Applescript Copy file to a new folder

Question

I need to create an AppleSript that will copy specified files from one folder to a newly created folder.

These files need to be specified in the AppleScript editor so something like:

start

fileToBeMoved = "Desktop/Test Folder 1/test.doc"
newfoldername = "Test Folder 2"

make newfolder and name it 'newfoldername'
copy 'fileToBeMoved' to 'newfolder'

end

Solution 1

Generally:

tell application "Finder"
  make new folder at alias "Macintosh HD:Users:user:Desktop:" with properties {name:"Test Folder 2"}
  copy file "Macintosh HD:Users:user:Desktop:Test Folder 1:test.doc" to folder "Macintosh HD:Users:user:Desktop:Test Folder 2"
end tell

You can add variable names that represent POSIX files and paths.

Obviously the colon character (:) is a reserved character for folder- and filenames.

set desktopFolder to "Macintosh HD/Users/user/Desktop/"
set desktopFdrPosix to quoted form of POSIX path of desktopFolder
set newFolderName to "Test Folder 2"
set destinationFdrPosix to quoted form of desktopFdrPosix & POSIX file newFolderName
set sourceFilename to "Test Folder 1/test.doc"
set sourceFnPosix to quoted form of desktopFdrPosix & POSIX file sourceFilename

tell application "Finder"
  make new folder at alias desktopFdrPosix with properties {name:newFolderName}
  copy file sourceFnPosix to folder destinationFdrPosix
end tell    

You may also want to add error checking if the destination folder already exists.

Solution 2

The trick with AppleScript is that moving files is done using aliases.

More realistically it might be easier to make a shell script instead which can be run from AppleScript using do shell script if you're using Automator or something similar.

#!/bin/sh

fileToBeMoved="$HOME/Desktop/Test Folder 1/test.doc"
newFolderName="Test Folder 2"
mkdir "$newFolderName"
cp -a "$fileToBeMoved" "$newFolderName"

Solution 3

This works for copying to a mounted network volume:

    mount volume "afp://compname.local/mountpoint"
    tell application "Finder"
      duplicate file "MyTextFile.txt" of folder "Documents" of home to disk "mountpoint"
      eject "mountpoint"
    end tell

Comments

[aayush sharma]

Its good to use this method over the applescript ones cause sometimes you might have permission issues and using this way helps then.

[damianostre]

The downsides of this are: User won't see a progress bar if the copy takes longer. User can't cancel, either, for the same reason. Supporting these operations with a shell command will be a lot harder than simply letting the Finder do it. Downside of Applescripting the Finder, though: If the user chooses to use a replacement "Finder" app, the Applescript operation may fail (not sure about this, probably depends on how well the replacement is written).

[damianostre]

Another plus for using the Finder: If the destination item exists, the user will be asked to replace or not.

[nekno]

What do I need to change to copy to a folder on a mounted SMB file share? I have the folder "Movies" on a share mounted at /Volumes/Video. I tried creating a quoted form of POSIX path for Video, Video/Movies, /Volumes/Video, and /Volumes/Video/Movies, for both copy file and duplicate file, with either to folder or to disk. None of them worked. All give the error: execution error: Finder got an error: Can't set folder (or disk) "'/Volumes/Video/Movies'" to file "'/Users/me/path/to/file.m4v'". (-10006)