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Why Automator?
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Automator and srcipting provide powerful tools to Mac users, but I think many have trouble understanding when they would use it.
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Anytime you have a task that you often repeat
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When there is a process or functionality that is missing.
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Sometimes you may find a 3rd party app or utility, but often with Automator you could write it yourself.
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I did this with Safe Download Version and AppleScript
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When Automator and when AppleScript?
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You will likley use both. The work together and compliment each other
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Automator is easier to get started with and has built in "actions" that can be strung together.
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The ingredients-->recipie-->dish (food) metaphore
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Applescript is more like code. Stuff you can use to create your own ingredients if they don't exists
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There are resources for getting more actions and 3rd party apps can add in their own to the Automator Library
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Understanding Automator Actions
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I covered a bit of this in the Intro to Atomator episode
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The "Actions" list is organized into categories based on application or function
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You can browse or also search by a key word or term.
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"image" for example would show you all actions that deal with doing things with images
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When you select an action you can see it's description in the Description View (lower right corner). You may need to expand it (icon looks like a window with upsidedown triangle).
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Tells you what the action does in a sentance or two.
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Requires - Explains what other actions or applications may be required to be running or used to work with this action
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Input - Tells you if and what the action requires to have coming into it to work
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Output - What will be returned (come out) of this action and be feed into the next action.
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Some examples
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Go through the Send PDF to iPhoto example
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Need came out of a feature removed from iPhoto '11 and OS X
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Talk about starting points
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Workflow, Application, Service, Print Plugin, Folder Action, iCal Alarm, and Image Capture Plug-in.
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The main differences are where they will run and what the start with as input.
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Differences between 'PDF to Images' and the 'Render PDF Pages as Images' actions
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Why choose one over the other and how did I know which one to pick.
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Debugging using the Results
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For Services and Plug-ins you'll need to ususally add a “Get Specified Finder Items” action to the start temporarily
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The system will tell you if you forget and try to runt the workflow in Automator
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Run the workflow and look in the 'Results' section at the bottom of each action.
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icon, list, and
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Also look at the 'Log' at the bottom of the window. (View > Log)
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When I save this because it's a Print Plugin it goes to ~/Library/PDF Services and is availbale under PDF in the Print Sheet
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Name the workflow exactly as you want it to appear in the menu or Service drop down.
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Go through 'GetiTunesTrailer.app' workflow
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No obvious way to get a trailer from apple.com/trailers
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Workflow to take the URL and download the file to a specific location on the Mac
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Started with a Service that could run inside Quicktime
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The reason was that the trailer would open in Quicktime X, but there was no file "downloaded"
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Could possibly locate the cache?
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Actually you do a File > Export… from QuickTime
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My service would extract the URL and go to Apple Servers and directly download to a specified folder
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Needed to use some AppleScript to make this all happen
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Adding in scripts
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Can use shell scripts and AppleScripts and this adds a ton of power
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Discovering what AppleScripts can do
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This just needs to be learned. Google it and I will also try to cover some in future episodes
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In the AppleScript Editor the 'Dictionaries' can be helpful
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Window > Library or File > Open Dictionary…
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All scriptable apps have dictionaries
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Organized into 'Suites' or groups of commands
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Have commands, like verbs in sentances. the actions, items (the nouns) and items have properties
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Automator 'variables' can store results for use later in the script. Set and Get value of variable actions
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Gets can be strung together to pass more than one into an action.
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