Delimited String to Array

Scripting Forums AppleScript Studio & Xcode
#1

I can find a hundred examples of reading a delimited file and bring it into an array, but how do I get delimited data out of a string?

Basically, my app is yanking data from a web server to populate a table. I can spit this data out however the heck I need too, but no matter what I do, I can’t seem to do what I want.

This seems to work just fine:


set content of table view 1 of scroll view "theTable" of window "main" to {{"abc","123","xyz"}{"abc","123","xyz"}{"abc","123","xyz"}{"abc","123","xyz"}}

This doesn’t:


set dataSource to do shell script "curl [url=http://mydomain.com/data/fetch.php]http://mydomain.com/data/fetch.php"[/url]
set content of table view 1 of scroll view "theTable" of window "main" to dataSource

In the last example, I have tried all various types of things, like giving the output of my php file to be “{{“abc”,“123”,“xyz”}{“abc”,“123”,“xyz”}{“abc”,“123”,“xyz”}{“abc”,“123”,“xyz”}}” or even “1,2,3/n4,5,6/n” and using some code to slice and dice that, but no luck.

Any help or advice!? Please… Newbie I am.

#2

If you configured you php app to return this:

AppleScript receives this:

That is, a string, not a list
You can coerce it to list very easilly as follow:

set dataSource to do shell script "curl [url=http://mydomain.com/data/fetch.php]http://mydomain.com/data/fetch.php"[/url]
set dataSource to (run script dataSource) --> will hold now a list, if syntax is OK
#3

Thank you, Thank you!

One last remaining issue… it says that dataSource is not a defined variable.

I assume it is in reference to this:


set content of table view 1 of scroll view "theTable" of window "main" to dataSource

I assume this is because dataSource is not a variable but an array. How do I get applescript to process dataSource as an array and not a variable to populate my table?

THanks.

#4

Hmmm… Perhaps the “run script” thing is not working… What do you see in the run long if you “log dataSource” after the “run script” line?

#5

IGNORE my previous post.

I figured out the error: ID10T Error

:smiley:

#6

BTW - Thank you very much. I searched for HOURS yesterday to resolve this issue w/ no luck. Tried a bunch of different possibilities. Have a good day!

#7

I have a problem which is along similar lines, the difference is that I’m trying to pull data out of a text file on my desktop (delimited by return) into a datatable, I can read the data fine but it seems to be seeing it as a string rather than a list and hence doesn’t go into my data table correctly. I’m sure there’s a simple solution but I’ve been unable to track it down and this post seemed to deal with a very similar problem.
Thanks in advance for any help.

#8

You could try:

paragraphs of (read alias "path:to:file.txt")

And you will get a list.

#9

Thanks for your help but I’m still having problems with that solution, I have a list like this:

“Wake.mov”,“MooV”,“27.3 MB”
“Base.swf”,"SWF ",“1.6 MB”
“cast.mov”,“MooV”,“1.3 MB”
etc…

Using paragraphs of (read alias “path:to:file.txt”), splits it nicely into the different rows of the table but all 3 fields end up in the first column, still in quotes. I’m guessing this is as it’s still seeing the information as a string rather than a list, but I’m not sure what I’ve done wrong.

#10

So, you have a tab-delimited text file? (being “tab” the field separator and “return” the record separator). Eg:

a	1	x
b	2	y
c	3	z

Then, you may need something as:

set x to paragraphs of (read alias "path:to:file.txt")

set lst to {}

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tab
repeat with i from 1 to count x
	set lst's end to x's item i's text items
end repeat
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {""}

lst --> {{"a", "1", "x"}, {"b", "2", "y"}, {"c", "3", "z"}}
#11

Awesome, thank you so much. Been driving me slightly nuts that one, but now works like a charm.