How to use IFTTT
in your everyday life
IFTTT is both a website and a mobile app.
IFTTT means "If this then that".
The free service launched in 2010 with the following slogan: "Put the Internet to work for you".
So, how can you use it?
Sign up for an account on the IFTTT website.
It's a one-step process that only requires an email, username, and password.
You can even sign in via Facebook and your Google ID.
Once you've joined (it's free to do so), you'll be able to find and set up your first Applet.
At this point, it might seem a little obscure so we will start with an easy-to-do but in our times useful applet.
I created an applet named "Send me a cute picture" via IFTTT.
What is it supposed to do?
Simply send me a cute picture that I will have predetermined when I ask for it.
In rough periods, it might be useful to know that you can send yourself such a picture.
... All the more so since if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself!
So let's get started.
As said in the introduction, you will have to create an account on IFTTT first.
Once it's done, you will have to click on "My Applets" to start designing your very first applet.
You now have arrived on a page on which you can find all of your applets.
Of course, right now this page is empty, so click on "New Applet" to fill it!
That's it.
You are now in the core of the creation: the IF THIS THEN THAT page.
So now click on THIS so as to create the trigger of your applet.
At this point you need to choose a service among all the ones that you are offered.
You could use popular apps such as Youtube, Facebook or Twitter,
but here we want to create a brand new personal applet so we are going to use Webhooks.
Webhooks only offers one possibility of trigger -which is not the case for every service-,
so all you need to do -after you connect on the platform- is to click on "Receive a Web Request".
Completing trigger fields, in this particular case, consists of choosing a name for your event.
Remember to get a name that is not too complex -you'll have to remember it later on-, and that is linked to the purpose of the applet.
Congratulations, you're halfway through the creation of your first applet!
You have now reached the "THAT" part of the IF THIS THEN THAT process.
Here you go, click on "THAT"!
You now get to choose your action service.
Then again, you can choose among all the services offered, just not Webhooks again.
Here, I chose Messenger.
As I mentioned before, even though Webhooks only offers one trigger possibility,
most services enable us to use a variety of options.
In this case, I clicked on Send photo to create my applet.
As said in the picture, during the action fields completion,
you will need to type the url of the picture you want sent
and then, if you wish, add a message to accompany it.
I chose the name "Send me a cute picture" for my app,
but you can choose your own so as to find it easily when you have plenty of other applets!
Ok, great, now you've got an applet of your own.
But it isn't that useful if you don't know how to activate it, is it?
So here is the solution to your problem!
What you need to do is to look for Webhooks through the search engine of IFTTT
, and, once you find it, click on Services.
Among all the things you can find on the page you have landed on,
the only one that interests us here is Documentation.
So here you go, click there!
Now you can see your very own key that will help you trigger an event.
Just one last step: type the name of your event in the red frame, and click on Test it!
There it is, your brand new working applet!
After clicking on the Test it button in the Webhooks documentation,
here is what I received on my phone just seconds later.
First to appear, my caption (that is the one thing that will appear no matter what:
if the applet can't go through with the transmission of your picture or your video,
it will still send the caption).
Then, the picture I chose was displayed.
And if I want to click on the Test it button multiple times, I will receive the same cute picture.
So beware, if you want to change the picture being sent,
you'll have to edit the applet or create another one!
Because nobody is perfect... A few errors that might occur when you use that kind of applet
Of course, if you follow the process I just explained, this one particular applet will work.
However, applets that are pretty similar might not work the way you expected them...
Right before I created this applet,
I wanted to send myself a Youtube music video that reminded me of good old memories.
But, as you can see, only the caption was correctly transferred to messenger whereas the video was lost somewhere in the World Wide Web...
So you might have to try several links before getting the right one when using the Video option in Messenger.
(And no, it is no use to do as I did:
hit the Test it button several times before realizing it really won't work...)
So, while we're back to images,
you might want to know where to get your images from to avoid the "image not found" type of error.
I first tried to take a picture from my computer
and to open it in Internet Explorer, which didn't quite work.
It seems more likely that you will actually receive a picture if you take something that is already on the Internet
-or you might as well put the picture you want on the Internet to use it,
but remember that once it's on the Internet, you don't quite own it anymore...
Here, we could assimilate the GET function we used to get a picture from an url to messenger
to the GET function we use when using jQuery.
Indeed, we use a GET function and not a POST function because we are loading a file lying within a small size range.
If we needed to code our applet through JS, we could start using this script:
$.get(URL, function() {
// You would here describe what your function would do, in this case return a particular picture
});
If you want more information about how to get an image via its url through JS,
click here
(please note that the article is in French but the code remains relevant)
According to the IFTTT website itself, here are some clues about API coding
and how you might improve your applet with what they call Filter Code :
each action's object has the following methods:
- skip(): this lets you skip an action instead of running it. You can optionally provide a message that will be shown
in the user's event feed to explain why the Applet decided not to run the action. - set[FieldName](): for each hidden field of the action, you can use a correspondingly-named setter method to override its value.
For more information about how you can use JS with IFTTT, click here
According to this web page General API requirements , here are the things you need to code your applet:
- You must use HTTPS to create the production version of your API
- Requests from IFTTT to your service API need to have the following headers:
Accept: application/json
Accept-Charset: utf-8
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate
Content-type: application/json - Provide response bodies as JSON objects.
Raw body on success:
{
"data": {
The value of `data` varies, but is typically either an object or array
...
}
}
Raw body on error:
{
"errors": [
{
"message": "Something went wrong!"
}
]
}