Reading XML data from .pages file

Maybe you might find some usefull ideas in Pierre Igot's Betalogue.

Perhaps you could work out some hack. Ignore the fact that the file is xml.

Open the file in Textwrangler. I mean display the file in unparsed. Identify some unique string like:

lesson number 1. Do a string search for lesson number & pull out the one.

This will be a bit flacky, but might work.

If you post an example .pages file on the Internet somewhere, I'll take a look at it.

Robert

The script should read the date, lesson no, and name fields from a .pages file and then use that information to send an e-mail.

Maybe you might want to try the following script:

tell application "Pages"

activate

tell foreground layer of page 1 of front document

select (text box 1 whose vertical position < 0.5)

tell application "System Events"

keystroke "c" using {command down} -- ⌘C

keystroke "a" using {shift down, command down} -- ⇧⌘A

end tell

set theText to the clipboard

end tell

end tell

set TID to AppleScript's text item delimiters

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to tab

set theTextFields to text items of theText

set AppleScript's text item delimiters to TID

set {theDate, theLessonNo, theStudent} to {item 2, item 4, item 6} of theTextFields

It seems to me that you haven't actually tried the script, which works flawlessly on the Pages file downloaded from .pages file zipped. (And “text box 1 whose vertical position < 0.5" is not at all the same as “text box 1”.)

IMOH, no need to change anything in the LessonReview.pages file:

text box 1 whose vertical position < 0.5 is the exact same box as text box 12

Message was edited by: Pierre L.

Perhaps it's also a question of the version of Pages we're using. I'm still on '08 and I've heard that they've improved AppleScript support since then.

That's possible. I don't know. Anyway I'm glad I could help you.

OK, I've finally got it. Q.E.D. Many thanks.

Message was edited by: Pierre L.

I think that Pierre L. has the right idea of using AppleScript to read the data.

I played around with PHP to attempt to analyze the data. I'm learning XML. I didn't recognize the style of xml used by pages.

I'll have to study more up to see if the : has any special meaning.

<?xml version="1.0" ?>
<sl:document xmlns:sfa="http://developer.apple.com/namespaces/sfa" 
xmlns:sf="http://developer.apple.com/namespaces/sf" 
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" 
xmlns:sl="http://developer.apple.com/namespaces/sl" sl:version="72007061400"
 sfa:ID="SLPublicationModel-0"
 sl:generator="slingshot" sl:app_build_date="Jan 22 2008, 01:09:42">
 <sl:version-history>
 <sl:number sfa:number="2004042200" sfa:type="i"/>
 <sl:number sfa:number="2004060800" sfa:type="i"/>
 <sl:number sfa:number="2004061600" sfa:type="i"/>
 <sl:number sfa:number="2004062200"
 sfa:type="i"/><sl:number sfa:number="2004062900"
 sfa:type="i"/><sl:number sfa:number="2004072200"
 sfa:type="i"/><sl:number sfa:number="2004091600"
 sfa:type="i"/><sl:number sfa:number="2004093000"
 sfa:type="i"/><sl:number sfa:number="2005091000"
 sfa:type="i"/><sl:number sfa:number="2005091200"
 sfa:type="i"/><sl:number sfa:number="2005140600"
 sfa:type="i"/><sl:number sfa:number="72006110200"
 sfa:type="q"/><sl:number sfa:number="72006110901"
 sfa:type="q"/><sl:number sfa:number="72006111601"
 sfa:type="q"/><sl:number sfa:number="72007010801"
 sfa:type="q"/><sl:number sfa:number="72007012700"
 sfa:type="q"/><sl:number sfa:number="72007061400"
 sfa:type="q"/></sl:version-history>
<sl:publication-info>
<sl:SFWPCTShowDeletedTextProperty>
<sl:number sfa:number="1"
 sfa:type="c"/></sl:SFWPCTShowDeletedTextProperty>
<sl:SLCreationLocaleProperty>
<sl:string sfa:string="pl_PL"/>
</sl:SLCreationLocaleProperty>
<sl:decimalTab>
<sl:string sfa:string="."/>
</sl:decimalTab>
<sl:kSFWPHyperlinksEnabledProperty>
.. massively clipped ...

I did look at PHP and I was able to understand it's xml extraction language. The PHP print statements stripped out the xml and left just the text.

I'll need to find out more about xml the next time I am at a llibrary.

I'll need to find a tidy program so to make the xml more readable.

I'll leave this be unless the applescript solution doesn't pan out.

I ran this php program from inside apache. I haven't figured out how to run php from the command line.

<html>
<head><title>Print XML</title></head>
<body>
<?php

// Implement multiple levels of debugging.
define('RUNsGREAT',0);   // Normal level for production
define('MINIMUM',1);
define('MEDIUM',2);
define('MAXIMUM',3);
// Current level of debugging.
define('DEBUG',MAXIMUM);

define('BR',"<br>");

// Display one line of debug information.
function debug($displayLine)
{
  if ( DEBUG >= MINIMUM )
  {
   echo $displayLine . BR;
  }
}

function formatCommandOutput($myArray)
{
  if ( DEBUG >= MEDIUM )
  {
    echo "\n" . BR . "in formatCommandOutput" .BR;
    //var_dump($myArray);
    //echo BR;
  }
  
  echo BR . "<tt>";
  // Display everything that was returned 
  foreach ($myArray as $string)
  {
    echo BR . "      " .  htmlentities( $string );
  }
  echo BR . "</tt>";
  
  return;
}

debug("Starting in " . __File__ );

// Invoke a Unix pwd command
$output = array();
$result = exec("pwd ", $output, $rc );
debug("rc= ".$rc);
formatCommandOutput($output);


$fileList = array();
$result = 
  exec("cat  ".escapeshellarg("/Users/mac/Sites/createDoc/apparent.xml"), $fileList, $rc );
debug("rc= ".$rc);
//formatCommandOutput($fileList);

$oneList = implode("\n",$fileList);

echo "------------------------------------" . BR . BR ;

$xml = simplexml_load_string($oneList);

//$xml->asXML("bigDoc.xml");

print $xml->asXML();



?>
</body>
</html>