How to make a universal action that asks for extra input

[erusev]

I made a workflow that lets me publish the selected text as a GitHub gist.

 

Here's how it works:

 

I select the text I want to publish, I open Universal Actions, and I select Publish as Gist (my workflow).

 

Now I'd like to add an extra step that asks for the name of the new gist. I imagine something similar to the built-in Email to... action which asks for the email of the recipient (see attached screenshot).

 

Is this possible?

 

Edited July 20, 2022 by erusev

[vitor]

Use an Argument and Variables Utility to store the output of the Universal Action to a variable, then use a Keyword Input to ask for more information (leave the Keyword itself empty). You can again save the output of that to another variable, or use it directly.

[erusev]

Worked 😊 Thanks for taking the time respond!

 

Any tips on how to pass the 2 variables to an external script?

 

I see how I can concatenate the 2 strings into a single string and pass that, but I'd like to pass them as 2 separate arguments (`$1` and `$2`).

[andy4222]

4 hours ago, erusev said:

Any tips on how to pass the 2 variables to an external script?

 

You can use Run Script and call your script like this:

 

/usr/local/bin/node transformer.js "$operation" "$capturedString" "$userInput" "$userInputSeparator"

 

Here, all these args are values that are set using Args utility. In your script, depending on the language, you can fetch these args.  

 

 

I think that is a useful workflow. Would be nice if you can share it with the community

Edited August 6, 2022 by andy4222

[erusev]

Thanks!

 

> I think that is a useful workflow. Would be nice if you can share it with the community

 

I'd love to, but it depends on GitHub's "gh" cli tool being installed. How should I address (or communicate) this in the shared workflow?

 

Thanks again.

[vitor]

1 hour ago, erusev said:

I'd love to, but it depends on GitHub's "gh" cli tool being installed. How should I address (or communicate) this in the shared workflow?

 

Mention it in your Workflow’s About. Homebrew is a standard way of installing those tools and Alfred 5 takes the Homebrew install locations into consideration in PATH, so you only need to mention to users the need to install Homebrew plus run brew install gh

[erusev]

Thanks @vitor! Shouldn't the workflow handle the "no gh installed" scenario? Ex: show an error or a notification.

Edited August 11, 2022 by erusev

[vitor]

An error will be shown in the debugger. If you want to do something extra, you can!

[luckman212]

@erusev I'd like to see this workflow too, sounds useful ! Hope you decide to share it.

[erusev]

@vitor 

 

Any tips on what I can do to make it a little more user-friendly?

 

Would it make sense to use a Post Notification object?

 

@luckman212

 

Thanks, I'll post here when I release it.

Edited August 14, 2022 by erusev

[vitor]

@erusev Maybe a Conditional Dialog instead, with one of the options linking to a page which explains how to install what’s missing.

[erusev]

@vitor That's perfect! Thanks 🙏

[erusev]

Is it possible to make the Keyword Input required? That is, don't accept empty values.

[vitor]

It’s the dropdown right at the top. The default value is Argument Required.

[erusev]

Awesome! Finally, any chance it's possible to set a default value?

[Stephen_C]

You can do that in the workflow configuration. Take a look at this Alfred help page.

 

Stephen