Safari-URL to Dropbox file

noreaux

After reading macsories.com's article on Pythonista I had to try the app :)

The problem is, that I don't know Python (but I have some very basic programming skills).

I would like to create a Safari bookmarklet, which, when tapped, will save the current URL to a Dropbox file. It would be ideal if the file was a clickable html file (like a .webloc file), which will open the side in Safari.

So I started and with syncing my Pytonista files to a Dropbox folder, which works great.

Next I made a bookmarklet, which gets the URL:

javascript:window.location='pythonista://get_url?action=run&argv='+encodeURIComponent(document.location.href);

and which shows the result in this script (from a user of this forum):

import sys
import pprint
import console

console.clear()

pprint.pprint(sys.argv[1:])

This all works. So the next step is, to change the URL to text. And here starts my problem.

I have tried to modify different codes I found on the internet, but I cannot do this thing. By trying things like

input_file = sys.argv[1:]
s = input_file
s = urllib.quote(s.encode('utf-8'))

and similar I get syntax or encoding errors. I other words: I don't know what to do :-P

The next problem is to get the URL into a file, which can be synced with Dropbox. I searched a bit and it seems that appending the text to a Notesy file would be the easiest.

I tried to modify different scripts (mostly from macstories and macdrifter), like:

from dropboxlogin import get_client
dropbox_client = get_client()
import clipboard
import keychain
import time
import console
import sys
import webbrowser
import httplib

input_file = sys.argv[1:]
s = input_file
s = urllib.quote(s.encode('utf-8'))

#response = dropbox_client.put_file('/URL_Paste/' + titles +)

print "uploaded!", #response

time.sleep(3) # delay for 3 seconds

console.clear()

def main():
	dropbox_client = get_client()
	f, meta = dropbox_client.get_file_and_metadata('/URL_Paste/URL_File.txt')
	content = f.read() # can use readlines here to get list of lines
#	print 'file content:'
#	clipboard.set(last)
	console.clear()
#	print last
	webbrowser.open(last)
	
if __name__ == '__main__':
	main()

and

import sys
import webbrowser
import clipboard
import urllib

input_file = sys.argv[1:]

s = input_file

s = urllib.quote(s.encode('utf-8'))

webbrowser.open('notesy://x-callback-url/append?path=URL/URL_File.txt' + s)

But this won't work either :-P

So now I am looking for some help with this. The best way would be:
bookmarklet -> creating a http://....com.html file -> Dropbox-sync via Pythonista -> auto-switch-back to Safari

But I am not sure if this is possible. If it is not possible to create a html file (like a .webloc file), a text file with the URL would be okay to.

I thought also of something like:
bookmarklet -> creating a clickable html file -> Adding file and Dropbox-syncing the file via Nostey app -> auto-switch-back to Safari

If anyone has some tips for even a single step so that I will achieve this workaround, I will be very happy :)

Greetings, Timo

omz

First off, switching back to Safari isn't really possible without opening another tab. The problem is that the http URL scheme is currently always handled by Pythonista's internal browser. I plan to add an option to open web pages in Safari, but it's not there yet. If you're okay with opening another browser tab, you could sort-of work around this by using the little-known ftp or x-web-search URL schemes, e.g.:

import webbrowser
# This will show an error page but do nothing else:
webbrowser.open('ftp://')
# or:
# This will do a web search for "foo":
webbrowser.open('x-web-search://?foo')

Next: sys.argv is a list (sequence) and Python has some special syntax for slicing and dicing sequences which you're probably not familiar with. The expression sys.argv[1:] that you've used actually extracts all elements beginning from the second, so the result will also be a list and not a string. To get just the second element, use sys.argv[1] (note the missing colon!). This will be a string (well, assuming that the script was started with arguments).

This also applies to your Notesy sample. That's probably where you should continue experimenting. Doing this with the Notesy URL scheme will probably be easier at first than to upload a webloc file to Dropbox via script (but that's also possible of course).

noreaux

Hi :)

thank You for the tips (and for correcting code to pre) :) . It helped a lot. Here is what I got and it seems to work (without the '#'):

import webbrowser
import sys
import clipboard

#s = sys.argv[1]

#clipboard.set(s)

#webbrowser.open('notesy://x-callback-url/append?path=URL/&name=abc.webloc&text=' + s)

So my bookmarklet creates now a abc.webloc file (which is just a txt file) in the folder "URL" and the webside's URL in it. Now the next step is to create a real webloc file.

Using the code form above works, but it seems to have a bug. When I try to sync via dropboxsync (code from this forum), there appears an error in the dorpboxsync file: "IndexError: list index out of range" it the line "import pickle" from the dropboxsync file. When I add the '#' like it is now in the code above, the dropbox sync works.

Any ideas?

@omz
Do You know the app 'EvernoteWebClipper'? It does the circle:

Safari -> Bookmarklet -> Opens EvernoteWebClipper -> Starts snycing with Evernote -> Switches back to Safari -> Reloads the page from earlier

So there seems to be a way to get back to Safari. I will do some research in a free minute :)

For now thanks again, Timo

omz

I didn't say it's impossible in general to switch back to Safari, just that it's currently impossible to do with Pythonista. To switch back to Safari, you would need to open the URL you came from, but http URLs are currently opened in Pythonista's internal browser. I plan to make that optional.

noreaux

Hi,

sorry I didn't meant to offend You. Now I understand the situation. Thanks for the feedback :)

viticci

I don't know if this is exactly what you're looking for, but I have a script that takes a URL via bookmarklet and makes it an HTML in Dropbox, using the Instapaper parser to clean up a webpage. It also assumes you are logged into Dropbox using the module and keychain method Ole linked to somewhere on the forums.


