Choose and copy folder

Question

Please help
I have a repetitive task that I do on a weekly basis between all the computers in my office.
I would like to be able to choose a folder such as the home folder then automatically it will back up to destination folder that I choose.
Each time the destination will be different
So lets say I am on station number one and I want to back it up I would have to go to the home folder and go into library and choose mail, calendar, preferences, and keychains and ect, then drag it to an external hard drive or a folder on the desktop.
I have multiple stations that I have to do this with and at times I use different locations on where to save them.
I know this is wrong but here is the idea.
-- I will choose the home folder
set the_source to choose folder
-- will choose lets say desktop folder that I have
set the_destination to choose folder
tell app "finder"
move folder (the_source & "Library:mail") to the_destination
move folder (the_source & "Library:calendars") to the_destination
--ect,ect,ect
end tell
I am grateful for any help on this

Answer 1

There are built-in locations that you can get paths for. One of them is the library folder from whatever user is running the script. The FInder's move command will move the items, but the command you are looking for is duplicate.
When building the file path, the choose folder command returns aliases - you will need to coerce everything to text, build your file path string, and then coerce back to an alias (if desired).
The following script will copy the_folders of the user library to a folder of your choice:
<pre style="
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title="this text can be pasted into the Script Editor">
-- copy user ~/Library folders
set the_destination to (choose folder with prompt "Were do you want to save?")
set the_source to path to library folder from user domain
set the_folders to {"Mail", "Calendars", "Preferences", "Keychains"}
repeat with some_folder in the_folders
get ((the_source as text) & some_folder) as alias
tell application "Finder" to duplicate the result to the_destination
end repeat
</pre>
I think the rsync utility would be a better choice for doing backups like this, since files that haven't changed won't be copied. There are several rsync based backup scripts and applications out there, or post back and I can modify one I use for your specific folders.