Dynalist-js // A Node.JS client for the Dynalist API

[_Lasar]

Hello everyone.

(Not sure if this belongs here or in the Developer category. Feel free to move around. Thanks!)

To scratch my own itch I built a simple API client module for Node.JS. Today I released it as dynalist-js on GitHub.

As usual it can be installed with npm install dynalist-js. A simple example:

const Client = require('dynalist-js');

const dyn = new Client('<my developer api token>');

dyn.editDocument('<my file id>', [{
    action: 'insert',
    parent_id: 'root',
    checkbox: true,
    content: 'Get more coffee'
}]).then(function(response) {
    console.log(response._success ? 'Done!' : 'Something went wrong');
});

It provides simple methods for almost all API endpoints (query and modify your file list, query and modify document contents, send to inbox, etc), plus a few utility methods for working with nodes or generating URLs. The README is currently the only documentation. I’m hoping to expand that and also provide some example scripts as a starting point.

(Please note that I wrote this purely for server-side Node.JS usage. I frankly have no idea if it would work when executed in a browser environment.)

Personally I currently use the client to periodically generate a “project report” that pulls data from my work document and presents it as a list of currently relevant information. I also generate a “world report” where I pull information from other APIs and write information to a Dynalist document as a sort of dashboard.
(Aside: I’m running these updates as GitHub Actions every few hours, so this is basically “serverless”.)

I hope this interests some of you and I’m looking forward to your feedback.

Take care,

_Lasar

[Kenneth_Aar]

Dude your rock!

I will look at your documentation and let you know if I have any questions.

[Kenneth_Aar]

This is sadly way beyond my skills, yet the things you talk about here are the things I would like to have myself in Dynalist (Reports and summaries).

Where do you suggest I start to be able to replicate what you are able to do. (I know CSS, HTML and webhosting but not much more).

[_Lasar]

I honestly don‘t know what the best way to learn Node.js would be, but a quick googling turns up a lot of beginner‘s tutorials.

I think you need a good grasp of the basic programming building blocks (variables, functions, objects, control structures like loops etc) and how to use those in JS.

Then you‘d go and use the API client to fetch your source document(s), extract and modify the information you want, then ise the client again to write to your report document.

I don‘t have any shareable code right now, but if you have issues integrating the client, I‘d be happy to help.

[Kenneth_Aar]

Ok. That luckily sounds a little like bash scripting so there might be a light in the tunnel here for me.