Automator and iCal make for some nice things...

Someone on the 43Folders Google Group asked how to mail some files present in a folder every day. I thought it would be a fun challenge to do with Automator so here are the results (which I also sent to the group).

1. Launch Automator;
2. Click on the "Finder Library" on the left pane, then drag the "Get Specified Finder Items" action to the right pane;
3. Click on the '+' in the newly added action and choose the folder you would like to send by email (you could also choose individual files);
4. Click on the "Mail Library" on the left pane, then drag the "New Mail Message" action to the right pane, under the previously added actions;
5. Enter the destination mail address, the subject, and a message body (if you want so);
6. Drag the "Send Outgoing Messages" (still in the "Mail Library") to the right under the previous actions;
7. Hit the "Run" button at the top right to test if everything work.

In the case you need to input some password when sending an email, you will then be asked for it.

Now you only need to save this workflow as an iCal alarm. To do so, choose "Save As Plug-in" in the "File" menu, choose "iCal alarm" in the "Plug-in for" dropbox, and choose a name. This will open iCal and create a new event with this workflow as an alarm. You may change the date and recurrence of this event to suit your needs. You may also create a new event, and give it an alarm of type "Open File" and choosing your alarm in the drop down list.

There is a more Unix solution using the mail command line program and either Launchd or Cron, but this seemed like more fun ;-)

2 comments were on Haloscan

Interesting. I'll try that to get started with Automator.

I've been interested for a while in adding to the finder the ability to create symlinks (not aliases) by drag-and-drop à la KDE, using Ctrl-Shift-drop.

The solutions I've found typically add an entry in a context menu, which is not an option when you want to create hundreds of symlink an hour (you might wonder why, I'll eventually talk about that on my blog). I really need to take an item, drag it to the location of the link to create, not type anything. Today I use KDE for this but I may want to do that with a Mac soon.

Alternatively, I'm planning to create a script that converts all alias in a directory (recursively) into posix symlinks. I'll start by modifying the code below (found in http://forums.macosxhints.com/ar...php/t- 3017.html) but you might have a better idea.

on open (item_list)  
tell application "Finder"  
repeat with theItem in item_list  
set targetPath to (get POSIX path of theItem)  
display dialog "Enter link name:" default answer "" buttons {"Cancel", "Create Link"} default button 2  
copy the result as list to {linkName, button_pressed}  
set chosen to choose folder with prompt "Pick location of symlink"  
set chosenFolder to (get POSIX path of chosen)  
do shell script "ln -s \" & targetPath & " " & chosenFolder & "/" & linkName & ""  
end repeat  
end tell  
end open

PS : I thought that your blog was self-hosted. This comment form seems not on your blog but on haloscan.com (and has ads).
Stéphane | Homepage | 20.10.06 - 11:23

I can't help you with the symlink thing, I've never tried it. But you could try to bind a script to a quicksilver trigger, which might make it relatively painless.

About the PS: the blog is self hosted, but I did not want to roll out my own comment system, so I'm using Haloscan, which I find works fairly well.
Alan Schmitt | Homepage | 20.10.06 - 16:02