Updating webarchives

[pete31]

@mksBelper

Am I right in understanding that what you did with the English Heritage page means that simply/only putting in a new URL (in that case the URL of this thread) by itself breaks the display of the original - as shown here?

Exactly.

@mksBelper

Is changing WebResourceURL the same as entering a (new) value in the Inspector’s URL field?

No. They are different things. The WebResourceURL is the URL that Safari reports while capturing a webarchive. It’s saved in the webarchive and not visible to users (unless you open the webarchive in BBEdit). DEVONthink uses it do populate the record’s URL property:

@pete31

inside the webarchive there’s the internal URL (WebResourceURL) and DEVONthink uses it to populate the URL in the inspector, the URL column and the view pane’s URL field

Changing the URL property in DEVONthink’s inspector that has no effect on

• the content of a webarchive
• the WebResourceURL of a webarchive

That’s why you used the script to update the WebResourceURL with the DEVONthink URL.

@mksBelper

Should I first put the correct URL in the appropriate field in the Inspector, as I have been doing?

Can’t say for sure as I can’t test it (easily).

What I know is that if I create a webarchive via AppleScript DEVONthink will follow redirects but it doesn’t use the redirected URL to populate the DEVONthink URL property. This means created via AppleScript we get a webarchive with the redirected URL’s content but the URL we see in DEVONthink is the one we provided in the script.

I guess it’s sufficient to use Reload, DEVONthink will probably follow redirects and you just have to use Update Captured Archive afterwards.

Look at the capture, DEVONthink automatically updated the URL in the view pane:

@pete31

• I changed the WebResourceURL to the URL of this thread,
• didn’t use any DEVONthink commands,
• deselected and selected the record to pick up the change.

Result:

And it was also updated in the inspector, just checked this. So you probably won’t need the script anymore.

@mksBelper

As far as you know - when Reload corrects the webarchive - does it remain corrected?

Yes.

• Reload loads the WebResourceURL in the current tab
• Update Captured Archive saves what’s loaded, i.e. writes the currently visible content to disk

That means

• if you use Update Captured Archive without previously using Reload you only save what’s currently visible. In your case that was broken content, that’s why Update Captured Archive didn’t seem to work for you.

• if you use Reload without using Update Captured Archive afterwards you don’t change the webarchive record, i.e. nothing is written to disk.

So

• Reload → acts on the tab’s content
• Update Captured Archive → acts on the file’s content

To update and save a webarchive’s content you need to use both.