Applescript to copy selected text plus page URL in Safari

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Level 1

5 points

Applescript to copy selected text plus page URL in Safari

I do a lot of online research. I would like to be able to select text then run an applescript to add the selected text plus the page URL to the clipboard. I have found a couple scripts that come close to what I want to do, but they don't work. They get the URL and usually some other information, but instead of the slected text, I get "missing value". Does anyone know how I can make this work?

The scripts I found that do kind of what I want, but don't work are:

http://allancraig.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=113:saving-se lected-text-and-url-from-safari-to-a-file&catid=40:applescript&Itemid=91

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080207080505152

This script works, but it copies URL and page title rather than URL and selected text:

https://gist.github.com/70565

I would be so grateful for some help on this.

Posted on Dec 1, 2012 11:48 AM

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Answer 1

Jeffrey Gill Author

Level 1

5 points

Dec 1, 2012 12:25 PM in response to Jeffrey Gill

After looking around a bit more –

first here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/2043319

then here: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3197130?start=0&tstart=0

– I was able to cobble together this script:

tell application "Safari"

activate

set theURL to URL of front document

set selectedText to (do JavaScript "(''+getSelection())" in document 1)

set theDate to do shell script "date +'%d-%m-%Y'"

set the clipboard totheURL & return & selectedText & return & theDate as string

end tell

which does the trick very nicely. (I added the date to make it easier to do my references in college assignments.) I used Automator to save it as a Service and assigned a a keyboard shortcut (option + c). I believe this will speed up my workflow tremendously.

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Answer 2

izaakm

Level 1

4 points

Aug 24, 2013 9:19 AM in response to Jeffrey Gill

Thanks for this - very helpful!

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