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Basic AppleScript Dialog:

display dialog "Your text here" with icon stop buttons {"OK"} default button {"OK"} giving up after 5

'giving up after 5' will automatically close the script after the indicated interval of time has elapsed.

HTML Anchor Code

Here is a sample of how to write code to link one part of your blog page to another:

<a name = "By Email">[optional text]</a> --place this where you want the link to go <a href = "#By Email">By Email</a> --this is the actual link

more HTML

HTML Code to Link to Other Web Pages

Here is a sample of code to link to another page. this is similar to the anchor code, except that the destination code is the url of the destination site:

<a href= "www.webSite.
com"> Website Name</a>

--just replace "www.webSite.
com" with the actual url destination site and replace 'Website Name' with the prompt that the user will see.

My Links

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AppleScript Note:

It might be interesting to those of you who are AppleScript enthusiasts that the HyperCard (HyperTalk) project was the prototype back in the '80's of what became the system-wide Applescript language (akin to JavaScript) that is in use today.
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Trapping for List Dialog Errors

With 'List Dialog' type dialogs, since errors cannot be intercepted in an 'on error' handler, there is no 'normal' way to trap for 'Cancel' which, of course, would result in some sort of undesirable error dialog such as 'User cancelled. Error number -128'. Here is an example of one simple way I have found to trap for this type of error: set x to (choose from list {"Joe","Amy",
"Bill"} with prompt "Choose a record:")
if x is false then
else
set targetItem to (x as text)
show every record whose cell "Name" contains x
end if
 When the user clicks on 'Cancel', the variable x is assigned the boolean value false. So all you have to do is set up a conditional to deal with that and to perform the usual statements otherwise.

Learning AppleScript

AppleScript-123-Book

Create Multiple Folders with Terminal

If you are more of a techy kind of person and are comfortable with using Terminal, here is a script you can use to easily create multiple folders:

First, for a single folder, type in: mkdir "Folder 1" --or whatever you want to name your folder, this creates a new directory, which, in effect is a new folder. To place multiple items in the 'Documents' folder: cd/Users/Administrator/Documents mkdir "Folder 1" "Folder 2" "Folder 3" To quickly create multiple folders, create a text file with the desired folder names (as many as you want) and name it something like 'folderList.txt'. Next type this in Terminal: cat folderList.txt |xargs mkdir Or you could create folders with the same prefix by entering: mkdir "Invoices " {"Corporate", "Individual", "Pro-Bono"}

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Mac LC III (1994), the first Mac that I ever owned, the CD-Rom and Zip drive were added much later.

Mac LC III (1994), the first Mac that I ever owned, the CD-Rom and Zip drive were added much later.

Basic HTML

Here is an example of a very simple HTML document:

<html>
<head>
<title>Basic HTML Document</title>
</head>
<body>
Your text goes here
</body>
</html>

more HTML
« FileMaker Pro AppleScript to Backup Files  
  Dialogs for Lists »

More on List Dialogs

Apple Mac LCIII Shipping 300x164This post will deal with what I consider a very concrete use of the ‘choose from list’ dialog. After reading this (and perhaps trying it out in the Script Editor) you will probably be totally confused (just kidding!!) It gets a little complicated, but it is basically a cut-and-paste script.

If you pay close attention to my comments, I’m sure you’ll understand most of what is going on and, after all, it’s understanding how a script works that allows you adapt it to other applications that you may have in mind.

So anyway, here it is:

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ","

–this first line is needed, because it sets things up for extracting the info we need

set theLongDate to (current date)
set theLongDate to (date string of theLongDate)

–the next 2 lines set us up for calculating the numerical data for month and day

set currentMonth to (word 1 of text item 2 of theLongDate)
set currentDay to (word 2 of text item 2 of theLongDate)

–this gets the numerical value for the month

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

–previous code sets up the default text (current date in the form mm/dd/yyyy – something like ‘02/03/2009′) for dialog below :

set theDefaultDate to text returned of (display dialog "Enter a date in the form MM/DD/YYYY:" default answer theShortDate buttons {"Calc Date"} default button {"Calc Date"} giving up after 20)

–this line converts the text supplied by the dialog into class ‘date’ (the long form of the date, including the time):
set calcLongDate to date theDefaultDate

–this line extracts the date portion and leaves the time portion behind:
set calcLongDateTrunc to (date string of calcLongDate)

–this converts calcLongDateTrunc back into the form ‘text’ so that it can be displayed in a dialog:
set calcLongDateTrunc to calcLongDateTrunc as string
display dialog calcLongDateTrunc buttons {"Done"} default button {"Done"} giving up after 15

–yields – ‘Tuesday, February 3, 2009′

Apple Mac Interface Banner

In my next post, I will shift gears and present an AppleScript which I have derived from one of my FileMaker programs, which serves as a convenient file backup program.

In conclusion, please note in my right sidebar (you may have to scroll), that in the future I will be featuring (here and there) little snippets of HyperTalk code (and others as they occur to me)

As always, if you have any questions or comments, contact me at: hyperscripter@gmail.com or http://twitter.com/hyperscripter or to subscribe, click the By Email link at the top of the page

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March 13th, 2009 | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Category: Choose Dialogs, MacOS, choose from list, list dialog
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My YouTube Videos, etc:

Create Multiple Folders with Terminal

If you are more of a techy kind of person and are comfortable with using Terminal, here is a script you can use to easily create multiple folders:

First, for a single folder, type in: mkdir "Folder 1" --or whatever you want to name your folder, this creates a new directory, which, in effect is a new folder. To place multiple items in the 'Documents' folder: cd/Users/Administrator/Documents mkdir "Folder 1" "Folder 2" "Folder 3" To quickly create multiple folders, create a text file with the desired folder names (as many as you want) and name it something like 'folderList.txt'. Next type this in Terminal: cat folderList.txt |xargs mkdir Or you could create folders with the same prefix by entering: mkdir "Invoices " {"Corporate", "Individual", "Pro-Bono"}

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An AppleScript to Verify a Date

Run this in the Script Editor:

set dateRecord to (current date)
set defaultDate to (date string of dateRecord)
try
set apptDate to text returned of (display dialog "Enter appointment date:" default answer defaultDate buttons {"Set"} default button {"Set"})
set datetext to apptDate as text
date apptDate --if an invalid date is entered, the next dialog is aborted and it triggers the error alert below.
display dialog datetext & " is a valid date." with icon note buttons {"OK"} default button {"OK"}
on error
set alertText to "An error has occurred!"
set messageText to quote & datetext & quote & " is an invalid date."
display alert alertText message messageText as warning buttons {"OK"} default button "OK" giving up after 15
return
end try

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