Link for Adding Data?

I’d love to be able to configure a link that effectively says “add +1 to /breathing now” every time it is clicked in a browser where I’m logged in. Would be a good workaround to a rather complicated iOS shortcuts integration. Any ideas how this might work?

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Does it need to be a link, look like a link, or could it be a button?

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It being a like would be ideal bc that means I can insert it into my Things Morning routine f.ex or just include opening the url in an ios shortcut.

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Love the way you’re thinking! Web-philosophically, it’s kind of … dangerous? for it to be a normal link because there’s no control over who or what may follow it. More details about the use case you have in mind would be awesome. There may be a way to get the best of all possible worlds!

Do you currently have something working with iOS shortcuts but it’s a pain to set up?

So I created this shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d99729d7514847198d104c05232b1138

It opens a guided Wim Hof session on Youtube, writes mindful minutes to Apple Health, and then tries to log to Beeminder via two pathways.

  1. running this shortcut by @k1rsty – it’s running through, but no data arrives at Beeminder. No idea why. Probably my setup of it. iOS Shortcut for Adding Beeminder Data
  2. triggering a Pushcut server action that’s supposed to trigger IFTTT. Also not working, but that seems due to pushcut’s ifttt integration. https://ifttt.com/applets/E73M4hpY-if-the-pushcut-action-ifpushbeebreathe-is-executed-then-add-datapoint-for-breathing

(3) A IFTTT widget button in my spotlight. This one works. But not automatically.

So ideally, it’d be great if Beeminder could put out an official shortcut that can reliably write data, and a guide to using it that makes it dau-proof (dau is dümmster anzunehmender user - german for most stupid user assumable). That shortcut could then be customized and run as part of other shortcuts like mine above. Who knows, maybe it’d even be possible to have a button on each /tracker’s page that offers a shortcut with all the required data prefilled.

edit: So ultimately, forget the link. What I actually want is a working shortcut setup.

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I use the iOS shortcuts app to send a +1 (or whatever other datapoint) to my Beeminder goals through email (i.e. to “bot@beeminder.com” with the subject “[username]/[goal]” and the content “^ 1 “Comment””

Might that work for your purposes?

(I used to use the SMS bot for this shortcut, but I’m in Canada now and can’t send free SMS messages to the US anymore… Sadness.)

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That‘s great! The datapoints in ““ or without?

Or could you maybe share one of these specific shortcuts? Struggling to get the date in there…

I have a bunch of them so let me quickly make a link for the simplest and share it and then come back with others later if you want more.

Quick +1 to Beeminder goal
https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d116a1702d344dd8a4f6e8823def6f52

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The content of the email is formatted like this (including the quotes below):

yyyy MM dd 1 “Comment”

i.e.
2020 08 10 1 “Thing I want to remember about this datapoint”

(The way I’ve formatted the date above is the way you have to format it in iOS shortcuts to get it to plug the date in for you, too. You can also use the ^ symbol, which Beeminder will take to mean “today”, but I prefer to use the calendar date than the goal date for things that have non-midnight deadlines.)

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Yes!! It’s working. Thank you for sharing this. There was one issue in the email subject it was “username” instead of “var username”, if anyone wonders why it’s not working.

Now, is it possible to make multiple updates through one email? Or is it restricted to this because of the formatting?

And, any idea how to completely automate the sending part, so that it could run in the background?

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Nvm the sending in background part, turning off show compose sheet does that!! Amazing.

I’m glad you’re liking it!

Yeah I left the “show” so that anyone who uses it would notice to change anything they wanted to change the first few times.

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love this. and “dumbest assumable user” is an equally good translation that preserves the acronym!

yeah! one per line!

thanks so much for getting this figured out and documented in this thread!

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