Scrappy AppleScript Tips

Contents

• Terminology
• Getting Objects
• Creating, Moving and Renaming
• Adding Files
• Adding Links
• Adding Text and Attachments
• Exporting

Choose Help > AppleScript Tips from the main menu to see a guide on how to automate Scrappy with AppleScript.

Terminology

While Scrappy refers to things in the sidebar as “lists”, a list is a class in AppleScript, and so Scrappy’s scripting terminology uses “sidebar item” instead, and “Scrappy list” specifically for lists that you create. Similarly, “item” is a generic term in AppleScript, and so items in Scrappy are referred to as “Scrappy items” in AppleScript.

Open Scrappy’s dictionary in Script Editor and look at the Scrappy suite to see all its terminology.

Getting Objects

Scrappy provides convenient ways to get the currently selected list or items:

Or the current item either selected in the list or opened in the editor:

And the standard sidebar items:

And collections of items:

Almost none of those things are guaranteed to have a unique name, but if you know that a list or item has a unique name within its container, you can fetch it that way. For example, if you have a list at the top level called “Things”, and it has a child called “More Things”:

If you need to get a list or item and your script is only targeting your own library and not anyone else’s, then you can get the list or item by its identifier. When using identifiers it doesn’t matter where something is located, or what its name is. To get the identifier:

• In Scrappy, select the list or item
• Hold on Option and choose Edit > Copy Scrappy Identifier from the main menu

You can then use the identifier as follows:

Tags always have a unique name in Scrappy, and so it is possible to do this:

In most cases, Scrappy lets you use tags and tag names interchangeably.

Creating, Moving and Removing

It’s possible to create lists with the standard “make” command. A location must be specified, along with a name:

And it’s possible to move list and items with the standard “move” command:

To delete lists or items, move them to Deleted Items first:

Scrappy items can be in many lists, so there is a special command for that:

And a corresponding command to remove them:

Tags cannot be created with a “make” command. Instead, you create tags by applying them to items. Tags are the only thing in Scrappy that can be uniquely identified by name, therefore Scrappy allows you to use the name of a tag for convenience in many places:

Adding Files

Scrappy is a sandboxed app, which means you can’t pass it file paths as text such as this, because it won’t have permission to access the files:

Instead, you need to create a POSIX file path, like this:

To get the path:

• In the Finder, select the file or folder
• Hold on the Option key, and choose Edit > Copy [filename] as Pathname from the main menu

Alternatively, you could specify an alias, using a colon-separated path like this:

You will also be provided a suitable path when creating folder actions, using the “choose file” dialog, and when a file is dragged and dropped onto an AppleScript app, etc.

To add files using your default settings:

Or include options to specify tags, how to add the files, where to store them, and whether or not to convert text files to notes:

Adding Links

To add a link using your default settings:

Or include options that specify where to store the web link, its name, whether or not save it for offline and in which format, along with any tags to add:

Adding Text and Attachments

To add a note with some text:

Or add options to specify the format, destination for the new file, tags and name:

To append text to a specific item:

And to add an attachment:

Exporting

Scrappy can either export an individual Scrappy item or list. The item or list’s filename will be made unique in the destination. See Adding Files above for important information about how to specify files when working with Scrappy. Notes will be exported as rich text files, either with or without attachments. Locked notes will be skipped.

To export an individual Scrappy item to a folder chosen by the user:

Exporting a list is the same:

When exporting "All Items", the top level list will actually be exported, and so the hierarchy will be preserved. Use this to export the entire library.

When exporting a list, the export operation will return the moment the export is started, but the export will continue in the background.

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