Mealime Grocery List API

This is a small server application that can items to your Mealime grocery list.

It wraps the internal Mealime web app grocery list API, and takes care of authentication with your Mealime account. It is written in TypeScript and uses the Deno runtime.

Getting started

This application can run anywhere where Deno runs, but in particular, it works for free and out-of-the-box on Deno Deploy.

Here's how to set it up:

Fork this repository
Create an account on Deno Deploy
Set up a new Deno Deploy project
Click "Add Env Variable" to add environment variables. We need three: MEALIME_EMAIL, MEALIME_PASSWORD and TOKEN. Add these to the left of each variable line respectively. On the right, add their values:
- For the email and password, fill in your Mealime credentials.
- For the TOKEN, come up with some random text that will act as the "password" to your server. If you know your way around a terminal, you can generate a random 64-character string using openssl rand -base64 64 | tr -d '\n' ; echo.
Link the project to the main branch of your forked GitHub repository, then select the index.ts file.
Deploy!
If all goes well, Deno Deploy will list two domains for your app, take note of the shorter domain, for example, username-mealime-groceries.deno.dev.

Now you have your own personal Mealime API running in the cloud.

Next, let's connect Siri to it.

Connect it to a Shortcut (iOS/ipadOS/macOS)

Add your shortcut, which you can base off this example: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/1eee03959780481ea1db7672565b4778

Replace "Get contents of" URL with https://username-mealime-groceries.deno.dev/add, using the domain name you took note of earlier. Make sure https:// is in front, and /add is at the end.
In the details of the "Get contents of" action, in the Authorization header, replace YOUR_TOKEN with the TOKEN that you set up before.

Now the integration should fully work! 🥳

For an idea for an Android integration, see below.

API reference

You need to use this API with an iOS Shortcut, you can also call it directly, or integrate it into another project.

The `/add` endpoint:

Expects the Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN header
Automatically logs you into the Mealime account of the provided credentials, before adding the products.
Currently only accepts JSON bodies of the type:
```
{
    item: 'apples and pears'
}
```
You can use and, & and , in your item query string to separate multiple products.

The `/reset` endpoint:

It expects the Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN header
This clears the cached CSRF tokens, cookies etc. used to authenticate with Mealime. On the next request, the app will log in into Mealime again.

Running with Docker

Run with Docker, referencing environment variables in a .env file:

docker container run --rm --name mealime-deno -p 3000:3000 --env-file=.env ghcr.io/th0rgall/mealime-groceries:main

Or set up a Docker Compose file:

version: '3'
services:
  mealime:
    image: ghcr.io/th0rgall/mealime-groceries:main
    env_file:
      - .env
    ports:
      - '3000:3000'

Behavior notes

When not running on Deno Deploy (e.g. Docker), the server caches cookies to a cookies.json file in the application directory, so they are preserved in case your container restarts.

Adding more product mappings

The application automatically maps products to sections.

This mapping is based on a static database, src/products.yaml, and it is not exhaustive (at all!). If you are missing products that you want to categorize to sections, add them to the file (also feel free submit a PR!)

The mapping code tries to assign products that are not exactly listed in the database to the right section using partial word matches, singular/plural matches, ... for example, "pinto beans" maps to the section "Rice, Grains & Beans" because "bean" is listed in that section (which is a partial word match, and a singular noun version of the query). These strategies are limited, and will lead to wrong categorizations. In those cases, adding more exact product matches are the easiest fix!

All available product sections in Mealime are listed in src/constants.ts. The app will not run if invalid sections are used in the mapping database.

Android "OK Google" Integration using IFTTT

Unfortunately Android does not have a proper equivalent to Shortcuts, or at least nothing that is as powerful as needed for this use case.

However, I've found a sketchy workaround using email and IFTTT.

It works as follows:

Set up an IFTTT applet with the "Email trigger".
- If... an email is sent to trigger@applet.ifttt.com by your email address. Check which email you used for your IFTT account, because it needs to be the same one as your primary Android phone email address.
- Then ... "Make a web request" that sends a POST request to your /add endpoint with the Authorization: Bearer YOUR_TOKEN header, application/json as the Content Type and { item: '[Body]}'} as the Body, where [Body] is the email body that you can find from "Insert ingredients"
Add a contact to your phone, which you name "Groceries", and give the email address "trigger@applet.ifttt.com"
You can now say something like OK Google, send email [bananas] to groceries. Google Assistant will ask you to confirm sending the email. This looks weird, but it works most of the time.

th0rgall/mealime-groceries