Click Here To Read Part One of “Learn To Speak AppleScript”

To recap the end of Part One, your goal will be to build a script that will save your emails as text files. The actual programming will be covered in Part Three and, when we get there, I’ll try to stay more “conceptual”.

My goal will be to give you a feel for how an AppleScript does its job — but still include enough real-life code to keep it interesting for more experienced scripters (or for people who came here from a search engine looking for a bit of code to get their scripts up and running!)

But, if you are a beginner, don’t let those computer code snippets intimidate you! They are included primarily so that you can see what a real-life Script looks like and not with any expectation that you master the intricacies of the AppleScript language.

After all, this is really an exercise in teaching you the fundamentals of thinking and speaking AppleScript. In other words, this is going to be more like an English class in literature where we talk about books and what they mean — and not a grammar lesson.

In fact, that metaphor is actually a pretty good way to get started!

The First Step Is Between Your Ears

As I mentioned in Part One, AppleScript is an “English-like” programming language.

What we are going to do in this lesson is to state our goals as clearly as we can — and do so in plain, everyday language. Once we’ve done that, we’ll set about writing an AppleScript that matches up with that description.

Rule #1:
First, we say it in English…. then we say it in “English-like”.

Writing a good AppleScript is like…. (wait for it) …. writing a good anything!

Most things that are well-written have probably started from a place of being well-thought-out, right? That’s not to say that you won’t discover some fun, unexpected stuff along the way — but actions begin with intentions. My experience is this: The clearer you are about your intentions when you start, the more you’ll make the right choices along the way.¹

And the more likely you’ll end up with a working thing at the end of your journey.

The Goal of the Script (In Plain English)

First, we need to state our overall goal as clearly as we can. For this first sample script, that goal is:

“I want a script that will save emails as text files.”

The Basic Elements We’ll Need In the Script:

Now that we know what we want to do, we’ll flesh out the details more fully:

1. I use the Apple Mail application to read my emails.
2. I want to be able to save emails as text files.
3. I want to be able to save more than one email at a time.
4. I want to be able to control where the text files are saved to.
5. I want the new text files to have distinctive names so that I can tell them apart more easily.
6. I want the script to come up with those names so that I don’t have to do it for each file.

“I Four Years Old!”

You’ll notice how explicit I was in calling out each part of what I wanted to do.

This way of thinking in terms of “baby steps” towards your overall goal is probably the most important thing you can take from this lesson.

Here’s why — AppleScript is great, but teaching it to do what you want it to do can be like trying to teach a child. You really need to try and see things through the eyes of a kid (or, in this case, a computer that knows only what you tell it) in order to know how to communicate.

Rule #2:
AppleScript is like an energetic child. It’s eager to please — but in need of clear, constant direction.

It reminds me a bit of that old Bill Cosby comedy routine about a kid named Jeffery:

If you have any hope of getting off the plane with your sanity intact, you’re going to have to learn how to translate your adult language into something a kid can understand. That is to say, it’s something you’re absolutely going to be able to do — it’s just going to take a brief transition while you take a deep breath and mentally switch gears from your language and into theirs.

Sometimes, Kids Just Don’t Understand

I’ll make one more point using the “Talking To Kids Metaphor” as we end Part Two…

Every kid is different.
Some are barely able to tie their shoes.
Some come up to you and, unprompted, freak you out by asking if you’re an existentialist.

In the world of AppleScript, each of the applications on your Mac — programs like Apple Mail, Firefox, Evernote, iCal, etc. — are like kids at different grade levels. And, although you can sometimes guess, you’ll never really know which type of kid it is until you start talking to them and figure out their vocabulary level.

And this is the point where, thankfully, reality departs from the metaphor: In the computer world, you can actually see which words an application knows ahead of time — sparing you painful, Jeffery-like conversations. When it comes to speaking AppleScript, each program keeps a list of the vocabulary it knows in an AppleScript Dictionary. (Easy to remember, right?)

Ready To Talk?

In Part Three, we’ll open up that dictionary and start having an AppleScript conversation with a fairly “well-spoken” kid on the Application playground — Apple Mail!

1. I’d like to welcome everyone to the Veritrope.com “Den of Zen”…

What Exactly is AppleScript?

