One thing I want to do with the workflow on this blog is the ability to upload posts and images to the Inbound Bucket from an iPad or iPhone. I poked around the App Stoe for S3 clients, but nothing jumped out. So, I thought I’d try to make my own with Shortcuts!

I started reading through the S3 PUT Object, AWS SigV4, and Signature Calculations for the Authorization Header documents form AWS, as well as the Request your first API in Shortcuts on iPhone or iPad from Apple.

Things were looking promising, especiually when I saw that the “Generate Hash” Shortcut action supports SHA256! I figured, with enough tapping, typing, and swiping, I’d have a decent shortcut in no time. With a little extra polish, it would be something to share with the world.

Unfortunatley, I need HMAC_SHA256, so I can seed the hash with various keys. Nothing in Shortcuts seems to provide this. Roadblock Number One.

Then, looking through the Shortcut Actions, I found the Run JavaScript on Webpage Action. Could I web-pack the aws-s3 API into a helper for Shortcuts? Short answer, no. This action can only be run on web pages, and only from Safari’s Share Sheet. Roadblock Number Two.

I think Shortcuts just isn’t the right tool for the job. For the short-term , I can upload through the AWS/S3 Console from an iPad. Longer-term, I’ll build an admin console into the blog itself, support Create, Replace, Update and Delete (CRUD) for the Inbound Bucket.