API and Webhooks

[David L_ West]

I like Trello but ran into the same "gotcha" everybody else does: no meaningful support for recurring tasks. Card Repeater doesn't cut it. So I was really excited when I found the API and Webhooks. Wow, the possibilities are endless! So I start coding. 

Not so fast, say the gods. While the API is clean and works well, it doesn't provide access to the full set of properties of Trello boards, lists and cards. In fact it seems like there are more things I *can't* touch than things I can. I can't turn 'Watch' on or off? The heck you say.

My question for the community and any Atlassians that read this: is this really how it is and how it's going to be? Is there going to be or has there been any evolution of the API? I could do some really amazing stuff if the API would let me do the things I (I think quite reasonably) expect an API to do. Will it someday?

UPDATE: Watch is apparently Subscribe from the API's POV. Tested and works. That said, Location doesn't appear to be anywhere in the API and I expect I'll keep finding things that are in Trello boards/cards/lists but can't be get/set via the API, so my question holds.

[David L_ West]

Consider this board, "Do The Things." I record what I have for Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner in the cards while they are in Do Today, and once I'm done eating, I drag them into "Done Today" where a rule marks them as complete. I'd like it to also un-Watch them, but neither Automation nor the API can do that. Oh well.

Then at 0130 every morning, "Done Today" gets renamed to that day's date and a fresh "Done Today" is created. Eventually, I'd probably like to move those to a "Did Today" board and have a master list of all my meals from all my boards. But ok, that's a little pie (heh) in the sky.

My initial idea was to have my daily (or someday, weekly/monthly as well) tasks listed in "Daily Task Repeaters" and have code that copied them with any attributes intact, just modify the dates, set them to uncompleted, clear watch status, etc. But nope, no such luck with the API.

This is just to add context to my question above. I'm head-scratching about how to implement Trello with the API as it is, but it makes me grumpy that I have to. 

[milynnus]

@David L_ West 

I will have to research a bit on your “watch” requirement.

I used webhook and Trello api via a Python wrapper my version of mirroring and sync that you can use with your Trello automation http request to setup the card for the mirror and sync.

I have a retrospective item due date microservice and other date manipulation work for clients. Building a custom power was done with a node.js microservice.

In summary, you would use Trello webhook and api, to address very specific requirements. 

[David L_ West]

Thanks. I haven't written web-hook-based things before, but until a couple of weeks ago, I hadn't used REST APIs much either, and I'm picking them up pretty quickly. I'm excited at the possibilities of webhooks, but I can tell even now that the API will limit what can be done.

I found that 'Watch' in the UI translates to 'card.Subscribed' in the API, but there (at least as far as I can see) is no API surfacing for setting reminders. That alone puts a big crimp in what I want to do.

It'd be great if there were some comparisons that showed what Trello functions were NOT exposed by the API, and greater still if somebody w/in Atlassian would say, "Yeah, we know, and we're committed to improving the API." As it stands I have a nagging feeling the API became frozen in amber when Trello was sold. I hope I'm wrong because I can do some really useful things with Trello if it is a living and growing product.

[milynnus]

@David L_ West 

If this is for subscribe

def subscribe(self):
   self.client.fetch_json(
   '/cards/' + self.id + '/subscribed',
   http_method='PUT',
   post_args={'value': True})

The settng value to False might work 

[David L_ West]

I'm using the TrelloDotNET wrapper, and the 'card'  object has a subscribed property that matches that, and works. I'm mindful of the possiblity that wrapper is the thing that doesn't implement a given property or method, not the API itself. So, to test that theory: do you know how to use the technique above to get/set reminders?

[milynnus]

@David L_ West 

Yes, change this attribute ...I recall it should be the number of seconds

dueReminder