Handyman - automate your PC

Handyman is text-based launcher that you can esily activate with shortcut. Handyman is easy to use, has a lot of plugins and also provides interface to create your own plugins.

Currently implemented plugins:

• CommandPromptPlugin
• EmailPlugin
• PowerShellPlugin
• RestPlugin
• ScratchPadPlugin
• ScreenShotPlugin
• SeriesPlugin
• SqlPlugin
• ToDoPlugin
• SysPlugin
• CalculatorPlugin
• GitPlugin
• TranslatorPlugin
• DaysPlugin
• BatchPlugin
• WorkPlugin
• TrackPlugin
• ConfigPlugin

Download Handyman Beta

Download the zip from HERE

How to use Handyman

• Initial shortcut for starting Handyman is Alt - 1, but you can change it.
• Type help to get info about all Handymans.
• Type add to add new Handyman.
• Type setup to see options.
• You can modify all config files in base directory for all the plugins, just open [PluginName].dll.config
• To see help for specific Handyman type help [HandymanName]
• To exit type exit
• To start Handyman at system boot, either use options or change directly in Handyman.Core.dll.config

Create Handyman command

• Right click on the taskbar icon and click New Handyman
• Handyman name: is the name used in launcher
• Filename or url: you can paste here link or path to some directory
• Startup mode: how do you want to start the application
• Startup path: in which directory you want to start the command
• Arguments: pass arguments to the application
• Notes: add comments to you command

Command arguments

• {F}: replace this with all the arguments from the launcher joined with empty space
• {FU}: replace this with all the arguments from the launcher joined with empty space, URL encoded (using HttpUtility.UrlEncode)
• {DTN}: replace this with DateTime.Now.ToString()
• {U}: replace this with your username
• {UD}: replace this with your user domain name
• {DD}: replace this with the name of the day DateTime.Now.DayOfWeek.ToString()
• {MM}: replace this with number of the month DateTime.Now.Month.ToString()
• {YY}: replace this with year number DateTime.Now.Year.ToString()
• {HH}: replace this with hours DateTime.Now.Hour.ToString()
• {MIN}: replace this with year number DateTime.Now.Minute.ToString()
• {SS}: replace this with seconds DateTime.Now.Second.ToString()
• {XU}: X represent number of argument U means URL encoding (ie. {0U}, {1U}, {2U})
• {X}: X represent number of argument (ie. {0}, {1}, {2})
• {RD}: replace this with system drive Path.GetPathRoot(Environment.SystemDirectory)

Example 1

We want to launch google search with search term entered in launcher. I want to write google how to write enums in c# in the launcher, and I want the launcher to open new tab in my browser with the search term entered. From the command arguments we can use {FU} which means combine all arguments and url encode them. The search url for google is https://www.google.com/search?q=[SearchTermHere], we can replace everything after q= with {FU} so now our url will look like this https://www.google.com/search?q={FU}. Now we can start creating our command. In the New Handyman windows for Name we enter google since we want to use this keyword in the launcher, in Filename or url we enter the url from above https://www.google.com/search?q={FU}, we can leave all other fields empty. Now when we enter this in our launcher google search for this will be translated to https://www.google.com/search?q=search%20for%20this.

How to implement your own plugin

• Add reference to Handyman.Framework.dll.
• Inherit IMaster interface.
• In constructor set Alias so the launcher can send the commands to you plugin.
• If you want you plugin to be startable from shortcut set Shortcut to some value, or set it to Shortcut.None (this is importat, because if you dont set your shortcut to something or None, you will get weird errors on runtime)
• Use Initialize method to setup your data. You can use Handyman.Framework.Persistence.Persist to load or save your data.
• Use Execute to act on commands.
• See some of the other projects for easy how-to.

Example 1 - Creating Days Plugin

• Create class library project - targeting Framework 4.5
• Add reference to Handyman.Framework.Interfaces.IMaster, and implement all the methods
• Add constructor method and set Alias and Shortcut.
• Here you can also define your own parser and use it for parsing the input.
  • Create new class and impelement Handyman.Framework.Interfaces.IParse and implement the Parse method.
  • In the constructor of you plugin set Parser to new object from your newly created class
• Create your model class, here we have simple string Name - DateTime Date class.
• In Initialize method write Framework.Persistence.Persist.Load<DaysModel>(Alias);, this will load all the data or create new empty file in Documents directory
• Execute method have two arguments args and display
  • args is array of string and this are the arguments that launcher will transfer to you, you can test this using this syntax [alias] dev parse [commands list], where alias is string keyword used in constructor and commands are space separated strings.
  • display is function you can use to show data on the launcher or in separate popup window, it takes two arguments displayText which is string and DisplayData enum where you choose where do you want to display your data in the laucher window or in separate popup window.
• In Execute method you can use Framework.Persistence.Persist.Save<T>(List<T> data, string alias); to save you list to file

Persistence

The package Handyman.Framework has defined static methods for saving and loading lists of simple objects. Saving is done to file in Documents directory, using System.Xml.Serialization the name of the file is [alias].Handymanconfig

Implemented methods

Handyman.Framework.Persistence.Persist.Save<T>(IList<T> data, string alias)

This method is used for saving data.

Handyman.Framework.Persistence.Persist.Load<T>(string alias)

This method is used for loading data.

CMD & PowerShell & Application

CMD

You can easily execute CMD commands in the app using Handyman.Framework.Utilities.CMD this is function with three string arguments on input. CMD(string commandWithArguments, string path, out string errors), the first is command and arguments to execute, second is directory path where we want to execute the command and the last one is out variable that will contain the error if there is one.

PowerShell

Executing PowerShell commands is same as CMD commands and the function is exactly the same as PowerShell(string commandWithArguments, string path, out string errors)

Application

You can also execute various other applications using this function Handyman.Framework.Utilities.Application(string application, string commandWithArguments, string path, out string error) where application is the name of the application you want to execute. CMD and PowerShell functions are just wrappers around this function that use application as cmd.exe and powershell.exe respectively.

New Plugins

Send me your created plugins and I will add them to plugins.json for easier installation.

Syntax

The syntax for new plugins is JSON object like this

{
	"Name": "Handyman.GitPlugin",
	"Author": "Mirche Toshevski",
	"Description": "Execute git commands.",
	"HasConfig": false,
	"URL": "https://github.com/neemesis/Handyman/.../bin/Release/Handyman.GitPlugin.dll"
}

if your plugin contains .config file you need to provide the config file and set HasConfig needs to be true. If your plugin contains another .dll-s you will need to find a way to provide / specify them.

Video