Tag: applescript

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I occasionally use AppleScript to avoid repetitive tasks. I quite enjoy writing scripts. My scripting tend to follow the guess and check procedure. It can be weeks or months between these efforts so I need to look up the library or search for many basic things1.

In my part time job, I quite often report findings or issues with the Glow Blogs system. In doing so I need to remember to include: computer model, OS version Browser and Browser version. This is quite simple but requires a few clicks and a bit of typing. I thought today I might create and AppleScript to do this for me.

I then thought I might use Claude.ai to get me started2. I used the prompt:

Can you give me a n applescript that will report on the current model of mac, the version of the OS and the current application & version?

I’ve noticed that AI doesn’t seem to be bothered with my constant typos!

The first script threw an error when I tested it. So I copied the error and the line it came from and sent it back to Claude. Another error. This continued through 10 versions. Sometimes I broke off to test an idea of my own or check the AppleScript Library and reported that to Claude.

This began to feel a bit like my usual process of testing, checking and reading. But a good bit quicker. We finally got there. I just added a line to copy to the clipboard and put the script in the Script Library so I can call it with FastScripts3.

For some reason I thanked Claude:

You’re welcome! The final script successfully gets:

1. The Mac’s hardware model

2. Current OS version

3. Active application name and version

Just for future reference – we went through several approaches before landing on the most reliable method using osascript to directly query the application’s version. This ended up being more robust than trying to get the version from file metadata or application paths.

Let me know if you need any modifications or have other AppleScript questions!

At this point I only had one free message left. So I asked Claude to refactor the script into a shell script. This it did with one error. With no more messages left, a search produced a fix pretty quickly. I ended up with this.

  1. This is true of all the scripty type things I do. Except for HyperCard which I used every day for years. ↩︎
  2. I’ve been using free versions of AI for a while now. A few times a week. Mostly for school things. Creating a text for pupils, or questions on a text. Claude is my current fav for scripting. ↩︎
  3. I think FastScript is one of my favourite mac applications. It is very handy for this sort of script as you can either select it from FastScripts menu or give it a keyboard shortcut. The Front application, which we are interested in, stays at the front. ↩︎

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As I’ve mentioned before we use Apple Notes a lot in our class. If the class are writing, unless there is a need for formatting or layout, I often ask the pupils just to stick to notes.

Notes are easily AirDropped to me when I need to collect work and both pupils and myself can organise them in a fairly simple manner.

Occasionally I want to print the pupils work. Notes, reasonably enough, only lets you to print one note at a time. I wondered if there was AppleScript that would help. I found Export Apple Notes via AppleScript which exported a folder of notes to a new TextEdit document. I altered it to:

  • Allow you to choose a folder from Notes.
  • Export to an html file on disk.
  • Provided page breaks so that the notes would each print on their own page.

Not particularly pretty, I guess I could work on the styles a little.

You need to be in my lucky position of having a mac in your classroom. Mine uses the same account as my iPad which helps me organise thing a lot.

Here is the code, I suspect it could be improved. Even if you don’t use AppleScript is easy enough to run. Open the AppleScript editor, create a new script, paste the code below in and hit run. You will be asked to choose a folder and then name an html file. The file will be created and opened with your default browser.
You then can print.


set htmltop to "<!doctype html>
<html lang=\"en\">
<head>
<meta charset=\"utf-8\">
<title>Notes Export</title>
<style>
@media print {
hr {
page-break-after: always;
}
}
</style>
</head>
<body>"
set htmlbottom to "</body>
</html>"
tell application "Notes"
activate
set x to (name of every folder whose name is not "Notes")
set foldertoexport to (choose from list x) as string
if folder foldertoexport exists then
set output to ""
repeat with aNote in notes in folder foldertoexport
set noteText to "<!– ### Start Note ### –>
"
set noteText to noteText & ("<h1>" & name of aNote as string) & "</h1>
"
— set noteText to noteText & ("<p>Creation Date: " & creation date of aNote as string) & "</p>"
— set noteText to noteText & ("<p>Modification Date: " & modification date of aNote as string) & "</p>"
set noteText to (noteText & body of aNote as string) & "<hr>
"
set output to output & noteText
end repeat
set thehtml to htmltop & output & htmlbottom
set theNewFile to choose file name default name foldertoexport & "-notes.html"
set myFile to open for access theNewFile with write permission
write thehtml to myFile as «class utf8»
close access myFile
else
display dialog "not likly to happen"
end if
end tell
tell application "Finder" to open theNewFile

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Notes-Export-to-HTML.scpt

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I got a request from a teacher who wanted to download a years worth of images from a Glow Blog (for end of year slideshow).

Although there are plugins that can do this these are not available on Glow Blogs. I was stumped apart from going through the site and downloading them 1 by 1. But after a wee bit of thinking I though I’d try using the REST API via AppleScript.

