Using MainEvents to script Acrobat

preslinc · December 30, 2003, 6:12pm

Does anyone know of a method (AppleScript, standalone app, or otherwise) for taking raw “forms” data which has been received via email (using OSX’s Mail.app) from a web site (e.g., name and address data), and converting it to tab-delimited text – so that it can be imported into a FileMaker database?

jonn8 · December 30, 2003, 7:00pm

There are lots of threads about this topic (people, please use the search function for this BBS!); here’s one.

Jon

Camelot · December 30, 2003, 7:45pm

Why make more work for yourself than you need to?

It’s just as easy (if not easier) to have your script read the email and write the data directly into a new record in your Filemaker database. No intermediate files needed. Faster, too.

preslinc · December 31, 2003, 11:29am

Hmm… Well, the reason I’m trolling in these waters for an answer is because some people browsing this forum may find that my problem is easy to solve (because they know scripting), or may consider the solution obvious (because they have solved it before). For me, however, not being a scripter, the problem is not easy, and the solution is not obvious.

Sure, launching a script and bringing the data straight into FileMaker is the right way to do the job… but who’s got the script?

Camelot · January 1, 2004, 3:10am

This should get you started. I can’t provide an exact script since you didn’t provide an example of the mail message, but I’m assuming that the message contains a number of lines in the format:

variable: value
variable2: value 2

and that you have a Filemaker Pro database that has field names matching the variable labels (i.e. in this case you have a Filemaker Pro database with two fields called ‘variable’ and ‘variable2’

The premise of this script is that for each message passed in it extracts the message contents then performs some text parsing to work out the various fields. It then creates a new record in Filemaker Pro and populates the data with whatever records were passed in the email:

using terms from application “Mail”
on perform mail action with messages theMessages for rule theRule
tell application “Mail”
repeat with eachMessage in theMessages
set mailContents to content of eachMessage
try
my [color=green]makeNewFilemakerRecord/color
end try
end repeat
end tell
end perform mail action with messages
end using terms from

on [color=green]makeNewFilemakerRecord/color
set mail_lines to paragraphs of mailContents
set {oldDelims, my text item delimiters} to {my text item delimiters, “:”}
tell application “FileMaker Pro”
set new_rec to create new record in database 1
repeat with eachField in mail_lines
set field_name to text item 1 of eachField
set field_value to text item 2 of eachField
set cell field_name of new_rec to field_value
end repeat
end tell
set my text item delimters to oldDelims
end makeNewFilemakerRecord

[This script was automatically tagged for color coded syntax by Convert Script to Markup Code]

It should be enough to get you started. You may need to make some changes, especially if the email doesn’t follow my assumptions or if the field names don’t match.

preslinc · January 3, 2004, 7:38am

Well, I was afraid this would happen, but maybe hoping it would, too. It looks like I’m going to put in the time, and actually learn AppleScript.

Lazy me, I was hoping (still am) for someone to appear with a piece of shareware, with an intuitive interface, to move emailed forms data into FileMaker. But that particular solution has not appeared, and may not exist.

I’ve never thought of myself as having a brain (or the time) for programming, :rolleyes: but maybe I’m wrong. I can assemble furniture from Ikea.

I’m reading an AppleScript book (.pdf), so it may be a while before I can put your advice to good use. Thanks for taking the time to share some code.

</shameful admission>

preslinc · January 3, 2004, 5:20pm

Muchas gracias to the lovely Sascha, who spotted my post, and sent the following email:

i know one:

look at http://www.nullify.de/nullifySoftware/en/Software/nulliform.html
i guess that is what you need!!

sascha

General · April 22, 2004, 1:57pm

Hi,

I downloaded MainEvents 1.3.1 and changed the sample script to script adobe acrobat.
It tells acrobat to show a dialogbox, this is a dialogbox of a plugin calls
“Enfocus Pitstop” wich we use to check PDF files. The script works till the dialogbox
show up, is it possible to script things in this dilaogbox with MainEvents??


tell application "Finder"
	if exists items in folder "Dolf HD:Desktop Folder:PDFF:" then
		set theFolderList to folder "Dolf HD:Desktop Folder:PDFF:"
		set theNameList to ""
		repeat with thisItem in theFolderList
			set theNameList to (the name of thisItem)
			tell application "Acrobat 5.0"
				activate
				open thisItem
			end tell
			exit repeat
		end repeat
	end if
end tell
tell application "Finder"
	set targetApplication to application "Acrobat 5.0"
	tell targetApplication
		try
			set menuListInfo to Query Menu List
		end try
		if (count of menuListInfo) is greater than 0 then
			set menuListText to menu title of item 1 of menuListInfo
			repeat with menuIndex from 2 to count of menuListInfo
				set menuListText to menuListText & ", " & menu title of item menuIndex of menuListInfo
			end repeat
		end if
		set menuInfo to Query Menu menu title "Certified PDF"
		Select Menu Item menu title "Certified PDF" menu item text "Edit Properties..."
	end tell
end tell