Capture Notes With Shortcuts and GitHub Actions

With this #recipe you can create notes on your iOS device, which will automatically be imported into Foam.

Context

• You use Foam for VSCode to manage your notes
• You wish to adopt a practice such as A writing inbox for transient and incomplete notes
• You wish to use Shortcuts to capture quick notes into your Foam notes from your iOS device

Other tools

• We assume you are familiar with how to use GitHub (if you are using Foam this is implicit)
• You have an iOS device.

Instructions

1. Setup the foam-capture-action in your GitHub Repository, to be triggered by “Workflow dispatch” events.

name: Manually triggered workflow
on:
  workflow_dispatch:
    inputs:
      data:
        description: 'What information to put in the knowledge base.'
        required: true

jobs:
  store_data:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    # If you encounter a 403 error from a workflow run, try uncommenting the following 2 lines (taken from: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/75880266/cant-make-push-on-a-repo-with-github-actions accepted answer)
    # permissions:
          # contents: write
    steps:
    - uses: actions/checkout@master
    - uses: anglinb/foam-capture-action@main
      with:
        {% raw %}
        capture: ${{ github.event.inputs.data }}
        {% endraw %}
    - run: |
        git config --local user.email "example@gmail.com"
        git config --local user.name "Your name"
        git commit -m "Captured from workflow trigger" -a
        git push -u origin master

2. In GitHub create a Personal Access Token and give it repo scope - make a note of the token
3. Run this command to find your workflow-id to be used in the Shortcut.

curl \
  -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3+json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer <GITHUB_TOKEN>" \
    https://api.github.com/repos/<owner>/<repository>/actions/workflows

4. Copy this Shortcut to your iOS devices and edit the contents of the last step, GetContentsOfURL

   • Make sure you update the URL of the shortcut step with the owner, repository, workflow-id (from the previous step)
   • Make sure you update the headers of the shortcut step, replaceing [GITHUB_TOKEN] with your Personal Access Token (from step 2)

5. Run the shortcut & celebrate! ✨ (You should see a GitHub Action run start and the text you entered show up in inbox.md in your repository.)

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