Ugly-ass script to convert recentsd-com.apple.mail.recents.plist to CSV for e-mailing purposes. Woohoo.

plist-to-tsv.rb

# encoding: UTF-8

####
# Ugly script that converts Mac OS X's recent history (recentsd-com.apple.mail.recents.plist) into a tsv (csv that is tab-delimited) 
# Dependency: nokogiri
# Usage: ruby plist-to-tsv.rb input.plist output.tsv
# Thanks to: https://gist.github.com/patrikjohansson/3896557
###

require "nokogiri"

if ARGV.size != 2
  puts "Usage: ruby plist-to-tsv.rb input.plist output"
end

input_file = File.open(ARGV[0])
output_file = File.open(ARGV[1], "w+")

results = []

def get_key_code(key)
  return case key
  when 's'
    :from
  when 'a'
    :to
  when 'n'
    :to_name
  else nil
  end
end

doc = Nokogiri::XML.parse(input_file)
doc.xpath("//dict/dict/dict").each do |dict|

  item = {}
  multi_bin = []
  last_key = nil      
  
  dict.children.each do |gc|
    next if gc.name == 'text'

    # binding.pry

    if gc.name == 'key'
      last_key = get_key_code(gc.inner_text)
    elsif gc.name == 'string'
      item[last_key] = gc.inner_text
    elsif gc.name == 'array'
      multi_last_key = nil
      gc.children.each do |ggc|
        next if ggc.name == 'text'
        if ggc.name == 'dict'
          multi_item = {}
          ggc.children.each do |gggc|
            if gggc.name == 'key'
              multi_last_key = get_key_code(gggc.inner_text)
            elsif gggc.name == 'string'
              multi_item[multi_last_key] = gggc.inner_text
            end
          end
          multi_bin << multi_item
        end
      end
      item[:multi] = multi_bin
    end
  end
  item[:multi] ||= []
  results << item
  
end

output_file.puts "from_address\to_name\tto_address"
results.each do |item|
  if item[:multi].empty?
    output_file.puts "#{item[:from]}\t#{item[:to_name]}\t#{item[:to]}"
  else
    item[:multi].each do |i|
      output_file.puts "#{item[:from]}\t#{i[:to_name]}\t#{i[:to]}"
    end
  end
end

output_file.close
input_file.close