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

1. In GitHub create a Personal Access Token and give it repo scope - make a note of the token
2. 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

1. Copy this Shortcut to your iOS devices and edit the contents of the last step, GetContentsOfURL
2. Make sure you update the URL of the shortcut step with the owner, repository, workflow-id (from the previous step)

3. Make sure you update the headers of the shortcut step, replaceing [GITHUB_TOKEN] with your Personal Access Token (from step 2)

4. 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.)