Automator actions and Grep: Extracting lines

[Miguel Perez]

Hi!

I have a question regarding Automator and BBEdit.

Context:

On a daily basis I get an XML file. This file contains information about some dossiers. I need to extract two elements from each dossier: (1) a URL to download associated images, and (2) the dossier's name.

Here's an example of such XML files: https://www.icloud.com/iclouddrive/0uq0GozmzGusqe09WNAmUJuow#MA_NO_2021_05_011

Information in the file is in Spanish.

What I currently do:

I open the XML file on BBEdit and use Grep search to extract the information. My Grep patterns are:

To extract the URLs:

<clave><!\[CDATA\[Imagen\]\]></clave>\n\s+<valor><!\[CDATA\[(.+?)\]

To extract the dossier's name:

<clave><!\[CDATA\[Denominación\]\]></clave>\n\s+<valor><!\[CDATA\[(.+?)\]

I "replace" this Grep patterns with \1 to extract everything and works like a charm.

Both pieces of information get saved in their own plain text files.

Then I download the images using some wget magic:

wget -E -H -k -K -p -e robots=off -P /users/USERNAME/TARGETFOLDER -i /users/USERNAME/URLSLIST.txt

As a final touch to my workflow, I run a batch rename on all files to add the filetype *.GIF on all images and I'm ready to work.

What I want to do:

I want to further automate the process.

Using Automator I created a Service (Quick action) that uses files as input in Finder.

What I have in mind is:

➤ Run the service on the XML file

➤ Read the contents of the file

➤ Use BBEdit's Automator action called "Extract lines containing" in Grep mode to extract the URLs

➤ Use a shell script to download all images

➤ Use a batch rename action to add the *.GIF filetype

For the love of me I can't get "Extract lines containing" to work. I'm using BBEdit 13.5.6 and Big Sur 11.3.1.

Any ideas?

Does anybody know if BBEdit's Automator actions still work?

[Christopher Stone]

On 05/19/2021, at 08:30, Miguel Perez <maperez...@gmail.com> wrote:

On a daily basis I get an XML file. This file contains information about some dossiers. I need to extract two elements from each dossier: (1) a URL to download associated images, and (2) the dossier's name.

---

Hey Miguel,

I don't think that automator action will take a file as input, but I'm not absolutely certain.

In any case I think you should bite the bullet and learn a little more shell scripting – since you're already using wget.

I'm just playing around here a bit to show you what's easily accomplished.

You can run these conveniently in a BBEdit worksheet to see what they do.

---

filePath=~/Downloads/MA_NO_2021_05_011.xml

# Prints the found pattern in the given text file.

grep -E -o -e 'http.+ImagenFichaServlet[^]]+' "$filePath"

---

filePath=~/Downloads/MA_NO_2021_05_011.xml

# Prints the line after the found pattern along with the found text.

grep -E -A 1 -o 'Denominación' "$filePath"

---

filePath=~/Downloads/MA_NO_2021_05_011.xml

# Prints the line after the found pattern then deletes the detritus.

sed -n '/Denominación/{n;p;}' "$filePath" \

| sed -E 's!.+\[|\].+!!g'

---

The output of these is easily redirected to files.

Your wget downloader can follow the extract-text segments.

You can rename your files using wget itself, or you can follow-on with a rename script.

Personally I'd do all of this in Bash.

That said let me recommend Keyboard Maestro to you as a great tool for getting real work done on a Mac. In my expert opinion it's currently the Best-of-Breed Mac Automation Utility. (Commercial $36.00 US.)

It's a bit like Automator on steroids, and I've been a happy superuser for about 17 years now.

Like BBEdit it runs 24/7 on my Macs.

--

Best Regards,

Chris

[jj]

Miguel,

If you are use Automator and AppleScript, "System Events" has some useful XML parsing functionality.

See : https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/LanguagesUtilities/Conceptual/MacAutomationScriptingGuide/WorkwithXML.html

Your input XML could be parsed with something like this:

```applescript

    tell application "System Events"

        tell XML file "~/Downloads/MA_NO_2021_05_011.xml"

            tell XML element "ejemplar"

                set vSecciones to every XML element whose name = "seccion"

                repeat with vSeccion in vSecciones

                    tell vSeccion

                        set vFichas to (every XML element whose name = "ficha")

                        repeat with vFicha in vFichas

                            tell vFicha

                                set vCampos to (every XML element whose name = "campo")

                                repeat with vCampo in vCampos

                                    tell vCampo

                                        set vClave to value of XML element "clave"

                                        set vValor to value of XML element "valor"

                                        log {clave:vClave, valor:vValor}

                                    end tell

                                end repeat

                            end tell

                        end repeat

                    end tell

                end repeat

            end tell

        end tell

    end tell

```

HTH,

Jean Jourdain