How do I get the containing group of a record via AppleScript?

DEVONthink Automation
1

I’m working on a larger script to move a selected record (group or document) to a particular location in a database, and I need help with what seems like it should be a simple AppleScript idiom. I’ve had success with this:

move record theRecord totheincoming groupof database "Inbox"

in a script that refiles a misplaced record back into the Inbox.

But I’m trying to to move a particular selected record to its “grandparent” group: that is, the group that contains the group that contains the selected record, and I can’t seem to avoid the error:

“Can’t get parent of selected record” (1728)

I have tried a few different approaches to getting the parent group of the selected record (where in the following my_record has been set to the selected record):

e.g.,

setthe_parentto the parent of my_record

or (in case I need to treat parents like a list)

setthe_parentto the first parent of my_record

or (in case I need to be accessing a property)

setthe_parentto (get thelocationof my_record)

or

setthe_parentto thelocation groupof my_record

or even

setthe_parentto the parent whose child is my_record

I must be missing something obvious about correctly accessing the parent of a record. What’s the correct way to get the parent or containing group of a currently selected record?

2

parent is not a wise choice here. An item can have multiple parents so don’t think about it relative to where a document is.

Here is a naïve but effective way to do the specific thing you’re asking about…

tell application id "DNtp"
	if (selected records) is {} then return
	return name of (location group of (location group of selected record 1))
end tell
1 Like
3

Thanks! This gives me what I needed.

4

You’re welcome.