Shortcuts

HTTPBot exposes a set of App Intents — actions you can drop into Apple's Shortcuts app and trigger with Siri or automations. That means you can call your saved APIs from anywhere iOS or macOS lets you run a Shortcut: a Home Screen tile, a time-of-day automation, a Siri phrase, or as one step in a larger Shortcut.

Because each action returns its result, you can chain HTTPBot actions together — make a request, then filter the response, then feed it into another step.

Available actions

Search for "HTTPBot" when adding an action in the Shortcuts app to find these:

Make Request

Pick one of your saved HTTPBot requests and, optionally, an Environment whose variables should be applied. HTTPBot resolves the request's {{variables}} (see Environments & Variables), sends it, and hands back a Response object. The Response exposes three properties you can use in later steps: Body, Status Code, and Response Headers.

This is the everyday action — wire it to a Siri phrase or an automation to fire a request hands-free.

Make Request With Variables

Identical to Make Request, except instead of selecting a saved Environment you pass variable values inline as a stringified JSON object. This is ideal when the values come from earlier Shortcut steps or from user input — for example building {"userId":"42","token":"…"} on the fly. The output is the same Response object.

Query/Filter JSON, XML or HTML

Extracts data from a block of text using a path query. Choose the input type:

• JSON — query with JSONPath.
• HTML or XML — query with XPath.

Give it the input string and your query, and it returns the matched value as a string. Pair it with Make Request to pull a single field out of a response.

📝 Unlike the in-app Filter Response feature — which also offers jq for JSON — this Shortcuts action filters JSON with JSONPath only. There's no jq option here, so write JSON queries as JSONPath expressions (e.g. $.data.name).

See Filtering Responses for more on JSONPath and XPath syntax.

Example automations

Make Request → Query/Filter JSON

1. Add Make Request and select a request that returns JSON.
2. Add Query/Filter JSON, XML or HTML:
   • Input — the Body from the previous Make Request step.
   • Input Type — JSON.
   • Query — a JSONPath expression such as $.data.name.
3. Use the filtered string in a later step — copy it, show it, or send it on.

This pattern turns a raw API response into exactly the one value you care about.

Passing dynamic variables

1. Add an Ask for Input (or Text) step to build a JSON string like {"userId":"42"}.
2. Add Make Request With Variables and pass that string as Variables.
3. Read the Response in the next step.

Use this when the request needs values that aren't known ahead of time.

Tips

• The first time a HTTPBot action runs, you may be prompted to allow it.
• Save the requests you want to automate in HTTPBot first; the actions reference your saved requests by name.
• Keep environment-specific values in an Environment and select it in Make Request, or pass them inline with Make Request With Variables.

Related

• Environments & Variables — supplying variables to automated requests
• Filtering Responses — JSONPath / XPath query syntax
• Building a Request — creating the requests you'll automate