Databases in Shortcuts: Save Favorite Quotes (and Show in Daily Brief)

Shortcuts
1

I’d like to create a shortcut(s) that does 2 basic things:

  • When I find an inspirational quote or bible verse I can save it to my database.
  • Return a random quote from my database (This shortcut can be called by my daily brief shortcut so that the random quote shows up in my daily brief.)

INSPIRATION: I love these shortcuts:

My problem is finding a suitable database for storing these shortcuts. Here are the candidates I’ve found so far:

  • iCloud Drive:
    • Cons: iCloud Drive really doesn’t seem designed to hold databases, much less run database functions like queries.
  • DataJar:
    • Pros: DataJar is on-device, secure, fast.
    • Cons: DataJar has a UI that is not conducive for efficient large-scale database editing.
  • Airtable: This would be my favorite option to use if I can get it to work. I’ve tried AirtableKit and Shortcutify and neither seems to work.
    • Pros: Airtable has a great powerful web interface that I am quite familiar with.
    • Cons: Airtable has a confusing API and irritating Formula structure.

Has anybody found a simple database solution for Shortcuts?

1 Like
2

Do you really need a database? What are you saving besides the text itself? I’d put this in Draft, Ulysses and/or flat text files.

3

I can help you with AirtableKit if you prefer Airtable. Can you let me know what specific part doesn’t work?

4

This maybe too basic for what you’re looking for but I made two Shortcuts using Data Jar. One to save a quote you come across. Just hi light the text and pick Share which brings up the extension sheet and run the first Shortcut. It will ask you for the Source and it will save your Quote and Source in a dictionary and add it to a list in Data Jar. The second Shortcut counts how many values there is in the Save Quotes Data Jar and randomly select one of the quotes and shows the result.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/9d5f6636ea694a5ca70886123a62bd8b

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/5c2709ae49ca44d9a927f9277933d656

5

I figured it out. Shortcutify wasn’t working with Airtable because I had emoji’s in my Table names. (I like to use emoji’s in labels because it makes things easier to find at a quick glance.) I updated my Airtables to have no emojis in the names and it’s working great now.

Thanks guys for the replies.

6

Have you reported this bug to the Airtable folks?

7

No I haven’t reported it.