I'm trying to write/collect some productivity scripts before starting grad school. What I'd like to do is keep track of the context in which I've downloaded (mostly pdf) files for research... for example, fetching the original email a file was attached to.
Luckily, Mac OS X records the download URL as well as the referer URL in the files' extended attributes. However, the way google handles attachments, the orignal email URI gets lost in a series of redirects before the actual file download starts.
I'm hoping there is some Apple Script magic to correct the kMDItemWhereFroms extended attributes to include the URI of the page that initiated the download. I'm able to (for example) fetch the URL of the active tab with
tell application "Google Chrome"
get URL of active tab of first window
end tell
and could correct the extended attribute by executing
xattr -w com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms NEW_URL FILENAME
But, what I'm missing is some way to either a). get the pathname of the most recently downloaded file to automatically run the xattr command with, or maybe b). create an alternate download workflow in Apple Script, or c). some other brilliant idea....?
Save this in your Folder Actions folder and attach it to your Downloads folder.
on adding folder items to theFolder after receiving theFiles
repeat with aFile in theFiles
tell application "Google Chrome"
activate
set myUrl to URL of active tab of first window
end tell
set filePath to quoted form of POSIX path of aFile
do shell script "xattr -w com.apple.metadata:kMDItemWhereFroms " & quoted form of myUrl & space & filePath
end repeat
end adding folder items to
Related
I have an apple script that asks the user to select an application as a prompt. I would like to know how it could be possible to find the directory of the Application Support folder for this application per example, Spotify is
~/Library/Application Support/Spotify/
On my mac, but like is there a way inside apple script to find this directory for the specific app. It would really be appreciated, thanks!
Because I would like to then delete this folder using Apple Script
This should accomplish what you're looking to achieve. Be careful though because using System Events to delete... deletes the item permanently instead of sending it to the Trash
property folderNames : missing value
tell application "System Events"
set appSupportFolder to application support folder
set folderNames to name of folders of appSupportFolder
set theChoice to my chooseFolderToDelete()
delete folder theChoice of appSupportFolder
end tell
to chooseFolderToDelete()
activate
set theChoice to (choose from list folderNames with prompt ¬
"Select an Application's Support folder to delete" OK button name ¬
"Delete Folder" cancel button name "Cancel") as text
end chooseFolderToDelete
So, I'm trying to use Automator under Mac OS Yosemite to create a service to allow a user to take a screenshot and save it to a location they specify, through some sort of "Save As" dialog. It seemed like it should be easy, but for some reason I'm running into difficulty with it. The screenshot component is easy, using the "Take Screenshot" action in Automator, but it's the saving it to a custom location that's causing me problems.
After trying a few different approaches, it seemed the easiest thing to do was to save the screenshot to a fixed directory/filename from within the "Take Screenshot" action, and then (using AppleScript) rename it in that directory, and move it to the user-specified target directory. So, I added a "Run AppleScript" action to my service. In it, I generate the dialog to choose a file name/path, using the choose file name command in AppleScript. I'm trying to split up the file name from the path, so that I can rename the file I save in "Take Screenshot," and then move it to the path that I'd like to save it at. I can get the full path, but am having problems just getting the filename from the path—and I've tried a variety of suggestions from what I've seen online. In my screenshot, the error shown was from attempting to do
I'm not set by any means on this flow, so if anyone has any better suggestions on how to do what I'm trying to do, by all means please let me know. Otherwise, if someone's able to just tell me how I can extract the filename from the path (and also if there's some special way you have to use that string to rename the file) that'd be great!
AppleScript code pictured in screenshot:
on run {parameters}
set thePath to (choose file name with prompt "Where would you like to save your file?")
tell application "Finder"
display dialog thePath as string
end tell
set UnixPath to POSIX path of (thePath as text)
display dialog UnixPath
end run
I tried this but it didn't work:
set basePath to POSIX path of (parent of (thePath) as string)
Thanks for checking it out!
An easy way would be to use the command line tool "screencapture". It has many options you can choose. See its man page. Here's an example that you can run as an applescript directly or you could put this inside an applescript automator action if you want.
Good luck.
set thePath to (choose file name with prompt "Where would you like to save your file?")
do shell script "screencapture -mx -T1 " & quoted form of (POSIX path of thePath & ".png")
I've created a Folder action in Automator. Choose Desktop. Add Find Finder objects (search: Desktop). Add Move Finder Object and choose your preferred destination. This will automatically move all your screenshots.
I'd like to write an AppleScript program to do the following (Automator would be fine too):
I want to open the current active TextMate file (possibly there are several tabs open and other windows) with the application Transmit 2. (This will upload the file over FTP using Transmit's DockSend feature.)
