How to make all Drafts read-accessible from the outside / Auto-copy all drafts to folder

[halloleo]

Hi there

I am a long term Drafts user who uses the app (iOS and Mac) mainly for capture and intermediate storage. Most stuff I sent eventually to DEVONthink, Pinboard, or Email.

But over the years I have collected stuff in Draft for which I “didn’t get to” the last stage of sending it off. That’s usually not a problem – mostly the old stuff is not necessary. However sometimes I want to search through my drafts just to check that I haven’t missed something. For this I have to open currently teh Drafts app and search manually there.

It would be nice to search the drafts together with my other stores. I think the easiest would be it if I could auto-export all drafts on the Mac, say once a day, to a folder (preferable with there reference URL somehow attached) and then index this folder in DEVONthink - that’s’s what I do with Pinboard.

Are there any solutions for this? Is the e.g. a Mac command line script that exports all drafts to a folder (auto-updating what is already in the folder)?

(Note: I did see @sylumer’s Alfed workflow, but I am not an heavy Alfred user, plus, it doesn’t look to me that the workflow can automatically export all drafts…)

[sylumer]

You could build an action to export drafts x you can then determine what meta data you want to include, format, etc.

You might also be able to build something in Shortcuts. That can search Drafts and you might be able to combine it with other things.

While I use Alfred more than Spotlight, I think Spotlight might give you a general search that can also index Drafts’ content.

[halloleo]

Lots of ideas @sylumer! Cool!

@sylumer

You could build an action to export drafts x you can then determine what meta data you want to include, format, etc.

That’s seems promising: An “Export Everything” action! Is there a way to trigger this action automatically, say, each night via a cron job or similar?

@sylumer

I think Spotlight might give you a general search that can also index Drafts’ content.

Another avenue to pursue. Will investigate. I think DEVONthink can do something in conjunction with Spotlight…

[sylumer]

@halloleo

Is there a way to trigger this action automatically, say, each night via a cron job or similar?

Simplest is probably scheduling something like a command line call of:

open drafts://runAction?text=&action=VALID-ACTION-NAME

Just calling the run action URL. I haven’t tested it, but it should be that or something similar.