Introduction to IFTTT

Why IFTTT and API ?

If This Then That, also known as IFTTT, is a free web-based service that creates chains of simple conditional statements, called applets. An applet is triggered by changes that occur within other web services such as Gmail, Facebook, Telegram, Instagram, or Pinterest.

Wikipedia

And later in the article we can find :

IFTTT employs the following concepts: Services (formerly known as channels) are the basic building blocks of IFTTT. They mainly describe a series of data from a certain web service such as YouTube or eBay. Services can also describe actions controlled with certain APIs, like SMS. Sometimes, they can represent information in terms of weather or stocks. Each service has a particular set of triggers and actions.

Using IFTTT's services to create our app

With recent news on coronavirus, I would like to keep myself updated on the subject.
The problem is that you see news on it everywhere and it can be hard to know if the source is relatable.
I will use the power of API to create my own newsfeed from the source I want.
IFTTT is kind of lacking of french news so I will use The New York Times that I personally trust.

How ?

Well by using New York Times services offered on IFTTT and then using another service, either email, SMS or anything that can send a notification directly to you.
The process will be lowkey the same for any second service you will chose.

First step is to go to create (create an account if you don't already have one) and then you will see the first screen on the left.
Click on the first part "If+This" and you will be redirect to a page with a lot of differents services, you can simply use the search bar and type in 'The New York Times'.

First step done, now you will have a bunch of options, and as you might have noticed it's the one on the second screen. You can if you desire look for the others one and maybe find one that will match better but for now I will stick to this one.

After, I think it's pretty clear but in the 'Search for' input field, I will just type 'coronavirus'.

Now that we've done the first part of our applet, we need a way to get notified when our trigger fires. That what we are about to do now.
You should've been redirected to the same page as the first one, except than now you can see the NY Times logo on the first '+'.
We are going now to set the second part, so click on 'Then+That' and let's finish our applet !

As earlier, we once again have the whole scrollable page with the different services, you are free to look for something you would like to use, on my own I will go on 'Email' (you will need to login into your email account).
This time, there is only one option so you can't go wrong and click on 'Send me an email'.
Once it's done you should arrive on a page with some more informations, don't get too scared it's actually super easy to understand.
You have two sections : the object of your mail and the body. You are free to fill them with anything you want but it's nice to know what are the ingredients.
Ingredients allow you to have dynamical values such as the title of the article, the author etc... You can see them when they have a grey background! Don't hesitate to check the whole list, maybe there is something you would need!

Personnaly I let it by how it is by default, there is all the informations I need to quickly know if it interests me and if so to reach the article easily.
Once you are set just click on 'Create action' at the very bottom and... that's it ! Applet done, you will now receive all the articles created about the subject you wanted, easy as that !