Here I've used a specific application (TextMate) but ideally I'd like it to work for any file currently active in any application.
Ultimately I will assign a keyboard shortcut to run it.
Here's what I have so far:
tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
set p to path of document 1
end tell
tell application "Finder"
open POSIX file p using "Transmit 2"
end tell
I've tried many variants of this and nothing works.
EDIT:
I have found this page: http://wiki.macromates.com/Main/Howtos and someone has made exactly the script I'm looking for:
tell application "Transmit" to open POSIX file "$TM_FILEPATH"
This is for Transmit [not 2] and I think for TextMate pre v2. I get the error (when using Transmit 2):
Transmit 2 got an error: AppleEvent handler failed.
One of the updates to v2 has broken it (not sure which one).
There appear to be two steps to your problem. One, get the path to the document (or some other reference that allows you to later open the document), and, two, open the document in the desired application.
If the AppleScript is saved as an application, the frontmost application is the AppleScript you’re running, and so that path will be the path to the AppleScript application. In that case, I’m not aware of how to get the second-frontmost application.
However, if the application supports the scripts folder (go into AppleScript Editor‘s preferences, and enable “Show Script menu in menu bar”), you can save the script as a “Script“ in the User Scripts folder, and when run from the scripts menu the frontmost application will be the application you’re currently in.
You may want to display the p variable when testing to ensure that you are getting the correct path and not the path to the AppleScript.
As far as opening the document in another application (such as Transmit), the best way to do this is to talk to the application directly if it supports it:
tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
set p to path of document 1
end tell
--for testing: verify that the path is for the correct document
display dialog p
tell application "Transmit 2"
open p
end tell
I don’t have Transmit, but I’ve verified that this works if I replace “Transmit 2” with Textastic or Smultron 6.
If you do need to use the Finder to open the document, the Finder seems to prefer its paths as strings, and also seems to prefer a full path to the application. Something like this should work:
tell application (path to frontmost application as text)
set p to path of document 1
end tell
--for testing: verify that the path is for the correct document
--display dialog p
set transmitPath to path to application "Transmit 2"
set p to POSIX file p as string
tell application "Finder"
open file p using transmitPath
end tell
Again, I’ve tested this using Textastic and Smultron as the applications.
The most common solution for the problem you are trying to solve is to run an app that makes your Web server appear to be a mounted Mac disk. Transmit 4 has that feature, which Panic calls “Transmit Disk.” But there are a few other apps also — Transmit was not the first.
Your Mac apps (and AppleScripts) just see a typical Mac disk that they can save files to and read files from (the most basic of basic AppleScript tasks) and yet Transmit Disk (or similar app) is transparently mirroring any changes to that Mac disk to your Web server in the background. This makes all the network and FTP stuff totally go away and leaves you writing very simple scripts that do very powerful things to your Web server. You Save HTML documents on there, you Export image and movie files onto there as easily as you would Save them on your Desktop, and yet they are immediately published to your Web server. Even the only barely scriptable apps can Save their files onto a particular disk.
For example, if I have an HTML document open in BBEdit and I want to save a copy of that document to my Web server, it only takes a few lines of code, which would likely be similar in any AppleScript-able text editor (this script would also work verbatim in the free TextWrangler):
tell application "BBEdit"
set theHTMLSource to the contents of text window 1
make new document with properties {text:theHTMLSource}
save document 1 to file "Transmit Disk:index.html"
close document 1 saving no
end tell
Notice that the AppleScript above not only doesn’t have to know anything about SFTP or have any login credentials, it doesn’t even have to figure out the file path of my current document because it just takes the content right out of the current window. There are no POSIX pathnames, no shell scripts, no monkey business at all. And because this task and code is so simple, you could conceivably rewrite this script 20 times for 20 different apps that you may use, so that they can all Save a copy of their current document onto your Transmit Disk, and thus publish that document to your Web server.
And if I have a folder of images that goes along with that HTML document, I can ask Finder to duplicate that folder onto my Transmit Disk to publish it. With just one line of code:
tell application "Finder"
duplicate folder "images" of (the path to the desktop folder as alias) to the disk "Transmit Disk" replacing no
end tell
… but those images could also be exported out of Photoshop or any app, right onto the Transmit Disk, via AppleScript.
In short, the thing that all of your Mac apps have in common is they can all Save files to a Mac disk. They can’t necessarily all give you the pathnames to the documents they have open, or open those files with Transmit. And Mac apps and AppleScript were designed primarily to work with files Saved or Opened to/from local disks. So you gain a lot if you use something like Transmit Disk to make your Web server basically part of the AppleScript party, by making it appear to be just a plain old Mac disk.
so I'm trying to create a service that will be located in the contextual menu of the Finder and that would allow to create a new document in the current directory.
