Action to store and retrieve variables - needs work

Scripting Forums Automator
#1

I’ve got two actions that store and retrieve arbirtrary “results” as variables so you can pick them up and reuse them in later steps in a workflow (for that matter, I think the variables are “valid” until you log out and log in again).

http://iharder.sourceforge.net/macosx/automator/Store%20and%20Retrieve%20Variables%20Automator%20Action.zip

I need some some help with them from some Applescript pros. When the stored variable is something specific to an application, like a list of contacts from Address Book, the script fails when reading the object back from disk. In Script Editor, I can get around this by telling Address Book to do the read operation, but this doesn’t work for general purpose store/retrieve variable actions.

Any help? The code’s public domain, so do what you want.

-Rob

#2

There are a couple options for storing and retrieving data during a workflow:

  1. Have your action write the info using the CLI user defaults command: do shell script "defaults write filepath/path/path preftowrite pref value. Then have a following action read the data back from the file

  2. Use the new Data Events application to create an SQLite database on the fly and have the other actions read from it.