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I use Grav as my blog CMS, it’s powerful and customisable, and it lets me upload blog posts via (S)FTP. The catch? My previous system for blogging involved using Transmit and Workflow - and sadly Transmit for iOS is no more. (You may be wondering why I’m only changing my system now, instead of back in January when Panic stopped working on Transmit for iOS. It’s simple, it was still supported in Workflow, sadly it is no longer supported in Shortcuts.)

This Workflow takes advantage of the stdin input option for the Run Script Over SSH action, in simple terms it means that you can give this action input as well as using variables as input in the script section.

A quick lesson on how Grav works for those unfamiliar with it and looking to modify this for Jekyll or another CMS:

  • There is a User folder where the data for your site is stored (config files, pages, etc.)
  • Inside of this folder is the Pages folder, where your pages are stored.
  • Folders inside of this become slugs the URL, so my blog posts are all in blog.
  • The file name is the name of the twig template.

To start with I choose where I want to store the post, if it’s a link to a guest post it goes in one folder, and a blog post goes in another - this is just my personal preference. I’m using a dictionary to do this because then I can see one option, but have it output something different - as my blog is the second item in my menu I would have to choose 02.blog every time otherwise. The next step is asking for the slug - this is nearly always on my clipboard (because I run this from Drafts and Drafts puts the slug on my clipboard!), then I get the text that was shared to the Workflow and Run Script Over SSH - which is where all the magic happens. The workflow I’ve shared does the following:

cd user/pages/$Chosen_Location;
mkdir $Slug;
cd $Slug;
cat > blogpost.md;

I’ve used the dollar signs here to represent Workflow variables - the key line is the last one, where I save the input of the SSH action to the file blogpost.md.
Steps:

  • Dictionary: This is a list of the folders where I might choose to save a blog post.
  • Choose from List: I choose one of those folders
  • Ask for Input: And grab the slug for the post.
  • Set Variable: I save the slug to a variable
  • Get Variable: And then I get the blog post shared to the Workflow.
  • Run Script Over SSH: Finally I run the SSH script.

Now, I actually save my blog posts in numbered folders - Grav will drop the number and dot at the start of the a folder name and use the rest of it as a slug, this helps me find posts based on when they were published from a folder list. If I create the post in the Grav admin GUI then it numbers them automatically, but it is possible to do this on the command line too! The script I use is as follows:

cd user/pages/$Correct_Location;
filecount=$(ls | wc -l);
mkdir ${filecount}.$Slug;
cd ${filecount}.$Slug;
cat > blogpost.md;

What this does is it counts the files and folders in the current folder and saves them to a variable on command line called filecount - and then I use this to create the folder for me. This variable is only valid for this session - but that’s fine for what we need. The folder where the post will be published contains a file which will display the list of blog posts and this gives me the +1 I need to create the next folder.
I hope this script is of use to at least one person!

You can get the workflow here: Upload Blog Post</a