Scheduled file sorting with Ruby

Question

I have a script running as an hourly cron job. It finds all screenshots on the Desktop and moves them to directories sorted by year/month/day.

On MacOS, screenshots are automatically saved to the desktop with the following filename structure:

"/Users/<USER>/Desktop/Screen Shot 2019年01月02日 at 11.56.42 AM.png"

require 'fileutils'
class Screenshot
 attr_reader :filepath
 def initialize(filepath)
 @filepath = filepath
 end
 def dir_exists?
 File.exists?(destination) || FileUtils.mkdir_p(destination)
 end
 def date
 @date ||= filepath.match(screenshot_regex)
 end
 def move
 FileUtils.mv(filepath, destination) if dir_exists?
 end
 def base_path
 "/Users/home/Pictures/Screenshots"
 end
 def destination
 "#{base_path}/#{date[:year]}/#{date[:month]}/#{date[:day]}"
 end
 def screenshot_regex
 /Shot (?<year>(.*))-(?<month>(.*))-(?<day>(.*)) at/
 end
end
class Screenshots
 attr_reader :directory
 def initialize(directory)
 @directory = directory
 end
 def filepaths
 Dir.glob("#{directory}/Screen Shot*.png")
 end
 def files
 filepaths.map{|i| Screenshot.new(i)}
 end
 def move_all
 files.each(&:move)
 end
end
Screenshots.new("/Users/home/Desktop").move_all

I'm sure there's a less messy approach here and I'd love to hear any criticism.

Answer 1

Your program is over-engineered in a way that makes it hard to decipher. Because every method is one line long, it's like reading a poem whose lines have been scrambled. You would be much better off writing a simple function, like this:

require 'fileutils'
def move_screenshots(src_dir, dest_tree)
 re = /^Screen Shot (?<year>\d{4})-(?<month>\d{2})-(?<day>\d{2}) at/
 Dir.foreach(src_dir) do |filename|
 if date = re.match(filename)
 dest_dir = "#{dest_tree}/#{date[:year]}/#{date[:month]}/#{date[:day]}"
 FileUtils.mkdir_p(dest_dir)
 FileUtils.mv("#{src_dir}/#{filename}", dest_dir)
 end
 end
end
move_screenshots("/Users/home/Desktop", "/Users/home/Pictures/Screenshots")

I wouldn't bother with Dir#glob, since it's a bit redundant with the regex. Note that screenshots aren't necessarily in PNG format: the image format can be configured using defaults write com.apple.screencapture type .... I also wouldn't bother testing File#exists? before calling FileUtils#mkdir_p, since mkdir_p implicitly performs that check anyway.

Instead of an hourly cron job, consider creating a Folder Action Script that is triggered instantly when a file is added to the folder.

• nope: I started off with something similar but broke it apart into those classes mostly for fun, but also with the intent to eventually revisit and expand it to target other common filetypes that might end up on my desktop. Wanted to use these as a starting point for that. Awesome suggestion on the folder action scripts. I had no idea.
• nope: Imagining for a second that this is part of a larger program, would this be an acceptable way to interact with a collection of object x that all need action y performed on them (separate class to represent the collection, mapping the seed data into a group of x instances, then calling y on each from within the collection obj)? Or would I still be overcomplicating it?
• 200_success: If your program needs to be extensible, or if the classes are polymorphic in more than one method, then OOP might be worthwhile. Otherwise, you are probably overcomplicating it. Post a separate question with a specific use case, if you are unsure.