s why “tell” is the most important command. That’s why you can accomplish your goal of reading an HTML file into a variable in just 3 lines:
tell application "BBEdit"
open (choose file)
set theHTMLSource to the text of document 1
close document 1
end tell
The following script expands on the above to read an arbitrary number of HTML files from a chosen folder. It works with BBEdit 9, and should also work with BBEdit’s free version, which is called “TextWrangler” and is available in Mac App Store. Or you can fairly easily adapt this script for use with HyperEdit or TextEdit or whatever AppleScript-aware HTML/text editor you prefer to use.
tell application "Finder"
set theFolder to (choose folder)
set theFiles to every file of folder theFolder
set theHTMLSourceList to {}
repeat with theFile in theFiles
if the kind of theFile is equal to "HTML document" then
set theName to the name of theFile
tell application "BBEdit"
open file (theFile as text)
set theSource to the text of document 1
copy {theName, theSource} to the end of theHTMLSourceList
close document 1
end tell
end if
end repeat
end tell
When the above script is finished, the variable “theHTMLSourceList” is populated with the names and source code of the entire folder of HTML documents, like so:
{{name of file 1, source of file 1}, {name of file 2, source of file 2}, {name of file 3, source of file 3}}
… and so on up to an arbitrary number of files. But of course you can have the script return the HTML source to you in whatever way you like. The key point is that an AppleScript-aware HTML editor can both read HTML and set AppleScript variables, so you don’t have to write (and debug and maintain) your own HTML reader in tiny AppleScript.