Change creation date of newly created location

DEVONthink
1

In the lines below I try to create locations and then correct their creation and modification dates:

tell application id "DNtp"
	
	set newGroup to create location "Firefox_Export/toolbar/[P] ReOrg Writing, Notes, Infos"
	set creation date of newGroup to "Sunday, 19. April 2020 at 10:53:25"
	set modification date of newGroup to "Thursday, 23. April 2020 at 10:47:03"
	
	set newGroup to create location "Firefox_Export/toolbar/[P] Automate Ulysses App"
	set creation date of newGroup to "Monday, 20. April 2020 at 07:29:10"
	set modification date of newGroup to "Monday, 20. April 2020 at 17:10:34"
	
end tell

Dates are not changed. What am I missing?

2

DEVONthink needs date which is an AppleScript class (I think), you can’t use date strings directly.

Didn’t find a good example how to create date from a date string but maybe this flexible-handler-to-generate-date-format-for-system-and-plug-in-date-string-allow-time-offset-and-7-days-generator from @ngan does this, didn’t check.

3

But it works for all other records, except locations.

This here for example works:

set urlName to "Bibliography management with bibtex - Overleaf, Online LaTeX Editor"
set urlURL to "https://www.overleaf.com/learn/latex/bibliography_management_with_bibtex"
set datCreated to "Saturday, 25. April 2020 at 22:08:42"
set datUpdated to "Saturday, 25. April 2020 at 22:08:42"
create record with {name:urlName, URL:urlURL, type:bookmark, creation date:datCreated, modification date:datUpdated} in newGroup
4

I can even create a fresh group and change its creation and modification dates:

tell application id "DNtp"
	
	create record with {name:"Test group", type:group, creation date:"Saturday, 25. April 2020 at 22:04:29"} in incoming group
	
end tell

It’s only when I create a group via create location modifying this groups creation / modification dates fail.

So the question is: Does create location not return a group record? Or a record at all?

5

Hmm indeed, it accepts date strings. Didn’t know that

6

Try to coerce a date string by this method first - just a suggestion

Set theDate to date "2020.04.25.22.08.42" -- just a numeric string of ur example "Saturday, 25. April 2020 at 22:08:42"
-- use theDate to do whatever you want
7

This does not work inside a DEVONthink tell block, a handler is needed

tell application id "DNtp"
	set sel to selection of window 1
	set theRecord to item 1 of sel
	set C to creation date of theRecord as string
	
	set theDate to my makeDate(C)
end tell

on makeDate(dateString)
	set theDate to date dateString
end makeDate
8

Thank you @ngan for the suggestion. Tried that already based upon the help from @pete31, but I get a syntax error whenever I use date "(some date string)"

The error message is: Expected end of line, etc. but found “"”.

I suppose the problem is in create location. It does not return a proper group reference, so acting on what it returns does not change the dates.

9

@pete31 Excellent! That works, miraculously :slight_smile:

tell application id "DNtp"
	
	(* PROCESS FOLDER: /toolbar/[R] Bibliography - BibTex *)
	set newGroup to create location "Firefox_Export/toolbar/[R] Bibliography - BibTex"
	set creation date of newGroup to my makeDate("Saturday, 25. April 2020 at 22:04:29")
	set modification date of newGroup to my makeDate("Saturday, 25. April 2020 at 23:23:58")
	
	
end tell


on makeDate(dateString)
	set theDate to date dateString
end makeDate
10

And I just got an error due to my local time settings :slight_smile:

11

Pete, thank you very much. :slight_smile:

12

Let’s thank @ngan, I tried as date which is wrong.

1 Like
13

The trick is from @BLUEFROG Haha!

2 Likes
14

The create record with AppleScript command of DEVONthink receives the input basically unfiltered/unparsed, therefore DEVONthink can apply conversions like string to date on its own. But setting a property like the creation date directly requires a valid date object due to AppleScript’s preprocessing.