Add calendar events with (mostly) natural language

[federico]

Hey there! 👋

 

I made a small workflow to add events to the calendar (stock Calendar app) with "natural language" (well... not really super sophisticated, but it feels "natural" to me in the sense that it's similar to how I create calendar events), similar to what Fantastical does. It works pretty good for me, and I thought to share it in case it can be useful for someone else as well

 

It's nothing fancy obviously, at the moment it can do some simple things like this:

 

• "cal buy groceries tomorrow at 5pm"
• "cal meeting next wednesday for 3 hours at 3pm PDT"
• "cal in 2 hours get a break for 10 minutes"

 

 

A couple notes:

• it supports only 1 target calendar at the moment, with the name specified in the `calendar` workflow variable
• it's written in Go (with `awgo`, thanks @deanishe!), for no particular reason rather that it's what I usually use for my projects, which means that it's compiled and it will bring up the annoying "verified developer" popup on macOS 10.15+
• it should work on M1 via Rosetta, but I don't have a M1 Mac to make sure myself. I also thought about bundling the arm version with the workflow and/or creating separate downloadable workflows, if somebody is interested I can do something for that

 

Here's the link -> https://github.com/ruggi/calfred/releases/latest

 

Stay safe!

[justcharlie]

This is working great for me on an M1. The only issue is that the time does not appear to be writing correctly to the calendar, but the day does. There is nothing in the time field when written to Calendar. I am using an M1 MBA if that helps. Thanks for contributing this!

[shamster]

Hi there, many thanks for this. I have only just installed Alfred for the first time, so I'm pretty sure I'm doing something wrong. 

 

I installed your workflow, changed the calendar name to my own calendar name. Then when I create an event, it shows fine in Alfred, but nothing appears in my calendar. 

 

Could you point me in the right direction? I'm running macOS 11.4 (intel). 

 

Many thanks. 

[alfredpanda]

@federico thanks for making this but it doesn't seem to work with me - I get the error below.

 

Could this be something to do with the region? I'm in the UK - BST.

 

 

 

Edited July 16, 2021 by alfredpanda

[shamster]

I am also getting the same error as @alfredpanda: 

 

 

I am also in the UK (BST)

[Slatts]

Can't seem to get it to link to a calendar. I've tried changing the calendar variable (like in the example on the GitHub page). Any ideas? 

[alfredpanda]

On 7/16/2021 at 11:18 AM, shamster said:

I am also getting the same error as @alfredpanda: 

 

 

I am also in the UK (BST)

 

@shamster Federico kindly fixed this in the new release here: https://github.com/ruggi/calfred/releases/

[stachmou]

I can't get it to work ! Query is launching fine but nothing appears in the calendar app... any help is appreciated

 

[alfredpanda]

On 7/23/2021 at 11:23 PM, Slatts said:

Can't seem to get it to link to a calendar. I've tried changing the calendar variable (like in the example on the GitHub page). Any ideas? 

 

31 minutes ago, stachmou said:

I can't get it to work ! Query is launching fine but nothing appears in the calendar app... any help is appreciated

 

 

It would be helpful if you both attached a screenshot of the debug log to see if it shows an error?

 

Open the workflow, click the debug button, test the command in Alfred as you would and then see if there are any red errors in the log.

Post them so the OP can help out.

 

debu

[stachmou]

32 minutes ago, alfredpanda said:

 

 

It would be helpful if you both attached a screenshot of the debug log to see if it shows an error?

 

Open the workflow, click the debug button, test the command in Alfred as you would and then see if there are any red errors in the log.

Post them so the OP can help out.

 

debu

there it is

[alfredpanda]

1 hour ago, stachmou said:

there it is

 

Have you correctly set your Calendar name?

 

Go here:

 

 

 

Make sure this exactly matches the name of your calendar in Mac's Calendar app:

 

[srb1961]

My Mac (M1 MBA) won't let me run the workflow. Never had this before with an Alfred workflow downloaded from GitHub. Any suggestions?

 

 

[rknightuk]

You need to open Preferences > Security & Privacy then allow calfred to be opened.

[hkgnp]

I installed the Workflow and it works beautifully in most cases.

 

However, if today is a Monday, when I type "next Thursday" it gives me tomorrow's date instead of next Thursday's date. Next seems to trigger the day that is coming up. 

In fact, if today is a Monday, when I type "next Monday", the helper does not change the date to next Monday's date and I am thus unable to enter a date.

Is it todo with my timezone? I am in GMT +8.

Thanks in advance!

[kraig85]

Hi. Is there any way to add all day events using this workflow?

Thanks :-)

[Phaks]

Hey there,

 

could someone please help me to fix the character encoding? Using some of the Czech characters like: ěščřžýáíé results in weird behavior.

 

Many thanks in advance!

[chezluc]

Hi there! I'm getting an error like this:  5933 Segmentation fault: 11  ./calfred "$1"
Any help would be apprecaited!

[unlink]

Doesn't get recognized. It simply does not use calfred when I use cal keyword meh

[andy4222]

@federico Thanks for making this. Is there a fix for  5933 Segmentation fault: 11  ./calfred "$1" error?

 

Edited April 30, 2023 by andy4222

[asteryou]

Hi @federico -

This is such a cool workflow but .... nothing gets added to my calendar.

• I see no (red) errors in the debug mode when using cal workflow.
• I've also set my destination calendar name exactly as it appears in the calendar ("Homer") in the workflow variables panel.
• I restarted both calendar and Alfred.
• When I type in your example: buy flowers next wednesday at 3pm - it appears to take but nothing actually shows up on the calendar.

 

Running OS Catalina. Is the OS too old? Or is it just dumb user error? 

 

Thanks in advance for any tips.

Aster

 

 

[madhurcchauhan]

I am seeing this error after setting up the variables as described above. 

 

[mourogers]

This is a good effort but I've had much better luck with the Agenda workflow.

[YusufGandhi]

Yeah, I got the very same error. Any luck on resolving this?

 

On 6/19/2023 at 2:13 PM, madhurcchauhan said:

I am seeing this error after setting up the variables as described above.