Saving a PDF from Safari via Applescript

Question

Hello. I’m an Applescript neophyte and have run into a problem I cannot seem to solve and no amount of Google searches has found an answer for me. It seems a simple thing to do, but I cannot get Safari (5.1, Lion) to save a PDF that is loaded as the result of a script. The relevant portion of the script is this
tell application "Safari"
  save document 2 in file pdfDLNAME
end tell
In this example pdfDLNAME is a fully specified path, something like this:
Sarkany:Users:fenevad:Dropbox:Personal:Heenan_book:downloads:1776-07-18_New-York -Journal_page-3_4.pdf
Every time I try this it fails, regardless of whether the file exists or not. I get this error (allowing for changes in the variable value) in Safari:
The document “New-York, July 18” could not be saved as “1776-07-18_New-York-Journal_page-3_4.pdf”. The file doesn’t exist.
This result then causes problems for the AppleScript, which cannot procede as it should.
So the question I have is how simply to save a PDF loaded in Safari to a specified path location. I've seen some people suggest scripting the UI, but that is a pain when I have to determine the location for the download based on the script’s results.
Apologies if the answer is obvious to scripters, but it isn't obvious to me or to someone with more experience helping me.
Best regards,
Arle Lommel

Answer 1

arle lommel wrote:
That would probably be fine except that I need to save the file to a specified location based on other factors in the script and that location is not the same each time. I.e., saving to the desktop isn't really an option.
The previous script can easily be modified in order to do what you are asking for. Let's suppose for example that you want to save the PDF file to a folder named "Downloaded PDFs" in your Documents folder, under the name "A new PDF file.pdf":
set theFileName to "A new PDF file.pdf"
set theDestination to ((path to home folder) as text) & "Documents:Downloaded PDFs" as alias
tell application "Safari"
    activate
    tell application "System Events" to tell process "Safari"
        keystroke "s" using command down -- save as…
        delay 0.5
        keystroke theFileName
        delay 0.5
        keystroke "d" using command down -- save on desktop
        keystroke return -- save
        delay 0.5
        if sheet 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 exists then
            click button 1 of sheet 1 of sheet 1 of window 1 -- replace
        end if
    end tell
end tell
tell application "Finder" to move file theFileName of desktop to theDestination with replacing
Is there a reason why Safari can't use the save action?
Safari is only partially scriptable. It's not impossible that it can use the save action though. I just don't know how to do it.