Automator: extract PDF text and save in current directory

Solution 1:

Here is the issue I ran into with the translation of "Hent ut PDF-tekst" in Google Translate while translating from Norwegian to English, it translated as "Get the PDF text" so when I typed "Get" in the Actions Search Box it didn't show any PDF Actions with the "Get" Actions that did show. Upon further examination I found Extract PDF Text and used it.

I was able to replicate the issue of a zero sized RTF file being created along with the one for the actual PDF file however I was not able to debug it as to why and I did try many different things. Through the Workflow it showed Bane as a Folder being the path to the selected PDF File but then converted it to the zero sized RTF along with the proper RTF file and to me it looks like a bug in Automator.

That said, I present a workaround that you can choose to use if no one else has an answer that resolves the issue without resorting to this workaround.

Add a Run Shell Script Action to the end of the list of Actions, setting Shell: /bin/bash and Pass input: as argument with the following code:

for f in "$@"; do
    if [ ! -s "$f" ]; then
        rm "$f"
    fi
done

Which translates to: If this file does not have a size greater than zero, then delete it.

BTW If you want to test the code first, you can temporarily replace rm "$f" with something like say deleting "$f" so you can hear what file it's going to delete. When satisfied it's going to delete the zero sized file, then put it back to rm "$f".

Here is an image of my Automator Service.