AppleScript is an English-like language used to write programs that control applications on your computer. The “English-like” part is important — it means that you don’t need to have a computer science degree to use it.

Simply put, it’s programming for regular people who want to get things done faster.

The programs that you write in AppleScript are called “scripts” (you saw that coming, right?). Much like the script for a movie, an AppleScript is really just a list of instructions for your computer to follow. It’s kind of like saying to your Mac, “Okay — when I say this, you need to do X, Y, and Z.” Honestly, that’s all that scripting means… giving your Mac a To-Do list.

Best of all, it’s free! Apple generously includes several tools that you’ll need to get started with automating tasks on your Mac — including the AppleScript Editor, which is used to write and save new AppleScripts for your computer to follow.

What is AppleScript Good For?

If you’ve ever known the soul-sucking drudgery of having to perform the same tasks over-and-over again on your computer, then AppleScript is for you! AppleScript automates repetitive tasks for you. So, instead of wasting time doing everything by hand, your computer does it for you…

(This is, after all, what they are supposed to do in the first place. )

Need to change the names of 100 files? You can either spend the next hour clicking and typing yourself into carpal-tunnel-induced dementia¹ — or spend 2 minutes to write a script, click a button, and it’s done!

Most programs on the Mac have at least some level of support for AppleScript and, if you look around Veritrope.com, you’ll see AppleScripts that I’ve written to work with (and to connect together) many popular Mac applications. There are literally thousands of AppleScripts available to automate your system (most of them free!).

And, if by some chance you can’t find a script that someone else has written to automate a particular task, it really is easy enough to write one for yourself.

How do I learn AppleScript?

People often write me asking “How did you learn AppleScript?”

The simple answer is that I started reading AppleScripts written by people who knew what they were doing. The more that I read, the more I understood what was possible — and also some of the things you needed to make a working script.

In other words — Before I could really speak AppleScript, I started to learn how to **THINK** AppleScript. It’s really not any different than if you were dropped into a place where you didn’t know the language. You’d probably understand what the people around you were getting at — long before you learned enough of the language to make yourself understood.

How To Learn The Language

The quasi-official macosxautomation.com site is probably the best place to get started. It has lots of introductory tutorials and code examples for the beginning AppleScripter — but also some great introductions to other utilities that really set the Mac apart (like Automator and Services).

People like Ben Waldie (a guru of AppleScript and Mac Automation) — as well as any number of people who post on the MacScripter forum — also really helped me get going. I was truly inspired by their projects… and also by the community that they maintained to help new people like me get started.

As I started to really get more into it, I also found some great books about AppleScript (Especially Sal Soghoian’s “AppleScript 1-2-3″)

Learning How To Think

All of the resources that I just mentioned are the places to learn the actual ins-and-outs of programming in AppleScript… Honestly, you really can’t do much better than all of these great, talented teachers! Read what they have to say — and they’ll whip your scripting vocabulary and programming grammar into shape before you know it!

What I’d like to do here is a little different: I want to try and teach you how to think in AppleScript so that, while you’re learning from these great resources, you’ll have an existing framework for understanding what they’re trying to teach you. That way when it comes time to write your own scripts, you’ll hopefully have a stronger sense of what your looking for and, what’s more, the types of scripts you’ll need to put together to make it all work.

In Part Two of this series, we’re going to start to build our first sample script: An AppleScript that will save your emails as text files!

1. This is not a real condition…I hope!

Well Scott — If there wasn’t one before, there is now!

Features

• This AppleScript will export any selected Messages or Notes in Apple Mail as individual text files to a temporary folder on your Desktop (called “Temp Export Folder”);
• The script also attempts to remove any “illegal characters” from the file name as to avoid the process grinding to a complete halt!
• If you have Growl installed, the script should detect it and notify you when your export is completed.

Current Limitations and Open Issues

(Otherwise known as “Places Where You Could Help Out!”)

• I kept the output very basic — only spitting out the content of the note/message as the content of the text file. It *IS* possible to add more information from the messages and, if people are interested in that, let me know!
• Errors that will undoubtedly arise when you do something that I didn’t think of or test for!

How to Install and Use

First, select the messages or notes in Apple Mail.

Then just run the script… either:

1. Manually;
2. By using Snow Leopard’s “Keyboard Shortcuts”, or;
3. By using FastScripts

Source Code and Download Link on the next page!

