I'm writing a workflow to start task timers based on todos. The idea is, if I type "task fix the", it queries my todo app for todos that start with "fix the" and returns them as options. I can either select one of the options or hit enter without choosing an option, which creates a new todo called "fix the". My current script basically does the right thing, but it has a few problems I can't figure out. I haven't been able to find a discussion of this exact problem.
The current script is a python script that calls an Applescript to get the todos. It is slow, and there's probably nothing to be done about that because Applescript is slow. The python script filters the todos based on the query, and also outputs a "Create new" option whos "arg" value is the query itself, so that if the user picks that option, the query they entered becomes the return value of the script.
This is a great candidate for "Alfred filters results". I don't need to run the slow script on every keystroke, except with "Alfred filters results" there seems to be no way to tell it "if the user doesn't pick an option, return whatever they typed in". Is there?
Another option is for the python script to store the Applescript todo results in a tempfile or something. Or maybe pass all the results back to Alfred as a variable, and then Alfred passes the results into the script the next time it runs, so that all Python has to do is filter it. That seems messy but fine. Does anyone have any suggestions about it?
Finally: I often run into a race condition:
1. I start typing a new todo called "fix bug", and the python script runs for the first time after I've typed "fi".
2. While the script is running, I'm still typing out the todo text.
3. It returns a bunch of options, the first of which says "Start a new todo", but the hidden value of that option is "fi"
4. By that time I've typed out "fix bug" and it runs again with that text, but before it can return, I press Enter, which selects the top option whose value is "fi".
Similar to the first problem, I think I want a way for the script filter to return an option that tells Alfred "the value of 'arg' for this option is whatever the user has typed in". Is there a way to do that? Thanks!
