I’m trying to write an AppleScript to manage defer dates and due dates programmatically. Importantly I want to treat the parent (is that the write word?) of an activity group differently from simple leaves.
The following script extracts properties from each row in a selected block of rows. My intention was to determine whether the item in a particular row was the parent of an Activity Group by using the count of its leaves, so that I could then then set dates for it accordingly. Unfortunately the critical part (commented out here) generates a “Can’t get defer date …” error.
tell application "OmniFocus" to tell content of front window
set theTasks to every selected tree
set ntasks to count of theTasks
set kount to 0
repeat with aTask in theTasks
set kount to kount + 1
tell aTask
log ">>>>> item: " & kount
set theName to its name
log "theName: " & theName
set theChildren to its leaves
set nChildren to the count of theChildren
log "theChildren: " & nChildren
(*
if nChildren > 0 then -- this is an Action Group
if defer date is not missing value then --
-- delete defer date
set defer date to missing value
end if -- delete defer date
end if
*)
end tell --atask
end repeat
end tell
In the next attempt (see script below), the first set statement is changed to get the value of every selected tree and this does give access to the defer dates - but the commented out part fails to get the number of children, giving the error: “Can’t get every leaf of task id …”.
tell application "OmniFocus" to tell content of front window
set theTasks to value of every selected tree
set ntasks to count of theTasks
set kount to 0
repeat with aTask in theTasks
set kount to kount + 1
tell aTask
log ">>>>> item: " & kount
set theName to its name
log "theName: " & theName
(*
set theChildren to its leaves
set nChildren to the count of theChildren
log "theChildren: " & nChildren
*)
if its defer date is not missing value then
set theStart to (its defer date as date)
log "theStart: " & theStart
end if
end tell --tree
end repeat
end tell
And so, in the hope of improving my meagre understanding, I have two questions for the forum:
- Why does specifying “value” change which properties are accessible?
- Is there a better strategy for my problem?
I apologise if the scripts demonstrate the problem are unnecessarily long. Please advise if there is a better way to include a script - I couldn’t see any pointers in the Forum.
Thank you.