“I am currently using Notespark and I would like to use Evernote. Notespark exports its files to .csv format while Evernote expects to import using an .enex file. Can you steer me in the right direction to help me to export from Notespark and import to Evernote?”

Well, Alan — As you’ve already figured out, the Notespark system doesn’t exactly make this easy….. but here are a few ideas:

PDF into Evernote

If you don’t really care about editing your notes, why not just open up the CSV file in Excel/Numbers/etc. and then save the file directly into Evernote as a PDF?

To do this, print the document by pressing the Command (⌘) key and the “P” key at the same time. A “Print Dialog Box” will open up and, in the lower left corner of it, you’ll see a button that says “PDF”. Press it and you’ll see a list of applications you can send the document directly to as a PDF:

Save PDF to Evernote...and it's in there!

Email your notes into Evernote

If you need to edit the notes after adding to Evernote, you might consider using Evernote’s handy “E-mailing notes into your account” feature!

You can email text, images, and audio into Evernote using a special e-mail address created by your Evernote account. To find the address using the Evernote web client, sign into Evernote Web and click the Settings link at the top of the page to see your address. Any e-mail with compatible attachments sent to this address will become a new note in your default notebook.

Sparknote is what I would personally characterize as a more “closed information ecosystem” — when you “share” your note with someone, it sends a link to a server-hosted copy of the note. Notespark does, however, append the text of the current contents of a note to the end of that “Share Note” invitation.

Send that invitation to your special Evernote email address and, voila, the note body is now inside Evernote! You’ll lose the metadata like the creation date and the tags for the note this way but, if this doesn’t matter to you, then it should work fine.

Use AppleScript

But what if you really need to keep that metadata? Or what if you have a ton of notes that you need to bring over?

As Alan mentioned in his email, Notespark allows you to export all your notes as a CSV file. Not very useful for importing to another note-keeping program….

However, if you aren’t averse to a little D.I.Y. tinkering, you can write an AppleScript that can do almost anything on your Mac! A customized AppleScript could read a CSV file and create new, individual notes in Evernote while preserving the metadata.

(…and if programming isn’t your thing, you could commission one to do the job!)

“What would be nice, also, is a script to do the contrary: Export a notebook from Evernote to MacJournal, if possible with tags, annotations…”

It was followed by three exclamation points (!!!) so, unless he’s a fan of the band of the same name, the guy would really like a script.

Okay Lem — here you go. (!!!)

Features **UPDATED**

• **NEW** There are now two scripts included in the downloadable ZIP archive: One that attempts to preserve the formatting of the Evernote item by importing it into MacJournal as a Read-Only Web Archive formatted file, and another that will create an Editable RTF file that may not retain as much of the original formatting and/or embedded images. (See “Current Limitations” Below For More…)
• Each script exports a copy of all the selected entries in an Evernote notebook and saves them into MacJournal.
• Automatic Growl detection has also been enabled which will save you a trip to the Script Editor to enable/disable it.

Current Limitations and Open Issues

(Otherwise known as “Places Where You Could Help Out!”)

• Editing Your Notes: I wrote the original script to convert the HTML files that Evernote exports into a slightly different format called a “Web Archive” which bundles in all of the embedded images and information so that the note will look the same inside of MacJournal. The only problem is that MacJournal doesn’t edit that format (yet). Dan Schimpf (the developer behind MacJournal) and I have been trading some emails about it and he is looking into some options to enable Web Archive editing within MacJournal. Until then (or until I can figure out a better way of doing it), you’ll have to use two different scripts depending upon if you want to edit the contents of the note inside of MacJournal right away.
• Errors that will undoubtedly arise when you do something that I didn’t think of or test for!

How to Install and Use

Just run the appropriate script and select the notes that you want to send to MacJournal!

Source code and download link on the next page!

Features

• This script exports a copy of all the entries in a selected MacJournal and saves them into Evernote.
• Automatic Growl detection has also been enabled which will save you a trip to the Script Editor to enable/disable it.

Current Limitations and Open Issues

(Otherwise known as “Places Where You Could Help Out!”)

