Tag Archives: applescript

Reliable record references when AppleScripting FileMaker

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Using current record when AppleScripting FileMaker has a couple of problems. The current record can change out from under you, so by the next step in your script, you may be dealing with the wrong record. Simply storing the record result in a variable doesn’t work either because getting the result converts it to a native AppleScript list of the data from the record. Using a reference to current record suffers the same problem.

One solution is to use record IDs. I believe that record IDs are guaranteed to be static/unchanging, at least while the app is running.

To get the record ID for the current record:
set recID to ID of current record

To use the record ID later in your script:
get cell "my_field" of record ID recID

To get all record IDs for a given query:
set recordIDs to ID of every record whose cell "my_field" is "my_value"

Then access each found record by ID:
repeat with recID in recordIDs
   get cell "my_other_field" of record ID recID
end repeat

Note: The following method will also work for certain use cases since it appears to use the record ID internally as well:
set x to current record as reference

Shell Injection with AppleScript’s do shell script

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AppleScript’s do shell script capability is immensely useful, but if you are sending variable data to do shell script, always validate input and use quoted form of variableName. See the following example:

set dialogResult to (display dialog "Enter a directory name to pass to ls:" default answer ";say boo" buttons {"Cancel", "Quoted Form", "Raw"})

if button returned of dialogResult is "Quoted Form" then
try
set theCommand to "ls ~/" & quoted form of text returned of dialogResult
display dialog "Will execute:" & return & theCommand & return & "Proceed?"
do shell script theCommand
end try
else
try
set theCommand to "ls ~/" & text returned of dialogResult
display dialog "Will execute:" & return & theCommand & return & "Proceed?"
do shell script theCommand
end try
end if

Note you’ll have to fix the quotes to standard double quotes to get this to compile. I couldn’t get wordpress to cooperate.

No creation dates from stat

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I was surprised to learn that creation dates are not included in stat output. I really thought stat would include something so basic. You get time of last access, time of last data modification, and time of last file status change, but creation date isn’t in there.

On the Mac, this info is stored in the resource fork. You can get it from the command line using GetFileInfo which is installed when you install Apple’s free Developer Tools.

/Developer/Tools/GetFileInfo -d path/to/file

In Applescript you can use info for:

creation date of (info for (choose file))