Struggling to download PDF with Shortcuts

Barryw · October 22, 2018, 6:10pm

I’m struggling.
I’ve tried to modify the built-in shortcut to scan a QR code and open the page. I want to download a PDF from a QR code, save it to ‘Files’ and then open it. The problem appears to be that the PDF is served out by a CMS, so the URL in the QR code is a .apx file, and the ‘download content’ shortcut action only gets the .apx reference, not the PDF!
An example URL from a QR code is https://kingsgateuk.com/Publisher/File.aspx?id=217755
Can anyone help me discover how to download and save the referenced PDF? This is what I have got so far…

Seppi · October 22, 2018, 8:33pm

Hi,
how about the following Shortcut:

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/d4eef9f0515a407683a74871a870fa42

If you take the „Create PDF“ (hope this is the correct english name for the action) Shortcuts should be able to convert it into a pdf.

Does this solve your Problem?

Best

sylumer · October 22, 2018, 9:49pm

Using that URL works fine for me with the sort of setup you have. But, I am running the latest beta for Shortcuts, so maybe there’s a bug fix I have that you might not?

It might be useful if someone else could check on a non-beta version?

Barryw · October 22, 2018, 10:01pm

Hi Seppi,
I already tried that and couldn’t get it to work.
Thanks for the suggestion though.
B

Barryw · October 22, 2018, 10:04pm

Ooh! That’s encouraging
I’ve just installed 12.0.1, so I’ll have to check if it’s fixed in that version.

Barryw · October 23, 2018, 12:15am

OK, I just checked using 12.0.1
The same thing is happening - the HTML is downloaded, which is rendered like the PDF version, but isn’t the same. For example, opening the HTML does not allow the use of markup tools, whilst the PDF does.
Is this what you are seeing? In the ‘Files’ app, the preview just has ‘html’ as the preview icon, not an actual preview of the PDF file.

If I manually scan the code, open the web page, use the share sheet to save the file to ‘Files’, I get a true PDF that can be annotated. I can’t seem to be able to do that through Shortcuts.

sylumer · October 23, 2018, 6:48am

That example shortcut gave me an actual PDF.

I’m running 2.1 (710).

Barryw · October 23, 2018, 9:53am

Thanks kylumer,
I’m still on 2.0 (700), so it looks like they’ve fixed a bug!
I’ll wait until 2.1 is released and check again.

thanks for checking

jbp · October 23, 2018, 9:26pm

If you want to try debugging in the meantime, try adding the Content Graph action after Get Contents of URL. If it is returning more than one data type, you will need to add the ‘get file of type action’ and add ‘com.adobe.pdf’