Invoking Drafts Action via callback URL and getting a response

dehowell · December 4, 2020, 11:57am

Is there any way to get drafts://x-callback-url/runAction to return a response in the x-success parameter?

I’m tinkering with OmniFocus plug-ins using Omni Automation and I’m finding cases where I want to make use of Drafts actions as part of the plug-in implementation, simply because there are things that Drafts does really well that Omni Automation doesn’t cover.

My current goal is to write an OmniFocus plug-in that will automatically create a new note in Bear for the selected project and then copy the Bear link back into the OmniFocus project note field. I can probably make this work without involving Drafts at all, but I’d really like to be able to delegate the note creation to a Drafts action so I can use MustacheTemplate and Drafts’ CallbackURL object.

The only problem is that I don’t know how to get the Bear note link back to OmniFocus in the x-success parameter. What I’d really love is a function in Drafts Scripting API that would let me set the x-success response from the action — maybe on the Context object?

agiletortoise · December 4, 2020, 1:42pm

What does the Omni Automation end of that transaction look like? Do they have an object that is similar to Drafts’ CallbackURL that waits on a response and gives you access to those parameters?

dehowell · December 4, 2020, 2:46pm

They have a URL object with a call function that takes two callback parameters — one for handling x-success and another for handling failures. Not as nice as Draft’s CallbackURL (I really appreciate that CallbackURL does the heavy lifting on URL building and encoding), but serviceable.

I have a version of my plug-in implemented that just goes straight to Bear rather than using a Drafts Action, which you seen look at to see an example of the Omni Automation call function in action:

github.com

dehowell/macos-workstation-setup/blob/main/omnifocus-plugins/create-project-note.omnijs#L44


        text += `* [OmniFocus: ${project.name}](omnifocus:///task/${project.id.primaryKey})\n\n`;
        text += `## Notes\n${project.note}`;
        let callbackParameters = { text: text };
        let baseURL = "bear://x-callback-url/create?";
        baseURL += Object.entries(callbackParameters)
            .map(([k,v]) => k + "=" + encodeURIComponent(v))
            .join("&");
        var noteLink;
        URL.fromString(baseURL).call((response) => {
            noteLink = `bear://x-callback-url/open-note?id=${response.identifier}`;
            project.note = noteLink;
            URL.fromString(noteLink).open();
        });
    }
});
action.validate = function(selection){
    return selection.projects.length === 1;
};

agiletortoise · December 4, 2020, 4:06pm

Gotcha…and, in the meantime I added something to support what you need for the next release. It was a really simple tweak.

The next beta build will have a new context.addSuccessParameter(key, value) method you can use in actions to assign query arg params that will be included in the x-success callback of /runAction. If you want to test it out, feel free to get on the beta (not in current build, but will be in next update).

dehowell · December 4, 2020, 4:18pm

Wow! Thank you, that’s awesome. I’ll give it a try.