Export Tasks to Pomodoro App for iPad
I should rather be screencasting, I know, but there are those times where your inner nerd tells you you just have to write this particular script or else you’re going to suffer for the rest of the week. This solution was originated from one of those moments.
A little history:
Pomodoro App for iPad is one of the most feature complete Pomodoros Apps I’ve seen thus far.
My only complaint was that it’s not possible to export tasks out of (my bevoved) OmniFocus into Pomodoro App.
Thomas, one of the developers, just told there is a way. The app apparently uses JSON to write and read data files saved into Dropbox. (Dropbox sync is coming later)
The idea
I wanted to take my “to do today” tasks, that I’ve chosen after my daily preview routine, directly into Pomodoro App so that I can pomodoro away.
It turns out that OmniFocus copies selected tasks as a simple list of task names to the clipboard. Really, plain task names, nothing else, no project, no start, no due, nothing. The perfect job for AppleScript. (not)
How it works and limitations
I figured I could just take the list and ask the user for estimate input for each of them, then generate a JSON file and save it into Dropbox.
After successful import I could safely delete that file, or let the script do it automatically for me next time it’s running.
Please, keep in mind, that the more JSON files you have in your Dropbox, the more tasks you’re going to end up with in Pomodoro App, since it doesn’t check for duplicates. (which is fair enough)
My script turns out to be not only useful for OmniFocus. Rather everyone who keeps his/her tasks as a list in a text file, e.g. TaskPaper, could make use of it.
Here’s the script as a beautiful gist.
In a couple of hours this script will also be available in LaunchBar Scripts repository.
Stuck with Things?
Thomas, one of the developers, is using Things.
He modified the script so that it’s getting selected tasks from Things.
He’s using, for my taste, too many shell scripts where native AppleScript calls could be utilitzed. So I merged his and my script to get the best of both worlds. You can find his original gist here.
Download the modified version.