notion2ical

A small script that, when called, will interrogate a Notion database and return all of the items in iCal format.

This allows you to add an iCal calendar to your regular Calendar app (Google, Apple, Outlook, etc) and the events are items that are taken from your Notion database. As you make changes in Notion, the events in the calendar will change automatically.

My Notion database is a Kanban board. The properties that are important to this script are:

Title is the title of the task and is used for the title of the event.
Status is a select property and the important values are "Doing", "Done" and "Not Doing". These determine if they should be included in the calendar, and if they should show an empty checkbox (🔲 Doing), a checked checkbox (✅ Done), or a red cross (❌ Not Doing).
When is a date property and is used to determine the day.
Tags is a multi-select property and a way to add hashtags to the end of the event.

Here is a screenshot of Notion database:

Here is a screenshot of my calendar app showing the calendar that was generated by this script:

Pre-requisites

I wrote this using PHP 8.1. It would probably work with PHP 8.0, I'm not sure.

You need to have Composer installed.

How to use it

Install

git clone https://github.com/andrewbrereton/notion2ical.git
cd notion2ical
composer install

Configure environment variables

Create your .env file from the example provided:

cp .env.example .env

Open .env file to set the values for each variable.

GITHUB_PERSONAL_ACCESS_TOKEN: Create a new GitHub token for this app to use https://github.com/settings/tokens/new
GITHUB_GIST_ID: Create a new Gist and record its ID https://gist.github.com/
NOTION_KEY: Follow this guide to create the API integration so that it can connect to Notion https://developers.notion.com/docs/getting-started
NOTION_DATABASE_ID: You can get the ID to your Notion database from the URL when you share it https://developers.notion.com/docs/getting-started#step-2-share-a-database-with-your-integration

Do it!

php src/notion2ical.php

The script will get the most recent 100 items from your Notion database, build up an iCal file, and upload it to your Gist.

Importing into calendar application

Once the script has been run, your calendar will be available at:

https://gist.githubusercontent.com/YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME/GITHUB_GIST_ID/raw/notion2ical.ical

In your favourite calendar tool, there is generally the ability to subscribe to an online calendar. Use the URL above.

Scheduling update

Executing the PHP script every time you want to update your calendar may become a bit tedious.

I have a cronjob that runs every 5 minutes to ensure the iCal file on my Gist is always up-to-date.

*/5 * * * * root /usr/bin/php /opt/notion2ical/src/notion2ical.php &>/dev/null

andrewbrereton / notion2ical