Question

I’ve been trying to write to a file the results of an xmlhttp GET request. I have tried the code below:

set the_file to "/Users/xxxx/Documents/outputvals.txt" as file specification

set the_data to costItems

try
    open for access the_file with write permission
set eof of the_file to 0
write (the_data) to the_file starting at eof as list
close access the_file
end try

However it doesn’t seem to write anything to the file. Ideally I want to write the xml ‘costItems’ to the end of a text file.

Answer 1

Generally, if you want to do anything with a file or folder, it must be a complete alias reference. Just change as file specification to as POSIX file as alias and that part will work!

Also, remove the as list and delete the line set eof of the_file to 0. Assuming the file already contains information, you’re basically telling the script that the end of the file is the beginning of the file.

I hope this helps!

EDIT: I don’t know why your code isn’t working properly (it does for me). Well, I guess you could try the following (kind of hacky, though, but oh well 😛 )

tell application "Finder"
    try
        set the_file to "/Users/xxxx/Documents/outputvals.txt" as POSIX file as alias
    on error --file doesn't exist yet, so create it
        set the_file to (make new document file at ("/Users/xxxx/Documents/" as POSIX file as alias) with properties {name:"outputvals", text:""}) 
        --Normally, when you're creating documents in this fashion, you would put the text you want in the document after the 'text' property, but for your sake I will use the alternative :)
    end try
end tell
set the_data to costItems
try
    open for access the_file with write permission
    write the_data to file the_file starting at eof
    close access the_file
on error --you never know when errors will crop up (when it comes to reading and writing files); better to be safe than sorry
    try
        close access the_file
    end try
end try