Apple shortcuts automation for appending to note

Question

I am attempting to create an apple automation shortcut in the Apple shortcuts app to do the following to do the following: Basically I would like to append to a note every day to keep track of my daily diary /Journal

I would like two options append or view I can describe the details of the functionality for each I can describe the details of the functionality for each

view: This is very simple just open the note file for the diary

Append:

1. Get the current date in this format MMM dd and then BOLD that date such that it is celary differenitateable from the content of the journal entry

2. Take text input

3. Append to an existing note for example I titled mine Jan 3 2023

4. I would like to do this on a daily basis

I attempted so many different ways from markdown to rich text and also from HTML to mark down but none of these worked. Since this is not proper code per se I can't use code blocks so I'll just include screenshots I hope that's OK with the guidelines in this manner.this is the append section where X is the current date taken from device: code for the append block:

This shortcut used to work perfectly in the past however I'm not sure what happened but the markdown text does not actually make the current date bold and neither does it leave one line gap behind the previous journal entry.

I personally thought that it was quite strange but I could not really find out a good resolution and it's been quite buggy.

Answer 1

Incorporating a current date within a blank text alongside adding the "Ask for Input Clause" should do the trick. Unfortunately anything that has to do with html is not registering properly when converting to rich text from HTML. This way you will be able add space after the previous entry in the note

As for bolding, Take input, have a text file with all the alphabet chracters in upper and lower case and all the numbers, Have another text file with all the alphabet characters in upper and lower case and all the numbers but this time in bold text. Then, split the text, And then, parse through which ones are from the input and convert them to bold. Basically create a mapping for notBold chracter or # to Bolded chracter or number. More questions? Please reach out to me via my github pages or linkedin : Anirudh Gattu or search this url: agattu1.github.io