A Hack to Index Notes, for Quicksilver

First: A few presumptions; this is a hack:

• You have at least some grasp of operating at the (Mac) command-line; ex: in Terminal.
  • For instance: ~ (tilde) is an abbreviation is for your homedir.
• You know what Quicksilver is.
  • (Yes; Far as I know, it’s Mac only.)
• Debugging your setup is up to you; at the moment, I have extremely limited availability to help.
  • Feel free to drop a note; on the off chance it’s possible, I will try to help.

How to set it up

1. A (bash) script to list the Titles of your Notes:
   • The code is in separate section below.
   • Save the script to ~/dump-note-titles.sh.
   • chmod it, to be executable:

     chmod u+x ~/dump-note-titles.sh
     

   • Run it once, to seed the output file:

     ~/dump-note-titles.sh
     

   • Open the ~/titles-from-notes-app.txt file which it generated.
     • It should have a list of the Titles of your Notes.
2. Keep this up-to-date, via cron:
   • Edit your crontab:

     crontab -e
     

   • Add a line like this:

     48  *  *  *  *	 ~/dump-note-titles.sh
     

   • Yes; cron can be a bear to debug. :/
3. Config QuickSilver to use this new “index”:
   • Add a Catalog entry, using File & Folder Scanner.
   • For the Path, select the ~/titles-from-notes-app.txt file generated by the script above.
   • For the Include Contents setting, select Text Lines.
4. Config a new Quicksilver Action, to open Notes by title:
   • Open Script Editor.app.
   • Paste the code in - see the separate section below.
   • Save it, as open note by title.scpt (File format: Script), to your Quicksilver Actions directory.
     • Which is usually here: ~/Library/Application Support/Quicksilver/Actions/.

How to use

• Fire up Quicksilver.
• Start typing some substring of a Note Title.
• Select the Title you want from the results.
• Select open note by title as the action.

bash Script ~/dump-note-titles.sh

#!/bin/bash
osascript \
	-e 'set outFilePath to (((path to home folder) as text) & "titles-from-notes-app.txt")' \
	-e 'tell application "Notes"' \
	-e     'set nameList to name of every note' \
	-e 'end tell' \
	-e 'set outFile to open for access file outFilePath with write permission' \
	-e 'repeat with theName in nameList' \
	-e     'write theName & return to outFile as «class utf8»' \
	-e 'end repeat' \
	-e 'close access outFile' \

Applescript open note by title.scpt

using terms from application "Quicksilver"
	on process text ThisClipping
		tell application "Notes"
			show note ThisClipping
	end process text
end using terms from

(Yes; I do intend to put this in a repo, where it belongs.)