Question

I’m finishing a business card production flow (excel > xml > indesign > single page pdfs) and I would like to insert the employees’ names in the filenames.

What I have now:

BusinessCard_01_Blue.pdf
BusinessCard_02_Blue.pdf
BusinessCard_03_Blue.pdf (they are gonna go up to the hundreds)

What I need (I can manipulate the name list with regex easily):

BusinessCard_01_CarlosJorgeSantos_Blue.pdf
BusinessCard_02_TaniaMartins_Blue.pdf
BusinessCard_03_MarciaLima_Blue.pdf

I’m a Java and Python toddler. I’ve read the related questions, tried this in Automator (Mac) and Name Mangler, but couldn’t get it to work.

Thanks in advance,
Gus

Answer 1

If you have a list of names in the same order the files are produced, in Python it goes like this untested fragment:

#!/usr/bin/python
import os

f = open('list.txt', 'r')
for n, name in enumerate(f):
    original_name = 'BusinessCard_%02d_Blue.pdf' % (n + 1)
    new_name = 'BusinessCard_%02d_%s_Blue.pdf' % (
                             n, ''.join(name.title().split()))
    if os.path.isfile(original_name):
        print "Renaming %s to %s" % (original_name, new_name),
        os.rename(original_name, new_name)
        print "OK!"
    else:
        print "File %s not found." % original_name