Find most recent item from application

Scripting Forums AppleScript | Mac OS X
#1

hi (again :smiley: )

i’m trying to find the most recent saved file from a particular app. (probably limited to somewhere within the users folder if it will speed things up)

i’d post all of my attempts so far but i’m a little embarrassed by them

there might be a little more to my needs but maybe we can start with just locating the file ?

[other requirements, i think, will be making sure the file was saved within the last 30 seconds or so… if not, wait til one has been…?]

#2

If you are lucky, there is a plist with recently used documents in your preferences folder for that app.

Else mdfind might be an option.

kMDItemKind allows to specify the application, there are kMDItemFSContentChangeDate and kMDItemFSCreationDate to restrict the time of creation and change.

Use mdls on a file to see the available properties.

Finding examples for the syntax is trickier. It is spread over man pages and several web pages.

http://homepage.mac.com/swain/Macinchem/Applescript/AppScript_tut/AppScrip_tut_2/appscript_tut_2.htm

has some simple exampels for AppleScript usage.

Jürgen

#3

Depending on which Application you intend using, you may find you can get names of recent files or items.

Check the Dictionary for the relevant application and search for “recent”

For example, getting recent files in Microsoft Excel can be done by:-

tell application "Microsoft Excel"
	get name of every recent file
end tell
#4

@juergen

this app (sketchup) does have a plist for recent items… unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to update immediately upon saving a new file… so that’s not going to work…

(basically, what i’m trying to accomplish is giving the .skp file a 512px icon upon saving… i’ve got most of it worked out so far… now it’s just a matter of getting the newly saved file so i can assign the icon to it)

@intoto… not this app… unfortunately :frowning:

the solution i’m going with at this point is via getting the title of the frontmost drawing window (whose name updates immediately upon ‘save’ or ‘save as’ then mdfind (thx juergen) to figure out where exactly the file is…

here’s this part of the script so if anyone has sketchup, maybe they can test it out to make sure it’s working on environments other than my own computer… (or, maybe someone knows of a better method?)
thanks

tell application "SketchUp"
	activate
	tell application "System Events" to tell process "SketchUp"
		
		--identify the frontmost drawing window (drawwin)
		set drawwin to 0
		set cw to 1 + (count of windows)
		
		repeat until drawwin ≠ 0
			set cw to (cw - 1)
			if value of attribute "AXmain" of window cw is true then
				set drawwin to cw
			end if
		end repeat
		
		--get the window's title then find the text before ".skp" 
		--this should work on both sketchup pro and free ?
		--also shouldn't matter if the user has a space or period within the title name?
		
		set WinTitle to title of window drawwin		
		set AppleScript's text item delimiters to {".skp"}
		set skpFILE to first text item of WinTitle & ".skp"
		
		--find the .skp using mdfind
		do shell script "mdfind -name " & skpFILE
		
		
	end tell
end tell

thanks for the help!

[edit]… hmm, actually, this could be a problem if there is another file by the same name on the system… i suppose i’ll can check the creation time to make sure it’s recently created (or opened, or modified, or something :slight_smile: ) ??