I've been doing that using Automator:
Sorry everything's in French ^^
Anyway here's the AppleScript that I'm using to retrieve the current working directory:
on run {input, parameters}
tell application "Finder"
set pwdAlias to insertion location as alias
if not (exists folder pwdAlias) then
set pwdAlias to (container of pwdAlias) as alias
end if
end tell
set pwd to POSIX path of pwdAlias
return pwd
end run
Then I'm setting this value to a variable, then creating a new text document using the variable as the path for the document and finally I'm using the command Reveal in Finder to show the created document.
Everything's is working fine except that the script seems to always be late!
What I mean is that when I open a new Finder window and select my service, it is systematically creating the document on the previous window as shown below:
But then if I try a second time, the document is being created properly at the expected location:
And this is very systematic it happens every time!!
Sorry if I'm not very clear, it is not so easy to explain!
Well otherwise, I'm running Mountain Lion and here's the Automator project attached: create_new_document
To add the service just unzip and put the file under ~/Library/Services/
Hope to get some answers but I fear that this is just an Automator bug!
Try this
Depending on what you want to be clicking.
Set the Services selected to: 'folders'
or files or folders. in 'Finder.app'
Get first Finder Window path Action
You can download the Get first Finder Window path Action from my blog post here
The download is at the bottom of the post.
The Action gets the posix path of the frontmost finder window.
Since you are clicking on a folder in a window. that window will be the one returned.
Set Value of Variable
Get Specified Text
The next action 'New Text File' needs some input. If it does not get any, no file will be created. You can leave the text field blank. Just having the action in place works.
New Text File
Drag the Variable 'path' or what ever you named it on to the Where: drop down menu.
you can click the double blue lines at the bottom of the Automator window to toggle the workflow Variable List
Save your service. And try it.
(It may take a short while to show up in the contextual Menu.)
It's an open bug in 10.7 and 10.8
Use this Workaround
on run {input, parameters}
activate application "System Events"
activate application "Finder"
tell application "Finder"
set pwdAlias to insertion location as alias
set pwdAlias to (container of pwdAlias) as alias
end tell
return POSIX path of pwdAlias
end run
Good morning,
I am trying to write an AppleScript that I can run that will send all the files on my desktop to Evernote, and then delete the files. My code to date is:
on run {input}
tell application "Finder"
select every file of desktop
end tell
tell application "Evernote"
repeat with SelectedFile in input
try
create note from file SelectedFile notebook "Auto Import"
end try
end repeat
end tell
tell application "Finder"
delete every file of desktop
end tell
end run
If I run this then the first and last 'tell' work fine (ie. the script highlights then deletes all the files on the desktop), but the middle 'tell' doesn't do anything.
However, if I manually highlight all the files on the desktop and then run just the middle 'tell' then it imports fine - each item into a separate note as intended.
As you can tell, I am new to AppleScript - I suspect I need to put the selected files in an array of some sort, but can't figure it out. Help!
Many thanks
Rich
Your code fails because there is no relation between your input variable and the selection of files via Finder – which means that your list is empty, and Evernote is not processing anything at all. You have obfuscated the problem by wrapping the Evernote import command in a try block without any error processing, which means all errors just go unnoticed (to avoid this kind of problem, it is good practice to always log the error message in an on error clause, if nothing else).
Also, you don’t actually need to select files on the Desktop via AppleScript to process them. The following code will grab all visible files (excluding pseudo-files like packages / apps):
tell application "System Events"
set desktopFiles to every disk item of (desktop folder of user domain) whose visible is true and class is file
end tell
Pass the list you retrieved that way to Evernote for processing:
repeat with aFile in desktopFiles as list
try
tell application "Evernote" to create note from file (aFile as alias) notebook "Auto Import"
tell application "System Events" to delete aFile
on error errorMessage
log errorMessage
end try
end repeat
and you are good to go.
Note that by judiciously placing the deletion command (right after the import command, inside the try block, inside the loop over all files), you make sure it is only called if Evernote does not error on import while avoiding having to iterate over the files several times.
A final note: you don’t have to use the block syntax for tell statements if there is only one command to execute – using tell <target> to <command> is easier and will keep you out of nested context hell.
Thanks #adayzone for corrections on list handling and alias coercion
Try
tell application "System Events" to set xxx to get every file of (desktop folder of user domain) whose visible is true
repeat with i from 1 to count of xxx
set SelectedFile to item i of xxx as alias
try
tell application "Evernote" to create note from file SelectedFile notebook "Auto Import"
tell application "Finder" to delete SelectedFile
end try
end repeat
Thanks #fanaugen