Create Plist using Automator/AppleScript/Perl

Question

I have several folders of images and would like to create a plist containing the file's name and the name of the folder its in too.

For example:

YELLOW
    MARKIN.PNG
    MARKOUT.PNG
BLUE
    ARROW.PNG
    RAZOR.PNG

I would like a plist, with an array root node, containing dictionaries such that:

<plist version="1.0">
<array>
    <dict>
        <key>name</key>
        <string>MARKIN</string>
        <key>colour</key>
        <string>YELLOW</string>
    </dict>
</array>
</plist>

Is this achievable using Applescript or automator or other programming language? I have about 60 images in 7 folders, and to type everything manually would be a real pain.

Thanks

Answer 1

Most code here is massaging your directory structure into the data structure you need:

use strict; use warnings;
use Data::Plist::XMLWriter;

my @plist;

for my $root_dir (@ARGV) {
    opendir my $ROOT_DIR, $root_dir
        or die $!;

    my @dir_contents = map { s[\.\w\w\w$][]; $_ } 
                       grep { not -d } 
                       readdir $ROOT_DIR;

    push @plist, { colour => $root_dir, name => $_ }
        for @dir_contents;
}

my $writer = Data::Plist::XMLWriter->new;
my $str    = $writer->write( \@plist );

print $str;

This results in:

$ ls -l YELLOW BLUE
BLUE:
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 psilva adm 0 2010-11-12 14:53 ARROW.PNG
-rw-r--r-- 1 psilva adm 0 2010-11-12 14:53 RAZOR.PNG

YELLOW:
total 0
-rw-r--r-- 1 psilva adm 0 2010-11-12 14:53 MARKIN.PNG
-rw-r--r-- 1 psilva adm 0 2010-11-12 14:53 MARKOUT.PNG
$ perl tmp.pl YELLOW BLUE
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">

<plist version="1.0">
        <array>
                <dict>
                        <key>colour</key>
                        <string>YELLOW</string>
                        <key>name</key>
                        <string>MARKOUT</string>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                        <key>colour</key>
                        <string>YELLOW</string>
                        <key>name</key>
                        <string>MARKIN</string>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                        <key>colour</key>
                        <string>BLUE</string>
                        <key>name</key>
                        <string>ARROW</string>
                </dict>
                <dict>
                        <key>colour</key>
                        <string>BLUE</string>
                        <key>name</key>
                        <string>RAZOR</string>
                </dict>
        </array>
</plist>

Answer 2

The System Events library has the basic tools to create a plist file and add elements. Sample code taken from the Mac OS X Automation website:

tell application "System Events"
 -- create an empty property list dictionary item
 set the parent_dictionary to make new property list item with properties {kind:record}
 -- create new property list file using the empty dictionary list item as contents
 set the plistfile_path to "~/Desktop/example.plist"
 set this_plistfile to ¬
 make new property list file with properties {contents:parent_dictionary, name:plistfile_path}
 -- add new property list items of each of the supported types
 make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
 with properties {kind:boolean, name:"booleanKey", value:true}
 make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
 with properties {kind:date, name:"dateKey", value:current date}
 make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
 with properties {kind:list, name:"listKey"}
 make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
 with properties {kind:number, name:"numberKey", value:5}
 make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
 with properties {kind:record, name:"recordKey"}
 make new property list item at end of property list items of contents of this_plistfile ¬
 with properties {kind:string, name:"stringKey", value:"string value"}
end tell