TLDR;

1. Take a photo on your Apple Device

2. Run the Shortcut in Apple Shortcuts to fetch the latest photo and extract text from the image

3. Send the extracted text to any note taking platform of your choice

What is Apple Shortcuts?

Shortcuts is a feature in Apple's iOS and Mac operating system that allows users to create custom commands for Siri, the company's digital assistant. Shortcuts can be used to perform a variety of tasks, including opening apps, sending messages, making phone calls, and much more.

Users can create their own shortcuts, or download shortcuts created by others. Shortcuts can be stored in the Shortcuts app, or in the Today widget. Shortcuts can be triggered using Siri.

What is the best way to use Apple Shortcuts?

There is no one "best" way to use Apple Shortcuts. It depends on what you want to use them for. Some people use them to save time by automate tasks they perform frequently. Others use them to be more productive by creating custom commands for Siri. Still others use them to have fun by creating shortcuts that perform humorous or whimsical tasks.

How can I create an automation in Apple Shortcuts?

1. Open the Shortcuts app.

2. Tap the Shortcuts tab on iPhone or All Shortcuts menu on Mac.

3. Tap the + button.

4. Select the type of automation you want to create.

5. Follow the on-screen instructions to complete

In this post we'll explore how to extract text from most recent image/photo or screenshot from your Mac or iPhone and send it to a note taking app Mem using API.

Steps to create the automation

Step 1: Get the latest Photos or Screenshots

Get the latest photo or screenshot from your device (iPhone, iPad or Mac).

• Click + to start a new automation

• Search for "Get latest photos"

• Add the step and enable "Include Screenshots"

Step 2: Extract text from Image

Extract Text from the latest photo or screenshot from Step 1.

• Search for "Extract Text from Image"

• Add the step and ensure the input is "Latest Photos" from Step 1

In this step, the text is extracted from the image using Apple's OCR on device.

Step 3: Copy to Clipboard

Copy the extracted text to clipboard.

• Search for "Copy to Clipboard" action in Apple Shortcuts

• Add "Text from Image" as input in this step. This step will help you to temporarily store the extracted text locally on device

• Next step is to send the extracted information to destination of your choice

· · ·

You can now send the extracted data to anywhere you'd like. Fe examples destinations:

• Apple Notes
• Send as Email
• Send as Text or WhatsApp message to a friend
• Send to your PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) system like Evernote, Mem Notion, etc.

In this post, we'll be exploring how to send the text to Mem using API.

To send the data using API to an external system, you need the API documentation and API Access Key.

Here's the example API Call that needs to be added in Apple Shortcuts:

curl \
-X POST \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-H "Authorization: ApiAccessToken " \
-d '{ "content": "Hello there! I am a new mem." }' \
https://api.mem.ai/v0/mems

Once you have the API Access Token, let's continue with Step 4.

· · ·

Step 4: Get the destination URL for API Call

Get the URL of the destination app (Mem) to initiate API Call.

From the code snippet above, the destination URL is:

https://api.mem.ai/v0/mems

• Add "URL" Action in Apple Shortcuts and update the destination URL

Step 5: API Call to Mem

This is the final step to send the data to your personal knowledge management system.

In this we need:

1. URL - Add "Get Contents from URL" Action from Apple Shortcuts
   1. Add URL as input from Step 4
2. Method "POST"
   1. POST method is used to send data using API
3. Headers
   1. Content/Type:application/json
      1. This is used to inform the API to accept the What is JSON as input format
   2. Authorization: ApiAccessToken
      1. your API token is private and should not be revealed to anyone
4. Request Body (JSON)
5. Content - Text extracted from Image
   1. The output of Step 3, extracted text content stored in clipboard

And, done!

Now, you're ready to run the shortcut from any of your apple devices to extract the text from most recent image or screenshot.

This automation saves you 2-3 minutes every time you want to extract text from your images.

Congratulations! You have successfully created an automation without writing a single line of code.

This blog is dedicated to help non-technical people build products and automations using No-Code. If you’re new to No-Code, you can check out the Beginner’s guide to No-Code .

​

What is Postmark?

Postmark is the email delivery service that developers and product teams actually like. Send transactional and marketing emails and get them to the inbox every time.

Postmark maintains one of the best delivery reputations in the industry by routing transactional and promotional messages through parallel but separate sending infrastructure. (source: G2)

What is Adalo?

Adalo is a no-code app development platform that enables you to build an app without writing a single line code.

You can publish the App to the web or App Store and Play Store without writing code.

If you're new to no-code, check out the post on Beginner's guide to No-Code.​

Integrating Adalo with Postmark

Create an account with Postmark and generate a Server API Token

Once you create a Postmark account, you'll need to create a server to start sending emails.

After creating the server, follow the steps below to get the server API token.

1. ​Click on the server name

2. Click API Tokens

3. Copy the API Token

Once you have the API Token ready, you can access the Postmark API docs here.

