Alfred Airtable Workflow

An Alfred workflow for managing Airtable records, adapted to my personal Airtable database for link collection.

The database serves as a custom bookmark manager / read-it-later app. It consists of two tables: Links and Lists, where Links is the main table, and Lists is used to group links under specific topics.

The workflow supports adding, editing, searching, and filtering records interactively.

To-Do

• Testing in Alfred
  • Why does fetchRecords sometimes fail to paginate?
    • Concurrent API calls hit the rate limit
  • Log to debug
  • Implement rate limiting
• Rewrite the workflow in Go
  • Authentication and OAuth flow (tested)
    1. Start the HTTP server in a goroutine: This server will handle the OAuth flow and listen for the callback from the OAuth provider.
    2. Use channels for communication: Create channels to pass the access token and any errors between the goroutines.
    3. Request the OAuth authorization: In the main goroutine, initiate the OAuth authorization request and wait for the response via the channel.
    4. Handle the OAuth callback: When the OAuth provider redirects back to your server, handle the callback, exchange the authorization code for an access token, and send the token back through the channel.
  • Data fetching with Airtale API (tested)
    • Concurrent requests to speed up fetching
    • Sync in the background without blocking the UI
    • Use the field Last Modified to fetch only the updated records
  • Data caching with sqlite (tested)
    • Keep the access token and last fetched time in the cache
  • Adding, editing, deleting records with Airtable API (tested)
  • User interface: adding, editing, searching, filtering (partially tested)
    • Think over the interaction logic in editLink

References

• Airtable API