Noodlesoft Forums

Hi,
I want Hazel to go into custom document properties of pdf files.
These custom properties are added to the files in former workflows.
For example:
custom property = "colormode"
value = "cmyk"

Now I want Hazel to look for these custom values for further handling.

Possible ? Maybe with a script ?


Thanks,
Jorg

Yes, there are several ways that you can access this kind of custom data. But first, you need to know the actual name of the custom property.

To do this, open terminal, and run mdls on the file:

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mdls /path/to/my/file.pdf

Scan the result for what you're interested in, and make a note of the name of the property. Odds are, it will have a prefix like kMDItemCustomProperty.

Matching based on known custom properties

If you want to MATCH based on a property's value, you can do this:

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if [ "$(mdls -name kMDItemName "$1"  | awk -F " = " '{print $2}')" == "THE VALUE THAT YOU ARE INTERESTED IN MATCHING" ];then exit 0; else exit 1; fi

And place this embedded script within an "passes shell script" condition. Your rule will match every file whose custom property is what you're interested in finding.


Using custom properties as tokens
You can use this applescript and applescript hazel tokens to extract custom field information.

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set posixPath to quoted form of (POSIX path of theFile) as string
set theCustomToken to (do shell script "/usr/bin/mdls -name kMDItemName " & posixPath & " | awk -F ' = ' '{print $2}'")
return {hazelExportTokens:{theCustomTokenValue:theCustomToken}}

Then you can use the token however you'd like!

Thanks for your reply.

I tried running mdls on a test-pdf with a custom property "test" and its value "testvalue" added.
Unfortunatelly mdls doesn´t list them.

This is the output:

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mdls /Users/jpreussmann/Desktop/Test.pdf
kMDItemContentCreationDate          = 2013-03-13 12:05:25 +0000
kMDItemContentModificationDate      = 2013-03-13 12:05:42 +0000
kMDItemContentType                  = "com.adobe.pdf"
kMDItemContentTypeTree              = (
    "com.adobe.pdf",
    "public.data",
    "public.item",
    "public.composite-content",
    "public.content"
)
kMDItemDateAdded                    = 2013-03-13 12:05:25 +0000
kMDItemDisplayName                  = "Test.pdf"
kMDItemEncodingApplications         = (
    "Enfocus PitStop Pro 10, update 3"
)
kMDItemFSContentChangeDate          = 2013-03-13 12:05:42 +0000
kMDItemFSCreationDate               = 2013-03-13 12:05:25 +0000
kMDItemFSCreatorCode                = "CARO"
kMDItemFSFinderFlags                = 8
kMDItemFSHasCustomIcon              = 0
kMDItemFSInvisible                  = 0
kMDItemFSIsExtensionHidden          = 0
kMDItemFSIsStationery               = 0
kMDItemFSLabel                      = 4
kMDItemFSName                       = "Test.pdf"
kMDItemFSNodeCount                  = 8948
kMDItemFSOwnerGroupID               = 20
kMDItemFSOwnerUserID                = 501
kMDItemFSSize                       = 8948
kMDItemFSTypeCode                   = "PDF "
kMDItemKind                         = "Adobe PDF document"
kMDItemLastUsedDate                 = 2013-03-13 12:30:37 +0000
kMDItemLogicalSize                  = 8948
kMDItemNumberOfPages                = 1
kMDItemPageHeight                   = 841.89
kMDItemPageWidth                    = 595.276
kMDItemPhysicalSize                 = 12288
kMDItemSecurityMethod               = "None"
kMDItemUseCount                     = 2
kMDItemUsedDates                    = (
    "2013-03-12 23:00:00 +0000"
)
kMDItemVersion                      = "1.6"
kMDLabel_kqde5prblvaibjifrcn4saxjwi = 2013-03-13 12:07:00 +0000

Alright, lets move from here. In what program/workflow are you entering these custom values?

Acrobat Pro

my custom properties seem to become xmp metadata:

If I'm not mistaken, exiftool can read this. If you'd like, install and try:

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/usr/bin/exiftool -XMP -b /my/pdf.pdf

Success !
It works with exiftool.

This is the script with the few changes for exiftool, with "AN" as the custom XMP property:

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set posixPath to quoted form of (POSIX path of theFile) as string
set AN to (do shell script "/usr/bin/exiftool -AN " & posixPath & " | awk -F ' : ' '{print $2}'")
return {hazelExportTokens:{Auftragsnummer:AN}}

In fact the only thing to remember is to change the delimiter from "=" to ":"

a_freyer, thanks for your ideas ...

Great! I'm glad you found success!

My many doubts have been clear after reading the above things as I was also little bit confused about it.