CODEWITHSUNDEEP
macosshellcalendarapplescriptautomator
David H
David H

Reputation: 33

How to use Automator and Applescript to batch move files/folders to a specified folder based on specific text in Calendar Events, MacOS

Every day, I get up to 25 real estate photoshoots from a photographer, edit them, and export them into their respective realtors' folder in Dropbox. I get each shoot from the photographer in a folder named with its respective address/location. Currently, after editing each shoot, I look at the foldername (the address/location), go to the Calendar app, find which event has that location, see who the respective realtor is, navigate to their personal folder or create it if it doesn't exist, and then export the photoshoot into their folder (the realtor's name). Every. Single. Time.

I'm trying to automate this process by simply exporting all the shoots into one folder, triggering an Automator Folder Action which sorts the shoots into their respective realtor's folder, based on the foldername.

The relationship between the source folders and destination folders is determined based on location data from a Calendar Event. I've already figured out how to pull the data from Calendar, but getting Automator to move the folders around using the data has me thoroughly stumped.

I've tried several things in Automator, and I'm sure there's a simple way using Applescript but I haven't learned enough about Applescript to make it work. I've tried copy/pasting bits of Applescript code from other posts but I've finally thrown my hands up and decided to ask the experts lol. Here are some screenshots to help illustrate the issue.

Folders full of pictures "Test"(Sources): Folders full of pictures

"Realtors" Folder (Destinations) Realtors Folder

Here is the Automator Workflow I've created so far, which pulls the address (Source foldername) and realtor names (Destination foldername [with other junk to be removed]) from Calendar event data, and creates 2 txt files (shown in the screenshot after this one):

enter image description here

Text files created by above workflow: enter image description here

It's possible that I'm overcomplicating this horribly, but the solution that comes to mind is this: The text files correlate based on line number, i.e. line 1 of "Today's Locations.txt" (Location: 326 Whiterock Dr) corresponds with line 1 of "Today's Shoots.txt" (Summary: Photos for Remy Locasio).

When I drop these folders into the trigger folder, "Test" in this case, Automator/Applescript could search the "Today's Locations.txt" file for "326 Whiterock Dr" and say, "Hey, that's on line 1. I'm gonna go into "Today's Shoots.txt",find line 1, parse out (Summary: Photos for ), take the realtor's name only (Remy Locasio) and move the input folder ("326 Whiterock Dr") into the realtor's folder with that name ("Remy Locasio"), then do it again for the next folder and it's corresponding documents' line, etc etc, until all the folders are moved.

I've racked my brain for a week trying to do this with Automator and variables and I'm at a complete loss, any help would be a godsend. I'll gladly clarify anything that doesn't make sense or answer any questions anyone has.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 514

Answers (1)

ujjwalkpatel
ujjwalkpatel

Reputation: 33

I can't understand the whole problem clearly but you can use below code in the applescript for the regex part.

set a to "Photos for Karie Williams (Zonker)"
set b to do shell script "str='" & a & "';sed 's/(.*//g' <<< $str"
set c to do shell script "inp='" & b & "';sed 's/.*\\(for \\)//' <<< $inp"
display dialog c

Upvotes: 2

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