Replace Existing Mapped Alias

[honda03v6]

New to Applescript and am in need of some help. This script creates an alias for our network drives just fine, but if the user deletes this "Network Drives" folder in the sidebar and needs it back again they have to run the script again but the issue is it makes another copy of the alias' again in this folder, which I do not want to happen I just want to have one set all the time no matter how often they run this script. I tried playing around with set tPath and set tName but I can't seem to get it right. Thanks in advance.

tell application "Finder"
try
make new folder at (path to startup disk as text) & "Applications" with properties {name:"Network Drives"}
on error error_message
display dialog "A Network Drives folder already exists in Applications. This will re-create a Network Drives shortcut in your sidebar"
end try

tell application "Finder"
set tPath to (path to startup disk as text) & "Applications:Network Drives"
set tName to "smb://network/1"
if exists alias (tPath & tName) then delete alias (tPath & tName)
make new alias at (path to startup disk as text) & "Applications:Network Drives" to mount volume "smb://network/1"
end tell

tell application "Finder"
activate
delay 1
select (path to startup disk as text) & "Applications:Network Drives"
delay 1
tell application "System Events" to tell process "Finder" to keystroke "t" using command down
close window 1
end tell
end tell

[hayne]

I haven't spent the time to look in detail at what you are doing, but usually you need to test to see if the link (or file or whatever) exists already and if so delete it before recreating it.

[ganbustein]

Aliases can be tricky to work with. For the most part, referring to an alias is the same as referring to what the alias points to. If you want to refer to an alias file itself, you have to refer to it as an "alias file" rather than as an "alias". And, of course, you also have to refer to it using its name, not the name of what it's pointing to. To make it easy to find the alias file later by name, create it with a name that you control.

Also, when appending to a foldername, you have to get an intervening colon in there somewhere. That is, when you write (tPath & tName), either tName should begin with a colon or, more usefully, tPath should end with one. It's easier to keep this straight if you follow the convention that a folder's path always ends with a colon. (All the path to ... as text constructs already do this.)

Instead of:

set tPath to (path to startup disk as text) & "Applications:Network Drives"
set tName to "smb://network/1"
if exists alias (tPath & tName) then delete alias (tPath & tName)
make new alias at (path to startup disk as text) & "Applications:Network Drives" to mount volume

say instead:

set tPath to (path to startup disk as text) & "Applications:Network Drives:"
set tName to "smb://network/1"
set aName to "network1 alias" -- or whatever. The name of the alias file itself
set aPath to tPath & aName
if exists alias file aPath then delete alias file aPath
make new alias file at tName with properties {name:aName} to mount volume "smb://network/1"

where I've highlighted in red the parts you should pay special attention to.


As an aside, it really seems to me that "/Applications" is not the best place to be storing things that are not applications. Maybe "/Library" would be a better place to create your "Network Drives" folder. That is:

set tPath to (path to startup disk as text) & "Library:Network Drives:"

[hayne]

By the way, you might want to look at the AppleScript written by yellow in this older thread: http://hintsforums.macworld.com/showthread.php?t=37778
It seems to have some useful error checking etc. Read through to the end of the thread to get all the improvements by yellow and other people.

[honda03v6]

Thanks for the help I now understand why aliases are very tricky to work with.

ganbustein,
I have done as you stated but I am getting this error - Can’t make "smb://network/1" into type item. This is happening on this line of the script - make new alias file at tName with properties {name:aName} to mount volume "smb://network/1"

Any thoughts on this error?

Thanks again

[honda03v6]

I got it straightened out:
make new alias file at tPath with properties {name:aName} to mount volume tName

Just switched out tName with tPath also added tName at the end instead of showing the full network path thanks again for your help!