Alfred Bear Workflow

This workflow should help to use templates in combination with the bear app.

I created one once, which is far less customizable. Now I moved to a node version of this workflow where templates can use placeholders whose values can come from node scripts. 

Link to GitHub Repo.

Installation

npm install --global alfred-bear

Usage

While creating note templates with static content can be useful, having the possibility to use dynamic placeholder from any source I want is really great. That's why I built this workflow.

To get an idea how this should work, take a look at an example: the Jira Ticket

The idea is that there is a index.yml which contains a list of your templates and some optional variables to configure the template behavior.

The Index

the index.yml has the following form

templates:
  - title: "Weekly Review"
    file: "weekly-review/template.md"
    script: "weekly-review/script.js"
    newWindow: true
    var:
      myFirstVar: "Hello "
      mySecond: "World!"
    question: "Any Subtitle?"

  - title: "Jira Ticket"
    ...

title

The title is shown in the template list to choose from. 

file

Path to the template markdown file. This file can contain 2 different styles of placeholder.

1. Normal Alfred Dynamic Placeholder
2. Placeholders with double curly braces {{myPlaceholder}} which follow the Handlebars syntax. These Placeholders could come from the script, var or question option.

First the handlebars placeholders are replaced in the template and in the second step the dynamic placeholders from alfred.

script [optional]

Path to a node.js module file. This module has to export an [optional async] function which returns an object, whose properties are placeholder keys.

To use other npm modules in this script, the script has to be a node module by itself. This means that templates can easily be shared as npm packages or repositories.

// script.js
const rp = require('request-promise');

/**
 * [Async] function which gets the static variables
 * from the var option and the answer from 
 * the optional question.
 */
async function greet(variables) {
  const data = await rp(variables.myRestApiEndpoint);
  return {
    myText: data.body
  }
}

module.exports = greet;

newWindow [optional]

Should the new note opened in a separate window?

var [optional]

List of static placeholders for the template (e.g. APIToken, BaseUrl for REST Call etc.)

question [optional]

Sets a question to the workflow which asks for an additional placeholder value. To use the answer of this question in the template or script the placeholder key is {{answer}}. 

The Template Directory

There is a bear template directoy [default: ~/.bear-templates] -- which can be synced e.g. with a .dotfiles repository, Dropbox, etc. This directory should contain a template index [default: index.yml] and all the necessary files for your templates.

These paths are handled by the bearTemplateIndex workflow variable which can be changed in the workflow settings.

A possible template directory can have the following form

- ~/.bear-templates
'-- index.yml
'-- weekly-review
  '-- template.md
  '-- script.js
'-- jira-ticket
  '-- ticket.md
  '-- ticket.js
  '-- package.json
  '-- node_modules
'-- diary.md
' ...

Examples

If someone built a nice basis for a template, feel free to add it to this list and make a PR.

• Jira Ticket
• Daily Log