>
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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

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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
« Working with Dates and Using Math Operators  
  Extracting Text Using Offset and Reverse vs Text Item Delimiters »

Working with Dates in AppleScript

Apple Beveled BlueIf you have ever worked with date coercions and manipulations in AppleScript, you know how frustrating it can be, from something as simple as trying to coerce it to text so that it can be displayed in a dialog, to trying to convert it to a different date format; you have one simple thing in your syntax that keeps causing errors and you just can’t figure it out!

Here, I will try to help you through some of the most common frustrations that you will encounter. First, something that I have found very useful in my specific work, a script that verifies whether or not a date is valid in the first place. It is really pretty simple, and relies on AppleScript error messaging.

The second will deal with two aspects of coercions: 1) Converting a date in textual form to date format and then 2) Determining a future date (1 week hence, 1 month hence, etc) from the given date. This is particularly useful in databases when you want to determine a future appointment for a customer, when it is supposed to be scheduled at a regular given interval.

First, validating a given date. Keep in mind that getting the current date will also include the time of day, which may not be useful for what you want to do. 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

Now the second part, which is used here in a FileMaker database and is a bit more complex, but, once you understand how it works, can be used with other types of database formats that support AppleScript.

Like the previous script, it begins by getting the current date and coercing the result to text for further manipulations. Run this in Script Editor. The result will appear its result pane:

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ","
set dateResult to (current date)
set comparisonDate to (date string of dateResult)
set calcBoolean to button returned of (display dialog "Determine date for next appointment?" with icon note buttons {"No", "Yes"} default button {"Yes"})
if calcBoolean = "Yes" then
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "@"
--This next line would be used with FileMaker, otherwise something like the line of code that follows this line would compile just fine, in case you want to test this on your system:
--set prevAppointment to (get cell "History" of current record)
set prevAppointment to "Saturday, November 7, 2009 @ 8:00 am - see Joe Palmer about specs on upcoming contract"
set prevReference to (text item 1 of prevAppointment)
set dateResult to date prevReference
set scheduleInterval to (choose from list {"1 Week", "2 Weeks", "1 Month"} with prompt "Schedule interval:") as text
if scheduleInterval = "1 Week" then
set dateResult to (dateResult + 24 * 60 * 60 * 7)
else if scheduleInterval = "2 Weeks" then
set dateResult to (dateResult + 24 * 60 * 60 * 14)
else if scheduleInterval = "1 Month" then
set dateResult to (dateResult + 24 * 60 * 60 * 28)
end if
set targetDate to (date string of dateResult)
else if calcBoolean = "No" then
set targetDate to comparisonDate
end if
set defaultDate to targetDate

If you have any questions about dates and AppleScript, 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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November 8th, 2009 | Category: FileMaker Pro, choose from list, date
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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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