Automator: get a folder if it dropped or ask for one otherwise

applescriptautomatorfinder

I'm building an automator application that acts on a folder that needs to be specified.

Until now, I've been using the "Ask for Finder items" action to ask for a the folder to be used, but I would like to be able to just drag 'n' drop the folder on the application icon.

Can it be done in automator? I've been thinking to use some applescript to check if any input was given.

Best Answer

You can do whole workflow in AppleScript:

on adding folder items to theFolder after receiving theItems
    repeat with anItem in theItems
        -- your code goes here  
    end repeat
end adding folder items to

Related Solutions

Automator Folder Action Help

Automator requires a graphical user session to run within. Regrettably, Automator can not run without a user session; this is because it is an application rather than a command line process.

Because of this requirement, running an Automator workflow at log-out is difficult. You need to run the workflow and delay the requested log-out until the workflow finishes.

If the tasks could be performed from a shell script, then this would be easier to hook into the log in and out steps.

How to make automator only perform an operation on one file at a time

You can do this multilpe ways, one is to use applescript to do a 'for each' loop.

Take this applescript code snippet as an example and work it out from there.

on adding folder items to this_folder after receiving these_items
   repeat with an_item in these_items
       tell application "Adobe Photoshop CC"
           activate
           open an_item
           do action "frame for print" from "Zak's actions"
       end tell
   end repeat
end adding folder items to

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Automator Folder Action Help

How to make automator only perform an operation on one file at a time

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