Command line interface for Drafts. Requires Drafts Pro.
demo.mp4
- Install the CLI:
brew install ernstwi/tap/drafts
- Install the required helper application (see "Implementation notes" below):
brew install --cask --no-quarantine ernstwi/tap/drafts-helper
- Install the required helper action from the Drafts Directory
$ drafts --help
Usage: drafts <command> [<args>]
Options:
--help, -h display this help and exit
Commands:
new create new draft
prepend prepend to draft
append append to draft
replace append to draft
edit edit draft in $EDITOR
get get content of draft
select select active draft using fzf
See further: drafts <command> --help
It is easy to send commands to Drafts. This is done using actions defined in Drafts' URL scheme. Using a custom action, we can send arbitrary JavaScript to be executed in Drafts.
The more difficult thing is how to get a response back from Drafts to the CLI. Drafts' URL scheme offers a x-success parameter which can be used to call a separate URL with the result of an action. The problem is that the drafts CLI process can't catch this call directly.
My solution to this problem was to make a separate macOS app (Drafts CLI Helper) whose only purpose is to catch x-success calls from Drafts, and forward them via Unix socket to the appropriate drafts CLI process. The resulting system is illustrated below.
graph LR;
cli[Drafts CLI]-- URL scheme -->drafts[Drafts]
drafts-- URL scheme -->cbh[Drafts CLI Helper]
cbh-- Unix socket -->cli
ln -s "$PWD/dist/Drafts CLI Helper.app" /Applications/
PATH=$PATH:$PWD/dist/drafts_darwin_all
./build.sh # To build
./release.sh # To build and publish a new release