Nozbe API and .Net
Monday, September 10th, 2007While browsing this very nice 5000+ Resources to Do Just About Anything Online blog entry, I can across a very nice “Getting things Done” site named Nozbe.
What I particularly liked about it was that it had a very simple API that you can work with. Basically, you make a specially formatted request and it sends results back on a JSON response.
JSON was likely chosen as the response type for a few reasons:
- You can make the requests via AJAX so it is very easy to integrate with web sites.
- You can easily use it with PHP5’s very nice json_encode/decode functions.
I, however, wanted to be able to write a windows application so that I could quickly add tasks to my project lists without having to actually open a web browser. The ideal tool would be a simple icon-tray application that I would rick click on and say “add action” (actions are what Nozbe calls what I would call a task.)
I decided to start writing a .Net application to do just this. In .Net (C#, in my case) you have to have some external library to handle the JSON parsing — because writing it yourself would be a pointless waste of time.
Thankfully, Json.Net has done just that for us. Thanks to this nice library and about 10 minutes of fiddling around, I was able to piece together a “proof of concept” application to show myself that want I wanted to do, could be done.
For now, I’ll throw up my demo application for anybody whom wants to do download and extend. If I actually follow through on completing the application, I’ll post the updated app as well.
Side note: I guess I better create an action item in Nozbe to finish the application! If only there were some Windows application that would allow me to do this very easily….
- Jon
