Scripting sherlock

[Jeff Spall]

Hi, I'm passing a filename from FileMaker to Sherlock which should do a search and return a file path (the filename should always be unique).

This will work OK, except that Shelock defaults to doing a search on "by content"

What's the command to make it search by file name??

thanks, jeff

[Lee Smith]

I don't think you can change the preferences of how Sherlock defaults. You might be able to do this with AppleScript, but maybe if you tell us what you are trying to accomplish, we can come up with a better alternative.

Lee

[Jeff Spall]

Hi, here's what I'm doing, sorry, it's a bit of a long explanation!:

I'm using FileMaker to record and provide a web interface for an automated publishing workflow.

Customer's adverts come in as digital files and are checked by our workflow.

This writes a report into FileMaker and also as a text file that goes into the folder of the job.

The difficulty comes because the name of the folder or thejob file may be changed manually, so I am now including in the folder a little blank text file which is titled with the Filemaker record number. This will always stay with the job, no matter what else changes.

So, If I can automate a search for that file, I can set a Filemaker field with the file's directory path and link the old and new names back together. Result: no job gets lost! If I have this directory path, then I can use FileMaker to control an automatic pdf creation queue through the web interface.

It's all working, except for the find file bit!

thanks, jeff

[Fenton]

That's a clever idea, writing the blank text file with the FileMaker ID. I'm surprised, opening the Sherlock 2 AppleScript dictionary in OS 9, that it does not give you the option to search file names only. Lame. Perhaps it's better on OS X?

Otherwise the Troi File plug-in has a file search function, which would be FileMaker scriptable. It's very fast.

[Jeff Spall]

Hi, I've downloaded a copy of the Troi plug-in and it looks like it will do just what I want, so I'm going to try that. I've heard the name a lot, but never looked at their products before.

There's lots of info for scripting Sherlock for the Intertnet, but almost nothing for automating the basic functions!

thanks, jeff