Questions and Ideas

[malkomalko]

First off, Alfred workflows are blowing my mind... so thanks .

 

After creating a few test workflows and reading through a handful from this topic I have some things I've been thinking about.

 

1) Would it be possible, and what do you think, about having the ability to pass the output of one workflow into the input of another workflow.

In this way, you would be able to create little modules of reusable functionality to build up more complex chains of workflows.

 

2) Filtering the list of Feedback items?  If I manually want to build up a list of feedback items to be used as the input to some other step in a chain, I think it'd be nice right now to filter out the list.  It appears that typing into Alfred doesn't do that yet.  Am I missing something?

 

3) Script Filter -> Run Script -> Run Script isn't possible.  It seems like you can only have one level of each type [Trigger/Input/Action/Output].  Thoughts on allowing for a more robust chain if you wanted things to pass sequentially through multiple script steps... say after you've chosen a feedback item in one step that lead to the next step.. so on and so on.  This could probably be alleviated by #1.

 

As a side question about Alfred, would fuzzy finding of results every be considered?  The file action is awesome, but a little limiting in that it must match the start of a file/folder exactly.

 

Cheers!

[jdfwarrior]

Filtering the list is definitely possible but its something you do inside your script. In a script filter, every time you type a character, it fires the script. So, in your script, read the input, parse it, filter with that.

 

As for the chaining of multiple scripts, I don't know. It's an interesting idea definitely. It may be something possible in the future.

[malkomalko]

Thanks David on the suggestion for filtering in script.  I just created something that I find useful and will be posting it up in another thread.

 

Not sure if this is a bug, but I find that other menu items are creeping in to my custom feedback.  For instance I see a list of my custom feedback items along side "Flash Player.prefPane".

[jdfwarrior]

Is this a script that has no argument? A script filter with no argument fires as soon as the keyword is matched. That keyword can also still be used to search other stuff as well. My example would be, for the Rdio workflow I made.. entering 'Rdio' in Alfred results in...

 

Rdio.app (the application)

Search Rdio (the search script filter I made for Rdio.. keyword = rdio)

Now Playing (another script filter that has no argument, fires immediately, and provides feedback of whats playing in Rdio, keyword = rdio)

 

Does that make sense?

[jdfwarrior]

And by the way, good idea on making the python module to speed up making workflows and dealing with results. I have the same thing for php because that's what I do most of my workflows in.

 

I have a helper class object that has functions for:

1. converting associative arrays or json objects into properly formatted xml for alfred

2. creating local sqlite databases and working with them (helper functions to make working with the database easier

3. getting/setting data to plists

4. getting/setting data to json files for storage/cache

and more..

 

Maybe that will give you some ideas of other ways to expand it. Good luck

[malkomalko]

awesome...

 

another idea: disable workflows.  It'd be nice to keep them in the list but not have them active.

[twinpeaks]

+1 for the ability to disable workflows.