this script groups selected records on a pattern you specified, in my case it was YYYY-MM-DD at the name beginning. It saves the user from selecting records that share e.g. the same name beginning manually, meaning that you don’t have to select records “one pattern by one”. Just select all records and run it.
It’s the normal DEVONthink 3 behaviour when grouping records, but without the manually selecting
-- Auto group by name pattern (in this case a YYYY-MM-DD date at the beginning)
tell application id "DNtp"
try
set windowClass to class of window 1
if {viewer window, search window} contains windowClass then
set currentRecord_s to selection of window 1
else if windowClass = document window then
set currentRecord_s to content record of window 1 as list
end if
repeat with thisRecord in currentRecord_s
set theName to name of thisRecord
set thePattern to characters 1 thru 10 in theName as string -- date as YYYY-MM-DD
set theGroup to create location (location of current group) & "/" & (name of current group) & "/" & thePattern & "/" in current database
move record thisRecord to theGroup
end repeat
on error error_message number error_number
if the error_number is not -128 then display alert "DEVONthink" message error_message as warning
end try
end tell
Hi, I’m using 3.0.1 but that’s all fine. Only used this script to “auto group” by a given pattern (to bypass the manual selection of records that I want DEVONthink 3 to built its pattern from). See the two captures
Using DEVONthink 3’s built-in feature results in
But what I needed was only 2019-11-02 so that’s what this script is for.
DEVONthink 3’s own feature is great, I like it a lot, this was just a “special case” I had to do once (but on many records)
In case you’re trying to run the script I posted in this thread you’ll find that it doesn’t work in DEVONthink 3.6. That’s due to DEVONthink’s new handling of “invalide arguments”.
After the release of DEVONthink 3 I decided to continue to use “search window” in scripts so that DEVONthink 2 users could use them in, well, search windows. With version 3.6 that’s not possible anymore.
If you want to use the script you’ll have to replace this voluminous block …
set windowClass to class of window 1
if {viewer window, search window} contains windowClass then
set currentRecord_s to selection of window 1
else if windowClass = document window then
set currentRecord_s to content record of window 1 as list
end if
… with this neat line …
set currentRecord_s to selected records
… which does what the six lines have done. Wow, that’s great!
No, it groups records in the current group depending on the pattern you specify in the script. If necessary it creates new groups in the current group.
This is what happens with the pattern characters 1 thru 10 in theName:
Select all records you want to group with the given pattern
Result
The advantages to DEVONthink’s built in grouping behaviour are:
You don’t have to select each pattern manually.
You can group selected records into an existing group.
You can specify the pattern.
With the script it’s a 2 step process:
Select the records
Run the script
With DEVONthink’s built in grouping it would have been:
Select all records that start with “2020-11-27”
Use menu Data > Group Items
Rename the new group to “2020-11-27”, as DEVONthink uses the longest string that all records start with, in this case “2020-11-27 - Test”.
I tend to save, import or create items that start with XYZ all over the place(any database)
Can this script be used to gather items with XYZ that are save, imported or saved in any database then group them?
Did you actually read the explanation I posted yesterday?
This one searches across all databases and moves the results to a group.
-- Search across databases and move results to group
set theNameStart to "XYZ"
set theDatabaseName to "_temp"
tell application id "DNtp"
try
set theResults to search ("name:<" & theNameStart & space & "kind:any") as string
if theResults ≠ {} then
try
set theDatabase to database named theDatabaseName
on error
error ("Please open database \"" & theDatabaseName & "\"") as string
end try
set theGroup_Name to theNameStart
set theGroup to create location "/" & my replace_String(theGroup_Name, "/", "\\/") in theDatabase
repeat with thisRecord in theResults
move record thisRecord to theGroup
end repeat
end if
on error error_message number error_number
if the error_number is not -128 then display alert "DEVONthink" message error_message as warning
return
end try
end tell
on replace_String(theText, oldString, newString)
local ASTID, theText, oldString, newString, lst
set ASTID to AppleScript's text item delimiters
try
considering case
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldString
set lst to every text item of theText
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to newString
set theText to lst as string
end considering
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ASTID
return theText
on error eMsg number eNum
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to ASTID
error "Can't replaceString: " & eMsg number eNum
end try
end replace_String
What you need is to change the hard coded value 10 in this line:
set thePattern to characters 1 thru 10 in theName as string
You could either do this by hard coding the values you need and saving different script versions.
Or you could add a choose from list dialog whose result you can use instead of the hard coded value.
Or you could add a display dialog dialog whose result you can use instead of the hard coded value. This is the most flexible way because you could use the script with any name length.
The thread title and script name are actually misleading. All that the script does is getting a specified range of a record‘s name and creating a group from that. There’s no actual recognition of any pattern done.
Thank you, I understood the approach. In my case, I have items of varying length. So when I tried 1-20, the script gave an error for short items. If I try 1-10, it cuts of the long items from the group name. The list or display dialog is ok if I have a few items. I am trying to group emails imported into DT, where I did not use the group by item option when I imported them.
