Golang Alfred Workflow Generator Ak

As loyal users of Gopher and Alfred workflows, we often write Alfred workflows in our daily lives to improve and speed up our workflow. Due to the nature of the Golang language, we encounter some issue when developing Alfred workflows using the Golang language.

1. Go is a binary language, so you need to compile it into a binary before you can use it when developing, and you need to package the binary into .alfreworflow when publishing. Here we will encounter binary security issues, so we need to code sign and notarize our binary to pass macOS’s Gatekeeper check.

2. The development directory of the Alfred workflow needs to be symbolic link to Alfred.alfredpreferences, so that our workflow can communicate with Alfred.

Earlier in the development of Alfred workflow, I used Python’s workflow-install.py to do the related Alfred interactive But it wasn’t very easy to use, so I needed a better solution. So there is this project cage1016/ak: A generator for golang alfred workflow that helps you create boilerplate code.

Features

1. Quickly create boilerplate code for Golang Alfred workflow projects
   • Use deanishe/awgo and spf13/cobra as the development framework for Alfred workflow
   • Create two sets of Github Action release processes (automatic update version and Alfred Gallery release compatible version), and support Code Sign and Notarization
   • Create Makefile to simplify the development process
   • Create LICENSE
2. Workflow development environment management
   • Use make link to symbolic link the development directory of the workflow to Alfred.alfredpreferences
   • Use make unlink to unlink the development directory of the workflow to Alfred.alfredpreferences
   • Use make build to build the development directory of the workflow to Alfred.alfredpreferences
   • Use make info to display the information of the development directory of the workflow to Alfred.alfredpreferences
   • Use make pack to package the development directory of the workflow to Alfred.alfredpreferences
3. Support arm64 & amd64

Install

Install with Go

1

go install github.com/cage1016/ak@latest

Usage

1. Create a project directory
2. Run ak to create the ak.json file and set the subsequent project information

   1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

   { "go_mod_package": "github.com/xxx/ak-test", "workflow": { "folder": ".workflow", "name": "Ak Test", "description": "", "category_comment": "category: Tools, Internet, Productivity, Uncategorised", "category": "", "bundle_id": "com.xxx.aktest", "created_by": "", "web_address": "https://github.com/xxx/ak-test", "version": "0.1.0" }, "update": { "github_repo": "https://github.com/xxx/ak-test" }, "license": { "type_comment": "support license https://github.com/nishanths/license", "type": "mit", "year": "", "name": "" }, "gon": { "application_identity": "" } }

3. Run ak init to initialize the project boilerplate code
   • .workflow directory is the development directory of Alfred workflow
   • .gitingore is the git ignore file
   • .env is the environment variable file
4. Run ak new cmd to create a command based on the Cobra CLI
5. Run ak add ga to create the Github Action release process
   • -s Enable Code Sign and Notarization features
   • -c Enable Go test Codecov release function
6. Run ak add mf to create Makefile development management tool
7. Run ak add l to create LICENSE file

Basically, you can start developing here, and if you need to, you can add more commands via cobra add to improve the workflow functionality. ak/_example Here’s a complete example project.

Development process

1. Run go run main.go to execute the workflow, which will provide the download of the go mod package and install it using go get
2. Run make build to build the development directory of the workflow to Alfred.alfredpreferences, which will put the compiled Binary exe in the .workflow directory at this time
3. Run make link to symbolic link the development directory of the workflow to Alfred.alfredpreferences

After completing the Alfred workflow symbolic link, we can see our workflow in Alfred workflow, and then we can start developing.

Release process

1. Run make pack to package the development directory of the workflow as .alfredworkflow file
2. ak add ga -s -c to create two sets of Github Action release processes (automatic update version and Alfred Gallery release compatible version), and support Code Sign and Notarization. The release process will be triggered when the tag is pushed to the Github repository. Please refer to Golang Base Alfred Code Sign and Notarize - KaiChu to learn how to use Code Sign and Notarization with Github action.

Summary

This project is my development of Alfred workflow, in order to solve the problem of the development process and release process and developed, I hope that this project can help you, if you have any questions welcome to cage1016/ak: A generator for golang alfred workflow that helps you create boilerplate code. to raise an issue.

Source Code

cage1016/ak: A generator for golang alfred workflow that helps you create boilerplate code.