• If you’re importing a lot of items, I’d recommend that you change a few settings inside Evernote before beginning the import. In the “Clipping” tab of the Preferences menu, uncheck the boxes in the section called “After a clip:”
  
  If the boxes are checked while importing a large number of items, Evernote will fill your screen with open windows and sound like it is repeatedly shooting you with a laser from a 70’s Sci-Fi movie. Trust me — uncheck the boxes first and you’ll be much happier!
• Although MacJournal uses tagging, it isn’t currently possible to read those tags via AppleScript. Therefore, you’ll need to tag your items once they’ve been imported into Evernote.
• Errors that will undoubtedly arise when you do something that I didn’t think of or test for!

How to Install and Use

Just run the script and select the Journal that you want to send to Evernote!

Source code and download link on the next page!

And now….the original project below!

The Big Picture (With Details)

I’ve designed a script that looks into the current application directory for Evernote, copies the HTML file and constituent elements, puts it in a folder named after the note, and then bundles everything up into a single Web archive file.

(Pretty cool, huh?)

This isn’t designed to replace the forthcoming “Export to HTML” feature; I wrote it in order to facilitate some of the other scripts that I’ve been working on for my clients (keep your eyes peeled for those!). 

However, I realized that it would provide a stop-gap solution until the export HTML feature is activated and so I am releasing it to the community in case someone finds it helpful! When Evernote adds HTML Export into the program, use it!

That said — this script works really well for me! “Web Archiving” (a.k.a., everything into one file) was the feature that I was most excited about and so, following some sort of Murphy’s Law of AppleScript Coding, it also ended up being the thing that took me the longest to get working properly. 

This script differs from my previous releases in that it also bundles a file known as “webarchiver” into the script file itself.  Without it, the script doesn’t work — something to keep in mind if you are trying to cut and paste the source code into the script editor.

What is “webarchiver”?

Webarchiver is a program that allows you to use Safari’s  “Save As Web Archive” command from the command line in Terminal (or, in our case, from a “do shell script” command inside of AppleScript). Paul William from Entropy, The Blog, webarchiver’s creator, was incredibly gracious in assisting me with the implementation of it into the AppleScript.  With his help, everything finally worked!  Moreover, webarchiver itself is a wonderful, useful program and, without it, this project would not have turned out as well as it did. Thanks Paul!

Features

• This script copies the selected Evernote items and saves them in 2 HTML formats: It consolidates all of the elements into a “Web Archive” so that everything is contained in one file, and it also creates a Folder named after the note containing all of the “non-Evernote” elements (e.g., everything except the recognizer and ENML files). For the purposes of this script, I figured it would be better to let people have the choice of *how* they wanted their data — thus the Folder/Web Archive output;
• The script lets you select where you’d like to export your files. I had to use shell scripting to clean up some file name weirdness that was causing the script to fail. As a result, you’ll see that typographical characters are sometimes removed from the original file name. Don’t let it freak you out.
• Automatic Growl detection has also been enabled which will save you a trip to the Script Editor to enable/disable it.

Current Limitations and Open Issues

(Otherwise known as “Places Where You Could Help Out!”)

1. The file names are sometimes altered in the exported version if they include typographical characters that would halt the file creation process;
2. The script is looking to the current folder structure for the files to copy.  When Evernote updates the database structure, the script will probably stop working until I update it.  Then again, my guess is that they’ll have a working “Export HTML” feature when that happens…which will probably eliminate the need for this script in the first place!
3. Errors that will undoubtedly arise when you do something that I didn’t think of (or test for)!

How to Install and Use

Just run the script, highlight the notes you want to export from Evernote, and tell the script where you’d like the files saved!

1. You can highlight multiple notes;
2. You can save this script to /Library/Scripts/ and launch it using the system-wide script menu from the Mac OS X menu bar (The script menu can be activated using the AppleScript Utility application). Keyboard shortcuts can also be assigned to AppleScripts in the script menu using the System Preferences “Keyboard & Mouse Settings”.

FastScript link and support

Do yourself a favor and download and install FastScripts from Red Sweater. Triggering the script from the keyboard really makes things almost second-nature: you’ll watch items practically fly into and out of Evernote with a few keystrokes!

Here’s how you set it up:

• Copy script or an Alias to ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/Evernote
• Set up your keyboard shortcut in the FastScripts Preference menu

For my FastScripts workflow, I am using ⌘ H (as in HTML).

Source code and download link on the next page!