Hi,

I’m posting this on behalf of nearly a dozen customer requests for Timepost. The time tracking API for Basecamp doesn’t support adding descriptions along with to-do items. This feature is available through the Basecamp web interface, but not through the public API. We’ve requested this be fixed a number of times, but haven’t received any replies from 37signals.

We’d greatly appreciate if 37signals could fix the time tracking API, so we don’t need to use undocumented methods.

Regards,

Mark Davis
Timpost Developer

That’s funny. I just downloaded the demo of Timepost and I was able to type in a description and log the time. It worked just fine. I went to Basecamp and the description was up there.

The problem that I AM having is that I can’t get the description field to work consistently in Timepost. It greys out and becomes uneditable as soon as I select a To-do. If I trick it and re-select the Project, I can get the description to become editable again and type something in. This looks like a bug… ;)

Regards,
Gilbert
Freelance Interaction Designer

By the way, I should say that I think Timepost is a great app. It is exactly what I was looking for to log my time in Basecamp! (Everything except for that bug…)

OK, so Mark Davis responded to an email from me, so I should clarify… Basecamp’s API won’t let you add a description if a To-do item is selected. You can enter descriptions for logging random times.

The really poor part about this user experience is that Basecamp’s interface for editing logged times doesn’t let you select a To-do item after the fact. That might have been a useful workaround.

Copying and pasting from other time tracking apps to Basecamp makes it really hard for freelancers to use the Time feature…

Looking for some help on timepost and was not able to find any outlet so far.

Here’s my issue after updating to version 2.1.2 today, the app in updating projects from basecamp just sits there. The progress bar gets at about halfway and stays stuck there. Left it running all afternoon: no timeout, no error and no connection either. Cannot use the app as a results which a major problem… great app but needs a little more support especially that it’s not free. Tried to remove the app and reinstall an older version to no avail, looks like the app never gets deleted either. All settings/credentials remain after deleting the app and reinstalling.

Can someone help please or advise of a direction to look into.

Hi, did you get any reply? I am on the lookout for some features that are available in Basecamp ie File sharing, webbased chat etc… to be integrated in 1 of my product developed using J2EE + MS-SQL 2005 hosted on JBoss (Linux Box). I also read somewhere that Basecamp provides API’s to developer community. I would be interested to know more about this. Do you have any idea on this?

I’m having the exact same problem as Raygo.

“the app in updating projects from basecamp just sits there. The progress bar gets at about halfway and stays stuck there. Left it running all afternoon: no timeout, no error and no connection either. Cannot use the app”

anyone have an tips on how to fix?

Basecamp’s API won’t let you add a description if a To-do item is selected

FWIW: I haven’t had any trouble submitting a description with the other time info when creating a time entry that’s associated with a To-do. I do it all the time with Project Recon. What I haven’t tried (and this may be what you’re talking about) is adding a description after the time entry has already been created and posted to BC.

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Indigoshade any reply on your issue… still having the same problem. the app had worked again but without being able to choose a task off of BC downloaded projects. Updated today to their version 2.3 and back at it again, progress bar sits there again…
Sent them email requests they ask for a log, sent it to them and no reply since then other than this 2.3 update which made matters worsen… Tried cleaning it up with appzap and reinstall, no luck
Ideas anybody? Seems like some people dont have any such issues…
Baffled

Does anybody know of a different API to track time through BC besides timepost? Need a back up as timepost is definitely not reliable at this point in time

Thanks’

AFAIK all the time-tracking widgets are listed on www.basecamphq.com/extras under “Widgets” and “Time Tracking”. I know Avalanche does time-tracking, I’m not sure about the other ones under “Widgets”. Of course, I recommend Project Recon but its not available for the mac yet.

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon (www.projectrecon.net)

I use time-tracked todo list items with descriptions all the time, and Timepost’s lack of support for this keeps me from using it. I found this forum post after hearing the Basecamp API doesn’t support this feature.

I just wanted to chime in that the Time Tracking API works fine and dandy for me. I dug into the API this weekend to investigate the issue and was able to post time, attached to a specific todo list item, with a description, using PHP and CURL (code below).

I’m working on a super simple timer at the moment using the Aaron Quint’s PHP wrapper for the API. I’ll post my code when I get it functional

Matt Larner
Receiver Design

XML string (straight out the documentation)

<request>
   <entry>
      <project-id>'.$projectID.'</project-id>
      <person-id>'.$personID.'</person-id>
      <date>'.$date.'</date>
      <hours>'.$hours.'</hours>
      <todo-item-id>'.$todoItem.'</todo-item-id>
      <description>'.$description.'</description>
   </entry>
</request>

The CURL options I used are a synthesis of some tutorials I found linked from this forum.

function post($post_xml='', $url, $user, $password)
{
    $user_agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'];
    $ch = curl_init(); // initialize curl handle
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); // set url to post to
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPAUTH, CURLAUTH_BASIC);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERPWD, $user . ":" . $password);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FAILONERROR, 1); // Fail on errors
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1); // allow redirects
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER,1); // return into a variable
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, array('Accept: application/xml', 'Content-Type: application/xml'));
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 15); // times out after 15s
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $post_xml); // add POST fields
    curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, $user_agent);

    if(ereg('^(https)',$request)) {
        curl_setopt($session,CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER,false);
    }

    $data = curl_exec($ch);
    curl_close($ch);
    return $data;
}