Send all files on Desktop to Evernote then delete - applescript

Question

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

Answer 1

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

Answer 2

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