Renaming PDF based on specific date found

[MyVizDrake]

Hi everyone!

Organize and regex noob here ...

Trying to find a replacement for the MacOS app Hazel and one of the really cool features is to specify in the content match which date to capture as a variable in order to do date-math. Best example is a Credit Card billing statement which has things like ...

Billing Period: 03/12/24-04/09/24

In the above case I would tell Hazel to match the 2nd date (04/09/24) and then rename the file to 'some_credit_card_202404.pdf' and move it somewhere. Manipulating the detected 2nd date from MM/DD/YY to be YYYYMM.

I think it can kind of be done with - filecontent: '^Billing Period: \d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{2}-(?P<statement_date>.*)' to capture 04/09/24 as statement_date but when I run organize sim on the PDF in question it reports "Nothing to do"

It's possible my action is messed up and it can't figure out what to do. I was simply trying to find the file(s) first and then simply show I captured the variable.

I am running organize via a scoop.sh installation of Python (3.13) and have poppler installed via scoop.sh as well. I can confirm that I can run pdf2totext on the PDF in question from a shell and I get a txt version of the PDF in question.

The config

  - name: "Test Rule"
    locations: "D:\\Folder 1\\Folder 2\\Folder 3\\Files"
    subfolders: true
    filters:
      - extension: pdf
      - filecontent: '^Billing Period: \d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{2}-(?P<statement_date>.*)'
    actions: 
      - echo: 'Found a {extension.upper()} with a credit card statement date of "{statement_date}": "{name}"'

I also did a basic check of the regex on the string in question (regex101.com) and it behaved as-expected.

What have I done wrong?

Thanks in advance!

Scott

Bonus points if you can give me a hint as to how to how to manipulate the statement date from MM/DD/YY to YYYYMM but I suspect I'll need to use the python action to handle that part. Baby steps 1st. :-)

[rkuzner]

Hi @MyVizDrake!

I Had a similar problem trying to match credit card statements with start and end dates for billing periods.
The rule I got finally working goes like this (many filecontent conditions removed & without PII):

  - name: "Card Statemenst: Bank XYZ"
    enabled: true
    tags:
      - pdf_rename
    locations: *bank_folders
    targets: files
    filters:
      - name
      - extension:
        - pdf
    #  - filecontent
      - filecontent: 'Period[ ]+(?P<period_start_day>\d{2}\/\d{2}\/\d{2,4})[ ]+to[ ]+(?P<statement_day>\d{2})\/(?P<statement_month>\d{2})\/(?P<statement_year>\d{2,4})'
    actions:
      - python:
          run_in_simulation: yes
          code: |
            statement_full_year = filecontent["statement_year"]
            if len(statement_full_year) <= 2:
              statement_full_year = "20" + statement_full_year

            target_filename_date = statement_full_year+"-"+filecontent["statement_month"]+"-"+filecontent["statement_day"]+" "
            target_filename_desc = " Account-"+name[-4:]

            return {
              "target_folder": "Banks/XYZ/"+statement_full_year,
              "target_filename": target_filename_date+"-"+target_filename_desc+".pdf",
            }
    #  - echo: "Contents : {filecontent}"
    #  - echo: "Target Folder   : {python.target_folder}"
    #  - echo: "Target Filename : {python.target_filename}"
      - move:
          dest: "~/OneDrive/Documents/Statements/{python.target_folder}/{python.target_filename}"
          on_conflict: "skip"
 

as per debbugging the rule, I start with a broad filter & gradually uncommenting fine grainded filter conditions

      - filecontent
    #  - filecontent: 'Bank XYZ'
    #  - filecontent: 'Monthly Statement'
    ```

and uncommented actions
``` 
      - echo: "Contents : {filecontent}"

Some other things to note:

• I use regex101 for testing & refining regex expressions (always with output from the "echo contents")
• Some Banks have their PDF statements encrypted, sometimes with password and sometimes without password (blank password), in either case I use QPDF to detect & remove encryption. Some PDF previewers try the empty password and if it works show the PDF without any hint that it was encrypted, thus organize might not be able to read its contents.

I hope this helps!

[joev2]

@MyVizDrake, a couple of comments, in case you haven't found a solution yet:

"Nothing to do" means your filter is failing to match the file. It's not obvious to me why it's failing, but it's likely because of something subtle with the regex and the exact formatting in your PDF file. You can run

    python -m organize.filters.filecontent "/path/to/file.pdf"

to see what text the filecontent filter is trying to match against.

Bank statements can vary in their formatting. My first guess would be ^Billing -- maybe there's a space before the "Billing Period" text that's causing ^Billing to fail to match. For another example, notice how @rkuzner used \d{2,4} to match a year of 2 to 4 digits, instead of \d{2}, and also [ ]+ to match one or more spaces.

I would also suggest you use something more specific than .* to match the statement closing date, as it will also match anything else on the line after the date, like spaces or other characters. But that isn't causing your filter to fail.

One more tip: If you like, you can use {path} to display the full path of the matched file, instead of {name}.