DT3 JSON Parser

[BLUEFROG]

I don’t use BibDesk but I just ran into this: https://bibdesk.sourceforge.io/manual/BibDeskHelp_80.html#SEC144

[jongilizwe]

Yeah BibDesk’s AppleScript support is pretty thorough and well-documented. It also supports script hooks tied to particular actions so e.g. it could export a corresponding csv automatically every time a new publication is added.

See also https://sourceforge.net/p/bibdesk/wiki/BibDesk_Applescripts/

[BLUEFROG]

Instead of exporting CSV, the values @Bernardo_V was referring to could be gotten and used directly.

[jongilizwe]

True. Here’s an example I cooked up. What a pleasure it is to use two programs which both have robust AppleScript support.

DT3 and Bibdesk

Just cooked up this which is a bit more elegant IMHO. This does require you to set up an exportMarkdown template in BibDesk first. Or you can comment out those two lines. Next steps would be to add existing BibDesk URLs and linked files as well. tell application "BibDesk" set s to selection of document 1 repeat with i in s -- get the cite key and create a new DT group with the same name and a link back to the BD record set ck to cite key of i as string set c to "" -- get the…

[BLUEFROG]

What a pleasure it is to use two programs which both have robust AppleScript support.

Indeed! I’ve always felt that Mac apps with robust AppleScript support were just that extra cut above the others.

[jongilizwe]

The downside of using Applescript is that that script imports maybe 15 records per minute, whereas exporting from Bibdesk to csv and importing that csv to Filemaker is done in a few seconds, even with a 7000 entry .bib file.

[BLUEFROG]

The downside of using Applescript is that that script imports maybe 15 records per minute… importing that csv to Filemaker is done in a few seconds,

This is not a 1:1 comparison. Not only are they different apps, they are doing two very different operations.

Importing a 5.4MB CSV file into DEVONthink is no slower than Filemaker. In fact, I just imported a CSV file with 36,634 entries and 18 columns in two seconds. That’s 659,412 cells of data in two seconds.

However, that is also a pointless comparison as the topic at the moment was using AppleScript to create individual records, not just importing a file.

[jongilizwe]

Yes of course; I didn’t intend it to be, nor did I mean to slight DT in any way. I’m sure if I used Applescript to pull the data into FM direct from BD, the performance would be similarly slow. Unfortunately it’s a downside of applescript - I’ve had this experience before of working to get s script to do exactly what I need, than realizing it’s gonna be too slow to be a viable solution.

[BLUEFROG]

No slight detected

And I was actually quite proud to post the numbers I did. 36,000+ entries isn’t enormous, but that’s still a good amount of data and I was pleased with DEVONthink’s performance