Sparkfun Thing: How to Trigger IFTTT Event and Send Extra Email Data

I was playing with Sparkfun ESP8266 Thing and IFTTT Maker Channel. I wanted to trigger an IFTTT event and then send an email to myself with extra data .

For example, trigger Home Security Event , sending extra data , a text string "Side Gate Open" .

But .. I could not find any examples on how to do this.

IFTTT does give you this information when you sign up:

1. The content is put after the HTTP headers. The format of an HTTP POST is to have the HTTP headers, followed by a blank line, followed by the request body. The POST variables are stored as key-value pairs in the body. With an optional JSON body of: { "value1" : "01", "value2" : "02", "value3" : "03" }

2. HTTP Post example:

POST /path/script.cgi HTTP/1.0

From: frog@jmarshall.com

User-Agent: HTTPTool/1.0

Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

Content-Length: 32

Body

Ok great .. now what ? After some googling and experimentation .. here are the key details:

1. Need to send HTTP POST request

2. The Content-Type must be application/json

3. The data must be a text string containing key value pairs: "{ "value1" : "01", "value2" : "02", "value3" : "03" }"

For Sparkfun Thing , you use the Arduino IDE and code in C/C++. I only going describe the IFTTT trigger code.

Here extra data sent is 05 , 06 , 07

const char IFTTT_POST_DATA[] = "{\"value1\":\"05\",\"value2\":\"06\",\"value3\":\"07\"}";

int post_data_size = sizeof(IFTTT_POST_DATA);
String IFTTT_POST_DATA_SIZE = String(post_data_size);

client.print(String("POST ") + IFTTT_REQUEST + " HTTP/1.1\r\n"

+ "Host: " + IFTTT_HOST + "\r\n"

+ "Connection: close\r\n"

+ "Content-Type: application/json\r\n"

+ "Content-Length: " + IFTTT_POST_DATA_SIZE + "\r\n"

+ "\r\n"

+ IFTTT_POST_DATA + "\r\n");

// Extra data to send

String v1 = "Backyard";

int v2 = 1;

float v3 = 73.6;

// Convert float value to a string named sv3

char sv3[16];
dtostrf(v3,8, 2, sv3);

String df1 = "{\"value1\":";

String df2 = "\"value2\":";

String df3 = "\"value3\":";

// Create body data string

String IFTTT_POST_DATA = df1 + "\"" + v1 + "\"" + "," + df2 + "\"" + String(v2) + "\"" + "," + df3 + "\"" + sv3 + "\"" + "}" ;

// Determine body data string size

String IFTTT_POST_DATA_SIZE = String(IFTTT_POST_DATA.length());

// Send HTTP POST Request to IFTTT

client.print(String("POST ") + IFTTT_REQUEST + " HTTP/1.1\r\n"

+ "Host: " + IFTTT_HOST + "\r\n"

+ "Connection: close\r\n"

+ "Content-Type: application/json\r\n"

+ "Content-Length: " + IFTTT_POST_DATA_SIZE + "\r\n"

+ "\r\n"

+ IFTTT_POST_DATA + "\r\n");

The event named "Home_Security" occurred on the Maker Channel

From your email name
7:08 PM (35 minutes ago)

to me

What: Home_Security When: January 5, 2016 at 07:08PM Extra Data: Backyard, 1, 73.60,