import clipboard
import urllib2
import console
from dropboxlogin import get_client
dropbox_client = get_client()
import keychain
import time
import webbrowser
import sys
import urllib
import bs4

numArgs = len(sys.argv)

console.clear()

if numArgs < 2:
	url = clipboard.get()
	console.show_activity()

	soup = bs4.BeautifulSoup(urllib.urlopen(url))
	title = soup.title.string
	name = title.encode('utf-8')

	console.hide_activity()
	
else:
	webpage = sys.argv[1]
	name = webpage.encode('utf-8')
	url = sys.argv[2]

insta = 'http://instapaper.com/text?u='

URL = insta + url

print 'Generating HTML file...'

getText = urllib2.Request(URL)
openText = urllib2.urlopen(getText)
content = (openText.read().decode('utf-8'))

final = content.encode('utf-8')

print 'Uploading HTML file to Dropbox...'

#Dropbox folder to put file into
response = dropbox_client.put_file('/HTMLs/' + name + '.html', final)

print 'Your HTML file has been uploaded'

print 'Converting to PDF...'

time.sleep(15)

encoded = urllib.quote(name, safe='')

urlstring = 'x-icabmobile://x-callback-url/open?url=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/yourDropboxPublicID/' + encoded + '.html.pdf'

webbrowser.open(urlstring)

On my Mac mini, I have Hazel moving .html files into my Public directory, which is what iCab is opening with a default URL (your Dropbox ID).

noreaux

Hi viticci,

thank You for Your script. It's very nice. I hadn't thought of such a thing :)

My original intention was a bit different. I want to send open tabs from mobile Safari to Safari on the Mac. I use the Reeder app for checking my news and if I find there is something interesting, I open the article in Safari. Because Safari has it's limitation to 8 tabs and because I sometimes like to continue my reading on my Mac, I was searching for a solution.

Of course I had thought and tried apps like Instapaper or Pocket. But I don't like reading on the iPhone with these apps; on the Mac I think they are even worse.

iCould on the other hand is okay, but not ideal. It takes many taps to open all tabs from the iPhone on the Mac (I have a Keyboard Maestro shortcut which does the work for me hehe). So I searched for something else. And than I read about Pythonista on Macstories.

Right know I am working with my last script from above. Pythonista fetches the URL, Notesy uploads it. Hazel on the Mac watches the Notesy folder and starts an Automator workflow, which opens the URL in Safari. I couldn't figure out how to create a working webloc file, which Safari could open directly, so I did this Automator workflow. Finally Prowl on the iPhone informs me when the work is done.

This all isn't great, but it works (some kind of) and comes close to my wishes.

The next thing for me to do is to get rid of the Notesy step, but right now I cannot figure out how it works (I have some errors, mentioned in my earlier post). But I will keep on trying :)

omz

Just a little pointer for the webloc file: You can use plistlib to create such a file pretty easily:

import plistlib
webloc = {'URL': 'http://google.com'}
plistlib.writePlist(webloc, 'bookmark.webloc')

Of course you would still have to figure out how to upload that file etc., but maybe it's a start... I'm not sure if you can upload a file with a webloc extension with Notesy, but if you can, you could also use plistlib.writePlistToString(webloc) to create the text content of the webloc file.

noreaux

My actual code looks like this:

import sys
from dropboxlogin import get_client
dropbox_client = get_client()

s = sys.argv[1]

#Dropbox folder to put file into
response = dropbox_client.put_file('/URL/link.txt', s)

So Notesy isn't necessary anymore.

omz, I tried Your webloc suggestion, but all it does for me is to create a txt file with the link in it, not a real webloc.

The other thing is there script creates for each part of an URL a separate folder, if the Dropbox line looks like this:

response = dropbox_client.put_file('/URL/' + s + '.txt', s)

The strange folder structure for a link like e.g. http://www.google.com/files/new/newfile.txt looks like this:

/http
-/files
--/new
---/http://www.google.com/files/new/newfile.txt

Any idea why this happens?

omz

omz, I tried Your webloc suggestion, but all it does for me is to create a txt file with the link in it, not a real webloc.

Your code shows that you're always uploading a file with a .txt extension, you would have to change that to .webloc for Safari to recognize the file.

To avoid creating the nested folders, you would have to replace the slashes in your URL with something else.

noreaux

Hi there :)

I had some free minutes and tried to word on my code:

import sys
from dropboxlogin import get_client
dropbox_client = get_client()
import datetime
import plistlib

s = sys.argv[1]

w = plistlib.writePlistToString(s)

fmt = '%Y-%m-%d_%H-%M-%S'

dt = str(datetime.datetime.now().strftime(fmt))

newname = 'Link_' + dt + '.webloc'

#Dropbox folder to put file into
response = dropbox_client.put_file('/URL/' + newname, w)

It does everything I want it to do, but there seems to be something wrong with the webloc file.

While a working webloc file looks like (I have replaced the '<' with a '(' and '>' with a ')' ):

(?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?)
(!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd")
(plist version="1.0")
(dict)
	(key)URL(/key)
	(string)http://www.omz-software.com/(/string)
(/dict)
(/plist)

the file my script creates looks like:

(?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?)
(!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd")
(plist version="1.0")
(string)http://www.omz-software.com(/string)
(/plist)

It opens an empty Safari page on the Mac. When I add the missing

(dict)(key)URL(/key)...(/dict)

the webloc file works.

Am I doing something wrong?

omz

Assuming s is just your URL, you should save the webloc file like this:

...
w = plistlib.writePlistToString({'URL': s})
...

The curly braces are important to make it a dictionary.

Howdy, Stranger!

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