Get meal plan

Use this action to get the meal plan from Mealie for a specified date range. This is handy when you want to read out today’s dinner, show it on a dashboard, or send it in a notification.

This action returns its result in a response variable, which you can use in later steps of the same automation or script.

Using this action from the user interface

If you prefer building automations and scripts visually, Home Assistant walks you through this action step by step. You pick what to target, tweak a few options, and save. No YAML knowledge required.

To get a meal plan from an automation or a script:

1. Go to Settings > Automations & scenes.
2. Open an existing automation or script, or select Create automation > Create new automation.
3. If you’re setting up a new automation, add a trigger in the When section. Scripts don’t need a trigger. They run when something else calls them.
4. In the Then do section, select Add action.
5. From the search box, search for and select Mealie: Get meal plan.
6. Select the Mealie instance you want to use, and set the date range you want.
7. In the Response variable field, enter a name to store the data in, such as meal_plan.
8. Select Save.

This action does not support targets. In the UI, you are not prompted to choose an area, device, entity, or label. You select the Mealie instance instead.

Options in the UI

Using this action in YAML

If you work directly in YAML, or you want to know exactly what Home Assistant does under the hood, this section has the technical reference. It lists the field names you use in YAML, their types, and which ones are required.

In YAML, refer to this action as mealie.get_mealplan. Store the result in a response variable so you can use it in later steps:

action: mealie.get_mealplan
data:
  config_entry_id: YOUR_MEALIE_CONFIG_ENTRY_ID
  start_date: "2025-06-01"
  end_date: "2025-06-07"
response_variable: meal_plan

This gets the meal plan for the first week of June and stores it in the meal_plan response variable.

Options in YAML

Response data

The action returns the meal plan entries for the date range, under a mealplan key. Each entry includes the meal type (such as breakfast or dinner), the date, and either the planned recipe or a note.

A shortened example of using the response in a template sensor that lists today’s dinner looks like this:

template:
  - triggers:
      - trigger: time_pattern
        hours: /1
    actions:
      - action: mealie.get_mealplan
        data:
          config_entry_id: YOUR_MEALIE_CONFIG_ENTRY_ID
        response_variable: result
    sensor:
      - name: "Dinner today"
        unique_id: mealie_dinner_today
        state: >
          
          {% for meal in result.mealplan if meal.entry_type == "dinner" -%}
          {{ meal.recipe['name'] if meal.recipe is not none else meal.title -}}
          {{ ", " if not loop.last }}
          {%- endfor %}
          

Good to know

• To find the ID or slug of a recipe in the response, use the mealie.get_recipes action.

Still stuck?

The Home Assistant community is quick to help: join Discord for real-time chat, post on the community forum with the action you’re calling and what you expected to happen, or share on our subreddit /r/homeassistant.

Related actions

These actions work well alongside this one:

• Set a meal plan: Plan a recipe or a meal note on a specific date in Mealie.

• Set random meal plan: Plan a random recipe on a specific date in Mealie.

• Get recipe: Get a Mealie recipe by its ID or slug.