Using Alfred to launch Automator on a different machine

[Dorv]

People smarter than me (If you're reading this, that's you),

 

I'm trying to figure out a way to trigger an Automator action on my iMac at home from my MBP from work.

 

I think Alfred's flexibility is probably a great way to do that. 

 

That being said, I have absolutely no idea where to start...

[jdfwarrior]

People smarter than me (If you're reading this, that's you),

 

I'm trying to figure out a way to trigger an Automator action on my iMac at home from my MBP from work.

 

I think Alfred's flexibility is probably a great way to do that. 

 

That being said, I have absolutely no idea where to start...

 

There may be another way to do it but at quick thought, this is possible but takse a little more work. 

 

The first thing I thought of would be using Alfred to write a value somewhere or a file that syncs to the remote machine (via Dropbox, Google Drive, etc). On the remote machine, you could use something like Hazel or even just a launchd script that would watch for the value or file and then execute the script that you want to run.

 

Or you could do it the easier way and just use ssh

ssh <user>@<ip or host> '<command here>'

Doing it the ssh way WOULD require a password for the user. though so you may have to prompt for password or pass the password in the command.

[Dorv]

I'd like to find a solution that isn't dependent on knowing what my home IP address is -- it's not static, and while it doesn't change all the time, the time I would take to look it up at any given moment, I could just use Back to My Mac and manually trigger the action.

 

But using a Dropbox/Hazel combination would be an interesting twist. I've not installed Hazel on a machine since they released a new major release and their auto-updater kept trying to force me into a paid upgrade, but I'd definitely pay that to get this working...

[Dorv]

David,

 

Thanks for the guidance, I already have this running.

 

I've got an Automator Application that creates an empty "update.txt" file in -- ironically -- my AlfredSync folder on dropbox.

That gets triggered by an Alfred Workflow.

Back on my iMac, Hazel is watching the AlfredSync folder for the update.txt file, and triggers a Workflow, then deletes update.txt.

Pretty nifty