Setup custom actions in Adalo to send emails with Postmark

Create new Custom Action in Adalo

Click "Next" to configure the custom action

Custom action requires the following parameters:

1. ​API Base URL
   1. https://api.postmarkapp.com/email
2. Method (POST) - Sending data through an API
   1. POST

3. Headers

   1. Accept: application/JSON

   2. Content-Type: application/JSON

   3. X-Postmark-Server-Toekn:

4. Inputs (from, to, subject, body)

   1. From (sender email)

   2. To (recipient email)

   3. Subject

   4. Body (email body)

5. Body in JSON format

Below is the format from Postmark's API documentation​

Example request with curl

curl "https://api.postmarkapp.com/email" \ -X POST \ -H "Accept: application/json" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -H "X-Postmark-Server-Token: server token" \ -d'{ "From": "sender@example.com", "To": "receiver@example.com", "Subject": "Postmark test", "TextBody": "Hello dear Postmark user.", "HtmlBody": "Hello dear Postmark user.", "MessageStream": "outbound"}'

Configure the API request in Adalo as shown below based on the documentation from Postmark

As shown in step 4, the inputs can be configured to send dynamic data and use Magic Text in step 5.

Once all the setup is complete, click "RUN TEST REQUEST" to send your first email via Postmark.

Upon successful test, save the custom action to send emails from your application.

Trigger your custom action in Adalo and send the dynamic values to the custom action using magic text in Adalo.

Use the custom action every time you wish to send an email from your Adalo application.

Congratulations! You have successfully set up your email integration with Postmark for your Adalo app.

If you're new to No-Code, you can access beginner's tutorials from here.

​

What is Airtable?

Airtable is an easy-to-use platform for creating relational databases.

The user interface is simple spreadsheet-like, colorful, friendly and allows anyone to create a database in minutes. You can create databases like employee directories, product catalogs, etc.

Airtable provides an API for every base (i.e., database), table, or views you create, which can be accessed by other applications to interact with your data in Airtable.

Why use Airtable as a backend in your Adalo App?

You should consider using Airtable as the backend for your App in Adalo if:

• Your data is already in the Airtable database, and you would like to use it in your Adalo App.

• You're looking to have ownership and control over your data.

• You're looking to leverage the automation capabilities provided by Airtable. (ex: trigger an email automatically when a new record is created or updated)

• You're looking for complex data types which are currently not supported by Adalo.

What is Adalo?

Adalo is a no-code app development platform that enables you to build an app without writing a single line code.

You can publish the App to the web or in App Store and Play Store without writing code.

If you're new to no-code, check out the post on Beginner's guide to No-Code.​

Creating your Airtable Base

Creating a table in Airtable

First, create your tables in the Airtable. In this post, we'll be working with a fictitious employee directory.

Accessing your Airtable database API

Once your Airtable base is ready, the next step is to access the API documentation.

Follow these steps to access the Airtable API:

1. Click on Help (?) on the top right

2. Click on API Documentation

3. Select the Table
   ​​

Once you have access to the API documentation, head to Adalo to set up the integration.

Connecting Airtable API to your Adalo App

Here are the steps to connect your Airtable base to Adalo as external collections using API.

Displaying the Airtable data in Adalo.

Once you have the external collections set up in Adalo, the next step is to access the data in your App.

You need to add a list to your Adalo App and provide the external collection (i.e., Employee Collections) as the source data to access the data.

Filtering the Airtable API results in Adalo

There are 2 ways of filtering the Airtable data in Adalo.

Filter by View

Filtering the results by creating views in Airtable will help get the filtered results from the source without dynamically doing it in Adalo.

A drawback with this approach is you'll need to create a view for each filter and set up an external collection for every filtered view.

This approach works best if:

• you have limited filters in your collection. (ex: If you want to show whether an employee is "Active/Inactive," in this case, the filters are limited to 2)

• You need multiple filters applied in your results (Filter By Formula doesn't support various filters)

Filter results by views in Airtable:

Using the filtered view collection in Airtable

To get the filtered results by a view, add the query parameters in your URL while setting up the external collection, as shown in the image below. (i.e., ?view=yourViewName)

Filter by Formula

Filter by formula helps to dynamically filter the data in your Adalo App.

Airtable allows to filter the results using "filterByFormula" in the query parameters.

If you want to filter the results where employee status is active, you'll be the following formula:

{Status} ='Active'

Value in the curly braces {} is the field name in Airtable & value in the single quotes is filter value.

Setting up filters in Adalo (filterByFormula)

Other most-used formulas in Airtable include:

AND({field1}='value',{field2}='value')

OR({Field 1}='value', {Field 2}='value')

NOT({Total} = 0)

for the full list of formulae, you can refer to the Airtable Formula Reference​

Sorting the Airtable results in Adalo

Airtable requires sorting parameters to be passed in as query parameters in the URL.

Each sort object must have a field key specifying the name of the field to sort on, and an optional direction key that is either "asc" or "desc". The default direction is "asc".

sort[0][field]=Employee Name

sort[0][direction]=desc (optional, default direction is ascending)

Rate limits in Airtable

The API is limited to 5 requests per second per base. If you exceed this rate, you will receive a 429 status code and will need to wait 30 seconds before subsequent requests will succeed.

Airtable recommends using a caching proxy for higher limits.

