mhaupt / trolo

Python helpers for Trello

Trolo

Trolo is a little cheesy Python utility that supports Trello REST API calls. It is configured with a file troloconfig.py that needs to define the following two values:

• API_KEY: the API key for accessing Trello, which can be obtained from the Trello developer site; and

• ACCESS_TOKEN: the Trello access token, obtained from the same site.

Both are to be provided as strings.

Trepic

Why?

I organise my personal work in Kanban style. I have a main Trello board that has several lists, including "backlog", "in progress", and "done", and also a "primordial soup" that contains raw ideas that haven't yet been prioritised into the backlog.

The main board can contain two different kinds of tickets: oddballs, which are one-off tasks with little or no inherent complexity; and epics, which themselves contain tasks. Each epic ticket has a Trello board attached to it that has all the tickets constituting it flow through it. The board is basically the same for all epics, with a standard set of lists.

So What?

Every time I create a new epic, I have to create a new board for it, add a ticket to the main board, attach the epic board to that ticket, and label the ticket as en epic. This calls for automation. Hence, trepic.

Running the trepic.py Python script; for instance, with the following bash script, creates a new epic ticket and board from a template board.

#!/bin/bash
(cd whereverYouPutThis/trolo; python trepic.py $@)

The trepic.py script relies on trolo.py. It requires configuration in a file named trepiconfig.py, which needs to provide the following values:

• TEMPLATE_BOARD_ID: the Trello ID of the epic board template;

• PRIMORDIAL_SOUP_LIST_ID: the Trello ID of the primordial soup list on the main board (in other words, the list on the main board where the newly created epic ticket should be placed); and

• EPIC_LABEL_ID: the Trello ID of the label that is put on epic tickets in the main board.

All of these IDs can be found out by fiddling with the Trello REST API on the Trello API documentation pages. I'll leave it to the reader to figure that out.