The REST API will list in JSON format the media:

http://johnjohnston.info/blog/wp-json/wp/v2/media/

Look at that in FireFox for a pretty view.

JSON Helper is

an agent (or scriptable background application) which allows you to do useful things with JSON directly from AppleScript.

So I can grab the list of media from a site in JSON format use appleScript to download all the files.

The script I wrote is not great, you can’t download from a particular year, but a quick look at the JSON will help in working out how many files to download.

I am sure there are more efficient ways to do this and I’ve only tested on a couple of site, but it seems to do the trick and might be useful again sometime.

Continue for the script:

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AudioBoom is closing its free tier:

If you take no action, then after 2nd October 2017, you will no longer be able to upload new content and your account will become private. We will continue to enable distribution of your existing content for a period of a month so all your RSS feeds and web embeds will continue to work for that period. If you choose to move to another podcast provider, let us know by emailing us at support@audioboom.com and we will redirect your RSS feeds for you. We’ll need at least 5 working days to comply with your request. After 36 months from 30th August 2017, your account will be deleted (including your old podcasts and your RSS feeds, so we recommend that you arrange for redirection of your RSS feeds, download your old podcasts and back them up elsewhere, before that period expires.

from: Subscription Changes

Which is depressing news for me and for Edutalk. I have 50 odd boos which range over field recording, audio recorded for Edutalk and some microcast type posts. Edutalk has had several hundred contributions from many different people over the years.

The situation at Edutalk is more worrying. I could pay $9.99 a month to keep my own account alive. But Edutalk has had contributions from many different people, we could not expect them to pay up for the privilege of having their content syndicated onto Edutalk.

AudioBoom did not provide any export that would help with importing into WordPress (or anything else). This differs from the posterous closedown which did give a WordPress export option.

We do have a while to sort this out. There is a month until the accounts become private.

AudioBoom does have an API, and we used it before.

I am not intending to rush, so this is the plan.

  1. Download the information about the posts using the API
  2. Download all the mp3s by parsing the JSON the api provides.
  3. Delete all the posts on edutalk that have been syndicated from AudioBoom.
  4. Upload all the mp3s
  5. Create posts that embed all these mp3s with the matching titles and descriptions etc.

Today I managed to download the json files and the mp3 I used AppleScript as I find it easier to get stuff done with that than pure shell scripting.

Thank goodness for the JSON helper for AppleScript which worked a treat.

I’ve put the script here:


set downloadfolder to "/Users/john/Desktop/audioboom/edutalk/"
–so this next bit could be a loop but doing it manual was not much of a hassle
set pagecount to 9
set tag to "edutalk"
set itemcount to 100
tell application "JSON Helper"
set bURL to "https://api.audioboom.com/tag/" & tag & "/audio_clips?page[items]=" & itemcount & "&page[number]=" & pagecount
set boos to fetch JSON from bURL
set myFile to open for access "Macintosh HD:Users:john:Desktop:audioboom:edutalk_" & pagecount & ".json" with write permission
set boohoo to make JSON from boos
write boohoo to myFile
close access myFile
set imageCount to count of audio_clips of body of boos
set mp3urls to {}
repeat with boo in audio_clips of body of boos
set end of mp3urls to high_mp3 of urls of boo
end repeat
end tell
repeat with mp3 in mp3urls
set cmd to "curl -L " & mp3 & " > " & downloadfolder & filenamefromurl(mp3)
do shell script cmd
end repeat
return cmd
on filenamefromurl(theurl)
set s to "url=\"" & theurl & "\"; echo \"${url##*/}\""
return do shell script s
end filenamefromurl

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downloadboos.scpt

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in case anyone is interested.

I had to run it 10 times, I guess I could have just made a loop but as I ended up downloading 890 mp3 for a total of 2.6 GB batches of 100 files at a time seemed like a good idea.

I am a wee bit worried that there are 2186 posts syndicated from audioboo on the Edutalk site, but there does seem to be a lot of duplication presumably caused by FeedWordPress.

Next Steps

I’ve now got all of the data and the mp3 files I can get.

I know how to post to WordPress from AppleScript, but I’ve discovered a couple of hurdles. I don’t seem to be able to add an enclosure with AppleScript and I can’t see how to ad multiple tags to a post.

The first is probably not a problem. These posts are all so old that they will not feature in our RSS feed. I would like to include all of the tags. I may end up creating a WordPress export file or try one of the csv import plugins. There is now not such a rush. I can test these approaches on this blog with my own boos.

I guess the main lesson to be learnt here is about the temporary nature of the free layer of the web. The AudioBoo app and service were wonderful in their day but reliance on free services costs.

The featured images is a gif captured with Licecap, of a mp3 download.

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I’ve been beta testing micro.blog. There is a new page here for status type posts, these get sent to micro.blog/johnjohnston and to twitter.

This has renewed my interest in finding different ways to post to the blog especially for short posts that would have previously gone straight to twitter.

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