AndroidApps

Adding a recipe book option to my Tasker-based todo list

Screenshot_2013-06-03-14-41-20My Tasker-created todo list is one of my most used Tasker creations, and I’ve occasionally used it as an example in posts and written about specific features. A few days ago I was adding the same set of items to my shopping list through it for the Nth time, and I thought there had to be a better way to deal with things I buy a lot. I came up with the idea of making a recipe book “add-on” to the shopping list part of the todo list, allowing me to browse a variety of preset recipes and then add them to the list in one go.

I ended up giving the add-on two options: adding the entire list of ingredients from a recipe, or go into detailed view and adding just individual items, useful for when you already have part of what you need. I have it set up so I can access this new recipe book via a long press action on the same icon where a single tap opens the shopping list, so I can quickly go there instead of the list itself.

There are many ways you can create something like this, and I ended up using a new method I hadn’t tried before. I now have a folder on my phone for recipes in text file format, where each text file is a new recipe. The ingredients are stored in the files, separated by commas. The scene dynamically lists the file names in a Menu scene element, so that adding or updating anything is a matter of editing the files in that folder. This makes it fully dynamic and capable of being updated without any tinkering with Tasker, which I think is a bonus.

I explain the specifics of how it works in the video above for anyone who’s interested. It uses some of what I was talking about last week regarding comma separated values, and is a perfect example of where you can use some of what I talked about in that post.

What I created is essentially a very basic version of something that can be made as complex as you want. The only purpose of mine is to store ingredients, but you could turn this into a proper recipe app with more feature. One guy even created a voice based cookbook a while ago, and something like that could be integrated in something like this as well. The method I use for turning a folder full of files into a menu in a scene also has uses outside of just what I used it for.

tasker banner - for some reason we don't have an alt tag here

Pocketables does not accept targeted advertising, phony guest posts, paid reviews, etc. Help us keep this way with support on Patreon!
Become a patron at Patreon!

Andreas Ødegård

Andreas Ødegård is more interested in aftermarket (and user created) software and hardware than chasing the latest gadgets. His day job as a teacher keeps him interested in education tech and takes up most of his time.

Avatar of Andreas Ødegård