​If you anticipate a higher read volume, we recommend using a caching proxy. This rate limit is the same for all plans and increased limits are not currently available.​

You can use services like NoCodeAPI to bypass the rate limits.

NoCodeAPI also allows you to fetch more than 100 records in a single call which is currently a limitation by Airtable.

​

If you’re new to No-Code, you can check out the Beginner’s guide to No-Code .

Disclaimer: Some of the resources in the list contain affiliate links, if you signup using these, I’ll get affiliate payments or discounts to my subscriptions and in some cases, you’ll be eligible for a discount too.

This post addresses your questions if you're starting out with no-code.

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

What is No-Code?

Put it simply, no-code enables creators to build software applications without writing code.

Traditional software development requires learning a programming language like Java, Javascript, React, etc., with no-code you can bypass this step and get straight into building on your ideas.

No-Code enables non-technical users to drag and drop software components and build full-fledged software applications. Users don't need to understand code or have prior coding experience to make with no-code.

Why No-Code?

While no-code enables non-technical users to build software applications, it also has other benefits like faster execution, low-cost development, minor or no setup requirement, etc.

Speed of execution

With no-code, the time to market is reduced drastically and allows the creator to launch applications rapidly. This is due to the work already done by the no-code platforms in the form of reusable software components, which you don't need to code.

All you need to do is to drag a relevant software component and connect to the desired data source with respective logic, and you're done.

Low-cost

No-code platforms reduce the development cost by up to 80%.

Traditional software development requires you to code or hire a developer to build the application.

Assuming you are a non-technical person, you'll need to hire at least one front-end developer and one backend developer; this will cost you a few thousand dollars a month.

No-code platforms subscriptions can cost as low as $19 per year (yup, per year!)

Little or no setup required

No-code platforms come with all the necessary setup, i.e., front-end editor, database, workflows, automation, etc.

Register for an account and start building using drag and drop software components; when you're done, deploy the application.

What can I build with No-Code?

You can build almost any software using no-code. Few examples include but are not limited to websites, web applications, progressive web apps, native iOS / Android apps, background automation, chrome extensions, etc.

Just like any other programming language, no-code platforms are evolving rapidly, and capabilities are increasing dramatically. There's no better time than now to start building with no-code.

Examples of No-Code app development platforms.

There are many no-code platforms available in the market; as of this writing, there are reportedly more than 500 no-code platforms available, both for individual creators and enterprises.

Here are few examples which are well known and widely used platforms currently:

Bubble.io

Bubble is one of the most advanced no-code platforms with a massive community of builders. Over 1.1 million Bubblers are creating web apps using Bubble as of this writing.

Bubble recently raised $100mn after bootstrapping for almost 10 years.

It has a bit of a learning curve initially, but it is worth the time and effort if you want to build advanced web applications with no code.

Price: Free; Paid plans start at $25/month per application

Adalo

Adalo is a mobile-first no-code platform; you can build and deploy your apps into App Store and Play Store with no additional setup.

Adalo is a beginner-friendly tool with a minimal learning curve. They recently raised $8m Series A and are expanding to support web applications with responsive design.

Browse more example Adalo apps here: #MadewithAdalo

Price: Free; Paid plans start from $50 per month to create unlimited apps.

GlideApps

Glide apps let you build powerful apps from spreadsheets in minutes.

Few notable example apps built within days using Glide during the Covid19 crisis in India and served millions of people in needy are:

Hyderabad Covid Resources

https://hydcovidresources.com/

India Covid Resources

https://indiacovidresources.in/

Price: Free; Paid plans start from $32 per month

​Softr

Softr is the easiest, fastest way to build your web apps on Airtable. Softr is one of the few no-code platforms which provide 1 custom domain for free!

One of my favorite communities, 100daysofnocode, is built using Softr.

https://www.100daysofnocode.com/

Browse more example Softr apps here: #MadewithSoftr​

Price: Free 1 custom domain; Paid plans start from $29 per month.

​Carrd

Carrd is the simplest way to build a simple, free, fully responsive one-page site for anything.

https://gyftbook.io/

Price: Free; Paid plans start from $19 per year (yup, per year!)

​​Xano

If you're concerned about the scalability of your no-code app, look no further. Xano lets you create a powerful, scalable backend for your app without writing a single line of code.

Price: Free; Paid plans start from $59 per month paid annually

And, there are many more no-code platforms on top of the few listed above (Airtable, Notion, Bildr, Zapier, Integromat, Retool, Clappia, etc.)​

Full list of No-Code Resources & Tools

I am a software developer (programmer); should I be concerned with No-Code?

Not at all! As a software programmer, you should be glad that you don't have to write the same piece of code again for a similar use case and instead focus your efforts on creating new stuff that millions of non-technical creators can use.

Your coding skills are an opportunity to make the world a better place by building solutions that don't already exist and even better if those can be reused by non-technical users to adapt to their use case.

No-Code in the news

The worldwide low-code development technologies market is projected to total $13.8 billion in 2021, an increase of 22.6% from 2020, according to the latest forecast by Gartner, Inc.

According to a report published by Forrester, the no-code / low code market will achieve an annual growth rate of 40%, hitting the $21.2 billion mark by 2022.