Searching with Spotlight from within a workflow

[nielsk]

I am creating a workflow that searches sites like Google Scholar, JStor and my local Evernote database for a query. Is it possible to search somehow via spotlight as well to get all files shown that contain the query (not only in the file name but in the content, too)?

 

What I want to do is for example a first crude search for a research topic. That shall reveal results from several web sites like Google Scholar or JStor, my Instapaper- and pinboard-account,  but also results from local libraries and of course local stuff on my harddrive like my Evernote-database and of course files that Spotlight would find.

[jdfwarrior]

Very possible. I've done just that with my mail workflow. It uses mdfind to search the drive using Spotlights metadata and grabs the results and shows those as Alfred feedback

[nielsk]

How do you do that? I can run the mdfind via a bash-script ok. But how do I get the files as "Alfred feedback" (and what do you mean actually by that)? And I would really prefer to get those results in a finder-window to have a "static" list for being able to quicklook and open files without doing the search again. 

[jdfwarrior]

By Alfred feedback I mean that, with Alfred 2 you now have the ability to generate results that show up in Alfred. So, as you would do a typical search in Alfred and you get the list of results, with workflows now, you can generate your own list of items to show as results and action those.

 

To actually grab that data from mdfind for use... you would have to use some kind of script to grab the output of the mdfind command. The majority of my workflows are based on PHP. With PHP I can run system commands (mdfind) and grab that output (the list of matching files) and have them show up as results in Alfred. This feedback is XML based. See the documentation for Alfred Feedback here

[nielsk]

Ouch…that seems a bit out of reach for me and my available time >_<

Let's see what I can do… :/

[tomhunt]

This workflow uses mdfind and returns the results in the required format. Have a pick through and see if you can hack it for your own purposes. Look for this line for the mdfind call:

 

 

$shell = "mdfind \"kMDItemDisplayName == '$search*' && kMDItemContentType == '$uti'\"";

This page gave me all the info I needed for this workflow. Hopefully it will help here too.

 

http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2006/01/04/mdfind.html

[nielsk]

This workflow uses mdfind and returns the results in the required format. Have a pick through and see if you can hack it for your own purposes. Look for this line for the mdfind call:

 

 

$shell = "mdfind \"kMDItemDisplayName == '$search*' && kMDItemContentType == '$uti'\"";

This page gave me all the info I needed for this workflow. Hopefully it will help here too.

 

http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2006/01/04/mdfind.html

 

I can't connect to the linked ftp-server (probably because it doesn't allow anonymous login) and a request via http gives a 404.

I will have a look at the macdevcenter-link.

Thanks a lot

[tomhunt]

my bad. copied the ftp link rather than the http link. I've edited the post as needed

[nielsk]

Yep, I know but replacing the ftp by http and removing the one / from the double-slash gives a 404

[tomhunt]

Use the link above. For ease :

This workflow

[nielsk]

Thanks. That's pretty much what David suggested. But unfortunately it doesn't help a lot because I cannot act on it like in the Finder (Quicklook, copy around etc.).

 

 

I searched more and it seems that it is just not possible to do what I want (get a Finder-window with search results) because Spotlight is actually not Applescriptable and apparently it is not possible to get the output of mdfind into a Finder-window. There's even a tip from an Apple Product Manager floating around which "scripts" it by emulating pushing buttons m)