AppleScript to download files from HTTP server, mutating the URL?

Question

I've never messed with AppleScript so this is only a concept to me. Can this work?

Bungie, the game designer, is hosting a ton of PNGs for Halo Reach in systematically named files and directories. IE:

http://www.bungie.net/images/reachstats/commendations/onyx/onyx_large_precision_multiplayer.png

Change two instances of the same word, and you generate another version of the image. Change "onyx" to "iron", "bronze", "silver" or "gold" and you get a corresponding image, like so:

http://www.bungie.net/images/reachstats/commendations/gold/gold_large_precision_multiplayer.png

Would an AppleScript be able to take an input URL, find and change the instances of the words in the URL, and then download the associated file to a directory? Today is my birthday (Oct 27th! hence the XXVII) and if this will work I would be super excited if someone could make this!

Thanks for all of your kind answers!

Answer 1

This works:

set the destination_file to ((path to desktop as string) & "picture.jpg") as file specification
set thisImageSRC to "http://www.bungie.net/images/reachstats/commendations/gold/gold_large_precision_multiplayer.png"
tell application "URL Access Scripting"
    download thisImageSRC to destination_file replacing yes
end tell

String manipulation is done completely with changing Applescript's text item delimiters. So to get the components of the URL into a list, you need to do the following:

set oldDelims to AppleScript's text item delimiters
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to "/"
set theUrlComponents to (every text item of theURL) as list
set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelims

Add salt to taste, but I agree with the first commenter that there are better languages to do this. Applescript would be my last choice here.