Mealie Bring API Integration

The self-hosted recipe manager Mealie startet to support sending a recipe to a Bring shopping list with this PR. However, this requires the Mealie instance to be publicly available (from the internet). Since many users want their self-hosted services to not be available from the internet, I chose to create this integration.

This project provides the source code and a container image for a simple webserver which listens for requests by the Mealie instance and adds the ingredients of a recipe to a specified Bring shopping list.

Architecture

Without this project

1. The Mealie instance sends a GET request to the recipe to API of bring (See Bring API docs).
   • The link looks like this https://api.getbring.com/rest/bringrecipes/deeplink?url=<mealieinstance>g/home/r/<recipe>&source=web.
2. Bring then does a GET request to the Mealie instance and pulls the ingredients.
   • In order for this to work the Mealie instance has to be reachable from the public internet.
   • This opens an attack vector as anyone can access the Mealie instance.

With this project

1. The client (e.g. your phone or PC) sends a POST request to this webserver with the ingredients in its body.
2. The webserver extracts the ingredients from the request and adds them directly to a list of the users choice via the Bring API.

This integration is entirely local and does not require any service to be exposed to the Internet.

Deployment

Environment variables

No matter which deployment option you chose you must setup some environment variables:

Variable name	Description	Required	Default	Example
BRING_USERNAME	The email address of your bring account	Yes	-	[email protected]
BRING_PASSWORD	The password of your bring account	Yes	-	my super secret password
BRING_LIST_NAME	The exact name of the list you want to add the ingredients to, supports special characters	Yes	-	My shopping list with spaces
IGNORED_INGREDIENTS	Ingredients that are never added to the shopping list (things you always have at home), separated by a ,, case insensitive, WARNING: This only works for recipes with enabled ingredient amounts in the recipe settings!	No	- (all ingredients will be added)	Salt,Pepper,Frying oil
LOG_LEVEL	The loglevel the application logs at	No	INFO	DEBUG
HTTP_HOST	The address the application tries to attach to, leave this empty to listen on all interfaces, leave this empty if you are using Docker	No	0.0.0.0	192.168.1.5
HTTP_PORT	The port the application listens on, change this if needed if you run the application locally, leave this empty if you are using Docker	No	8742	1234

Ensure to quote your environment variables. Without quotes your password might not be read properly if it contains symbols such as <, & or ;.

Deployment options

You can run this app in three simple ways. I prefer the third option. Depending on the deployment option you chose you can ignore some environment variables (e.g. HTTP_HOST and HTTP_PORT).

1. Locally

1. Copy the contents ./assets/env.example to ./.env and adjust the environment variables to your needs.
2. (Optional) Create and activate a virtual environment with python -m venv .venv; source .venv/bin/activate.
3. Install the requirements with pip install -r ./assets/requirements.txt.
4. Run python source/main.py.

2. As a container with docker run

1. Run docker run mealie-api and pass in your environment variables with -e.
   • You can (not must) specify a different port than the default (8742) with -p 1234:8742.
   • Example:

     docker run \
         -e BRING_USERNAME="[email protected]" \
         -e BRING_PASSWORD="my super secret password" \
         -e BRING_LIST_NAME="My shopping list with spaces" \
         -p 1234:8742 \
         ghcr.io/felixschndr/mealie-bring-api:latest

3. As a container with docker-compose (Preferred way)

1. Add this container to your existing docker-compose next to your Mealie instance or create a new docker-compose and adjust the environment variables to your needs. Take a look at the example docker-compose.
2. Run docker-compose up.

Setup in Mealie

After deploying the container, there is one simple step you have to do in Mealie: You have to set up the link between Mealie and this project.

1. Head over to http(s)://<your-mealie-instance>/group/data/recipe-actions (e.g., http://localhost:1234/group/data/recipe-actions) while being logged in as an administrator.

   

2. Click on Create to create a new action.

3. Give it any title (e.g. Bring or Add ingredients to Bring). This will be visible for the users.

   

4. For the URL input the address where this project is running on followed by a / (e.g. http://<ip-of-server>:8742/ or https://mealie-bring-api.yourlocaldomain.com/ if you are using a reverse proxy)

   Note: It is important to understand that the HTTP requests to this service originate from your client and NOT your mealie instance. Thus, you have to ensure that your client is able to reach this service (not being blocked by the firewall) and enter the hostname of the server where this service is running on in the URL (not localhost).

5. Change the Type to POST

6. Save

   

7. Try it out 🎉

Usage in Mealie

1. Head over to a recipe of your choice.

2. Click on the three little dots.

3. Click on Recipe Actions

4. Chose your new action (e.g. Bring)

   

5. That's it!

   • You should now see the ingredients in your list
   • You should see some output in the logfile

   mealie_bring_api | [2024-05-18 13:38:41,090] [LoggerMixin] [INFO] [Received recipe "Apple crumble" from "https://mealie-bring-api.yourlocaldomain.com"]
   mealie_bring_api | [2024-05-18 13:38:45,373] [LoggerMixin] [INFO] [Added all ingredients to Bring]
   

Maintenance

You can check whether the webserver is still alive by sending a GET request to /status and check if you get a 200 status code:

$ curl -I https://mealie-bring-api.yourlocaldomain.com/status
HTTP/2 200
server: openresty
date: Mon, 20 May 2024 12:27:56 GMT
content-type: text/html; charset=utf-8
content-length: 2
strict-transport-security: max-age=63072000; preload

or

$ curl -s -o /dev/null -w "%{http_code}" https://mealie-bring-api.yourlocaldomain.com/status
200