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Creating a shopping list from recipe

  • August 5, 2022
  • 4 replies
  • 94 views
C

Hi,

I’m really enjoying Airtable. First some context, I’m an individual user using Airtable to keep track of various aspects of my life and I am only on the free plan.

Onto my question. I have a base that I use to record recipes and use as a meal planner. I would like to be able to generate a shopping list from the recipes marked as going to be used in the next week.

In my main table Recipe, are obviously the recipes. I’m using 2 linked fields to two different tables: one for ingredients and one for when the recipe will be used (as that’s the way I found to show multiple dates for one recipe). In the usage table I have a view that shows me the recipes for the next week. I cannot however wrap my head on how I should go to create a view (in any of the tables) that says “show Ingredients matching Recipes where Used date is within the next 7 days”.

Best answer by Claire_Eymin

Hi @Claire_Eymin,
On the Usage table, Add a formula field with

TONOW({Date})

Set {Date} to the name of your Used date. This will tell you how many days there are to that date from now.

Now you can filter to only show Used dates not in the past.

I thought this might be better than with in 7 days as that is too restrictive for a formula, if you ever wanted to change that threshold just change the filter.

Or

You can get the WEEKNUM({Date}) of the used date. Then add a formula to find this weeks number and output a yes/no result that is easier to filter on.

IF(WEEKNUM({Date})=WEEKNUM(TODAY()), 'This Week', 'Not This Week')

Hi,

Thanks for the input! TONOW didn’t quite do what I needed as it was just returning a value with no indication if it was in the past or future. However, this out my mind to work again and I have achieved what I wanted. I’m not sure it’s very elegant but it does the trick.

I added a formula in my usage table to return only dates after today.

Then I added a lookup field in my recipe table to look for that field.

The in my ingredient table I added a lookup of that field via the recipe table and filtered not empty cells, therefore only showing ingredients needed.

4 replies

V
Forum|alt.badge.img+16
  • Vivid-Squid
  • Inspiring
  • August 5, 2022

Hi @Claire_Eymin,
On the Usage table, Add a formula field with

TONOW({Date})

Set {Date} to the name of your Used date. This will tell you how many days there are to that date from now.

Now you can filter to only show Used dates not in the past.

I thought this might be better than with in 7 days as that is too restrictive for a formula, if you ever wanted to change that threshold just change the filter.

Or

You can get the WEEKNUM({Date}) of the used date. Then add a formula to find this weeks number and output a yes/no result that is easier to filter on.

IF(WEEKNUM({Date})=WEEKNUM(TODAY()), 'This Week', 'Not This Week')
C
  • Claire_Eymin
  • Author
  • New Participant
  • Answer
  • August 5, 2022

Hi @Claire_Eymin,
On the Usage table, Add a formula field with

TONOW({Date})

Set {Date} to the name of your Used date. This will tell you how many days there are to that date from now.

Now you can filter to only show Used dates not in the past.

I thought this might be better than with in 7 days as that is too restrictive for a formula, if you ever wanted to change that threshold just change the filter.

Or

You can get the WEEKNUM({Date}) of the used date. Then add a formula to find this weeks number and output a yes/no result that is easier to filter on.

IF(WEEKNUM({Date})=WEEKNUM(TODAY()), 'This Week', 'Not This Week')

Hi,

Thanks for the input! TONOW didn’t quite do what I needed as it was just returning a value with no indication if it was in the past or future. However, this out my mind to work again and I have achieved what I wanted. I’m not sure it’s very elegant but it does the trick.

I added a formula in my usage table to return only dates after today.

Then I added a lookup field in my recipe table to look for that field.

The in my ingredient table I added a lookup of that field via the recipe table and filtered not empty cells, therefore only showing ingredients needed.

V
V
Forum|alt.badge.img+16
  • Vivid-Squid
  • Inspiring
  • August 5, 2022

Hi,

Thanks for the input! TONOW didn’t quite do what I needed as it was just returning a value with no indication if it was in the past or future. However, this out my mind to work again and I have achieved what I wanted. I’m not sure it’s very elegant but it does the trick.

I added a formula in my usage table to return only dates after today.

Then I added a lookup field in my recipe table to look for that field.

The in my ingredient table I added a lookup of that field via the recipe table and filtered not empty cells, therefore only showing ingredients needed.


Great Job!

As you can see there are many ways to get the solution you are after. Glad it worked out.

H
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  • himg1509
  • Participating Frequently
  • January 27, 2024

Hi @Claire_Eymin @Vivid-Squid 

I have a similar problem statement relating to creating a grocery shopping list from a meal plan but my use case and thus data structure is slightly different. Would you be able to help?

heman
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