Gathering API v0.1 ideas

I see that we can make use of amsmath (or similar) notation to directly generate beautiful equations. I love that, so thank you for implementing it. Now I wonder if it might be possible to extend the LaTeX functionality a bit more.

Creating Tables with LaTeX Syntax

A nice and maybe easy solution for creating tables might be the generic whitespace ignoring syntax of a LaTeX-table. That way, there wouldn’t be a problem with indentation, for it is the very heart of an outliner like Dynalist.
So we could type in something like this:

\begin{tabular}{ l | c | r } Val1 & Val2 & Val3 \\ \hline 1 & 2 & 3 \\  4 & 5 & 6 \\  7 & 8 & 9 \\  \hline \end{tabular}

to generate this:

Of course, the math-symbols get initialized with the double -$: $$\wedge$$ as it is inline-practice of a given .tex-file. Would it be very difficult to implement a seperate function like \begin{} \end{} to behave like sketched above? I think that would be a fantastic feature.

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@P_A_Monsaille Thanks for the post!

Unfortunately this doesn’t belong under the API thread, which is for proposing ideas for the API (mainly for pulling data from Dynalist and push changes to Dynalist in a programmatic way).

Re: extending LaTeX, we use KaTeX for a partial LaTeX implementation, so I recommend looking into their official website to find out if it’s possible.

Thanks again for the kind post :slight_smile:

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Are you any closer to releasing an API?
I’m looking for ways to more tightly integrate Dynalist with Android (like notifications and a widget or something similar).

Yes, it’s closer, alpha is likely to begin before the first half of 2018 ends. Hopefully that’s not too late for you!

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Hi - there are a lot of great ideas here. I hope you don’t wait to release the API until it has a robust feature set - I’d imagine 80% of use cases would be covered by two relatively straightforward endpoints:

  • A GET endpoint for entire documents in OPML form, e.g. https://dynalist.io/api/my+document/opml where projects is a document name. If the consumer needs something more specific, they can parse this.
  • A POST endpoint for adding items to a document, e.g. https://dynalist.io/api/my+document/task

I’d focus on these two things plus Zapier integration. Get that out, take the heat off, and build something more complete at your leisure.

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A good feature would be that some API is available, any API :slight_smile: Yes people, its time to release something on this front.

Having said that, I have been looking at other solutions that offer API support and came across Checkvist. They have a simple API that would allow for a lot of things to be done very easily. Check it out as a reference:
https://checkvist.com/auth/api

Chris

Thanks for the pointer to their API page! Pretty useful reference :slight_smile:

For beta, we won’t have that many endpoints though. Will start with the most useful ones :slight_smile:

Erica,

I have been thinking about this for a few days. One of the things I like about the checkvist API is its simplicity. I also looked at the Todoist API. They have the sync api and now they have a simpler rest api. I think the thing I see that is of great value:

  1. Simple API can be very powerful
  2. As needs of developers grow or change, you can always add a new api. yes it s a lot of work, but its better than trying to solve all possible problems from beginning.

Even the trello API, which has a fairly deep set of data, is a simple Rest API in the end.

I would be happy with simple abilities in beginning
(1) Add item to a list
(2) change/delete item in list
(3) read a list
(4) read a list of all lists

Chris

P.S. Keeping this topic live!

Like a list of all documents for an account but without the contents?

Erica,

Yes that would be right. Thank you for helping me with the proper terminology. In effect it the api should return a list of documents and folders.

Thanks,
Chris

I see. It’s just the first time I’ve heard of this proposal so I wanted to make sure I understand it correctly.

How do you plan to use this API endpoint, if I may ask?

There should be some way for discovery I would say, to know what exists. For example, imagine a Trello Powerup allowing for you to link a dynalist list to a Trello card. The power would need to be able to see a list of available documents for the powerup to link the document to the cards.

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I’d like to encourage you to deliver the 0.1 version with a (very) limited feature set. For my use case (chatbot) a single GET endpoint (as pointed out by Herb) would be enough.

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Re-posting here my original post:

I just wanted to check whether the API will be implemented in GraphQL? In 2018 it looks like the de-facto way to go for me. Out of the box you’ll have a GraphiQL interface with automatic schema documentation, strong type system, and it will automatically allow integration within the GraphQL tooling ecosystem. On top of that it would make it easy to use Dynalist as a backend for front-end static site generators like Gatsby.

And @Erica’s reply:

Thanks for the suggestion, we’ll need to look into GraphQL a bit more in order to decide. From a quick look it seems promising.

If GraphQL isn’t used, you could still allow consuming Dynalist data in Gatsby with a source plugin similar to Trello or Google Sheets. You could then write a guest post on the Gatsby blog to gain visibility.

I currently have a hard time documenting things since I am really focused on some specific topic / websurfing in general, I find using pinboard’s chrome shortcut to be convenient for bookmarking items. I wish dynalist had something similar to this. It would be very similar to the “capture inbox” but as a chrome extension using only dynalist API, with support for automatic root dynamic endpoints [e.g. endpoint changes if its #monMarch1st vs #monMarch2nd], with the ability to pick a sub-bulletpoint destination [e.g. @work or @personal]

Workflow wise, it would look like this. similar to pinboards bookmark shortcut

  1. Shortcut - Press CTRL+D on that page

  2. A new temporary page pops with that day’s dynamic endpoint. You can only see top level bulletpoints here, you would see the top 5 bulletpoints in that list no subbulletpoints shown

  3. Optional - Create subbulletpoints on the same level only

  4. Pick a subbulletpoint and append one singular bulletpoint.

  5. Add Data - Can add bulletpoint data and its’ note data. It automatically creates a markdown bookmark to that page. You can optionally delete that by default, in the event you are just adding an idea you had related to your project with no URL in mind

  6. Press enter - pressing enter brings you back to whatever page you were looking at. You push the bulletpoint data similar to “capture inbox”

it would work like this:

  1. GET request (Grab first top level bulletpoint by json format “create date” in that doc). Possibly filter if it has a #tag to prevent it from accidentally triggering wrong bulletpoint.
  2. POST request (Creating top level child bulletpoints), optional. PUT request if this bulletpoints name is to be updated entirely.
  3. Refresh changes if #2 was made. GET
  4. POST request (creating a bulletpoint with its notes)

this would be helpful to me since then I would never have to open dynalist at all except at the beginning of the end, end of day, and anytime I need to reference notes I made throughout the day.

Optionally, it would also be nice to have that chrome extension (upon being clicked in toolbar) to view those days notes. This would only be done using GET requests. . Functionality would resemble this page notes chrome extension

Even better if you can have a way to correlate a bookmarked URL’s domain to that specific website through all notes you made, although this would cause too many requests being made

On the IOS app, it’ll be great to have a x-callback-url to insert item into inbox, that’ll allow simple integration with apps like “Drafts” to capture ideas without all the steps to go through share.

Is that the same as what’s mentioned in this request?

Yes, same request to be able to automate dynalist in IOS

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I am very late in saying this but just want to give a huge THANK YOU to the developers for making the API. I haven’t had enough time to make anything notable but I’ve played around with the requests and it works like a charm! I cant wait to see all the things this community will create. :pray::smile:

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Hi, Vincent,
Did you figure out the workflow from Dynalist to Anki yet? I am trying the same thing.