CODEWITHSUNDEEP
applescript
Steve Gon
Steve Gon

Reputation: 462

How to convert an Apple Mail received date, month, to a string or number?

I am doing a simple step through messages in my inbox. I want to write out the date to a text file. The date is coming through as "Sunday April 2, 2017 at 12:12:12:. All I want to do is convert this to "4/2/17". I keep getting "April" as the month and cannot coerce it to "4" MM format.

tell application "Mail"
  repeat with aMessage in messages of inbox
  set sSender to (get aMessage's sender)
  set recDate to (date received of aMessage)
  set sMonth to month of recDate
  set sDate to day of recDate & "/" & month of recDate & "/" & year of recDate
end tell

I have tried using a shell echo, or coercing sMonth to a string or integer. No matter what I keep getting "April" instead of a number and "rich text" instead of string.

I don't mind using a shell command, but I am not good with Linux and I do not want to convert the current date (I need to use the date of a past email). I know I must be missing something simple.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 841

Answers (2)

vadian
vadian

Reputation: 285180

First of all to avoid the terminology confusion (rich text instead of text) move the code to create the date string into a handler.

To get 4 from the month just coerce it to integer, then coerce all components to text. To strip the 20 from the year just use only the last two characters.

tell application "Mail"
    repeat with aMessage in messages of inbox
        set sSender to (get aMessage's sender)
        set sDate to my dateString(date received of aMessage)
    end repeat
end tell

on dateString(theDate)
    tell theDate to set {yr, mn, dy} to {year as text, its month as integer as text, day as text}
    return mn & "/" & dy & "/" & text -2 thru -1 of yr  -- 4/27/18
end dateString

If you want to add leading zeros to the day and month components use another handler to pad the values

on dateString(theDate)
    tell theDate to set {yr, mn, dy} to {year as text, its month as integer as text, day as text}
    return pad(mn) & "/" & pad(dy) & "/" & text -2 thru -1 of yr  -- 04/27/18
end dateString

on pad(v)
    return text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & v)
end pad

Upvotes: 1

wch1zpink
wch1zpink

Reputation: 3142

This works for me using the latest version of macOS High Sierra

property theShortDate : missing value

tell application "Mail"
    repeat with aMessage in messages of inbox
        set sSender to (get aMessage's sender)
        set recDate to (date received of aMessage) as string
        my shortDate(recDate)
        log "This E-Mail Was Sent From:  " & sSender & " " & "on" & " " & theShortDate
    end repeat
end tell

on shortDate(recDate)
    set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ","
    set theLongDate to recDate
    set currentMonth to (word 1 of text item 2 of theLongDate)
    set currentDay to (word 2 of text item 2 of theLongDate)
    set currentYear to (word 1 of text item 3 of theLongDate)
    set monthList to {January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December}
    repeat with x from 1 to 12
        if currentMonth = ((item x of monthList) as string) then
            set theRequestNumber to (text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & x))
            exit repeat
        end if
    end repeat
    set currentMonth to theRequestNumber
    set currentDay to (text -2 thru -1 of ("0" & currentDay))
    set theShortDate to (currentMonth & "/" & currentDay & "/" & currentYear) as string
end shortDate

Upvotes: 0

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