Identify path to file in AppleScript script as part of Automator workflow

Question

I'm still very much at the bottom of the learning curve for Automotor and AppleScript so I apologise for lack of basic understanding that has inevitably led to this question.

I'm running MacOSX 10.15.6 (Catalina) on a MacBook Air. My ultimate aim is to take a folder of .pages files (or other compatible file types) and batch convert to .pdf (or other) by opening with Pages and then exporting to the same folder as new file type. I have set up an Automator script that contains: i. Get Specified Finder Items - defines folder containing the files ii. Get Folder Contents - lists all documents in folder iii. AppleScript to open each document and export as PDF

Even before getting to the 'export' bit (I've commented out the export command in the bit below), the AppleScript is throwing an error when I try to get the path to the directory containing the file. The AppleScript looks like:

on run {input, parameters}
    
    repeat with theFile in input
        
        tell application "Pages"
            set theDoc to open theFile
            set theDocName to name of theDoc
            set theName to (characters 1 thru -7 of theDocName) as text
            set thePDFPath to ((path to theFile as text) & theName & ".pdf") as text
            -- export theDoc to thePDFPath as PDF
            close theDoc
            
        end tell
        
    end repeat
    
end run

The error I get is:

The action “Run AppleScript” encountered an error: “Pages got an error: Can’t make alias "path:to:directory:test.pages" into type constant.”

I've been struggling with this for a while and none of the suggestions I've found online so far have helped to resolve the issue. Any help would be very much appreciated.

red_menace red_menace · Accepted Answer · 2020-09-09T02:50:05

path to only returns the path to the application or script, or to certain locations in the file system such as home folder or documents folder. You don't need to use anything to get the path though, as theFile is already a reference to an item in the input - you can just coerce it to text. Also, once you've built the file path, Pages is expecting a file specifier for the export.

Note that the file path includes the extension, so a little manipulation is needed to separate it from the rest of the name - here I've added a handler to split the file path into the containing folder, the name, and extension, so that they can be mangled as desired:

on run {input, parameters}
   repeat with theFile in input
      set {folderPath, fileName, extension} to getNamePieces from theFile
      tell application "Pages"
         set theDoc to open theFile
         set theDocName to name of theDoc
         set theName to (characters 1 thru -7 of theDocName)
         set thePDFPath to (folderPath & fileName & theName & ".pdf")
         export theDoc to file thePDFPath as PDF
         close theDoc
      end tell
   end repeat
end run

to getNamePieces from someItem
   tell application "System Events" to tell disk item (someItem as text)
      set theContainer to the path of container
      set {theName, theExtension} to {name, name extension}
   end tell
   if theExtension is not "" then
      set theName to text 1 thru -((count theExtension) + 2) of theName
      set theExtension to "." & theExtension
   end if
   return {theContainer, theName, theExtension}
end getNamePieces

Identify path to file in AppleScript script as part of Automator workflow

1 Answers