Topic: Basecamp API / XML Response For Only Milestones and File Upload?

FWIW, I do get an XML response with all the Time Entry information (including the ID) when I post a time entry using the old API, and I get a similar detailed XML response when I create a message via the old API.

I haven’t been uploading files or posting milestones, so I’m not sure if those are different.

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / Native Basecamp client for iPhone

Looks great, Misha—good job!

One question on the UI – is it recommended/standard for iPhone apps to have the Sync button on the top left and the back arrow (when necessary) below it, as you have it? I’m not very familiar with iPhone apps, but I thought I’d seen some with the back arrow on the top left – but maybe that’s just because those apps don’t have a Sync feature?

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / Is Desktop Version Present

Basecamp doesn’t have an official Desktop version, but there are a number of third-party desktop applications that tie into Basecamp. You can view the list of third-party applications (some are Web, some are Desktop) on http://www.basecamphq.com/extras. For instance, our product (Project Recon), allows you to log time to Basecamp from your desktop.

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / Create comment get Internal Server Error 500

You’re welcome—glad you found it! I wish more browsers/XmlHttp objects did the Base64 encoding automatically – it can be an error-prone & annoying triviality that gets in the way of a developing who just wants to make a simple BC add-on.

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / Free account problem

Deanit: My first guess would be that the free account doesn’t support SSL and that you should give it a try with just “http://...”

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / Create comment get Internal Server Error 500

version 1 should be correct. Did you get a detailed XML error in response? Your postid has two }} on the right-hand side, but I’m guessing that’s just pseudo-code, not the actual templating/string concatenation code.

Are you able to request info from the API? (this would rule out problems like turning API access on, the domain and protocol, etc). Are you sure the postid exists and can be commented on? Can you print out the actual URL being generated? (check for spaces or other problems, etc)

You also might need to check the headers… (are you specifying Accept “application/xml” and Content-Type “application/xml”?)

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / Error getting people...

don’t worry about it—I figure you’re not a real programmer if you don’t make those kinds of mistakes…

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / to-do deadlines ... again

FranksIRM,

I can see where you’re coming from and I agree with you – most of the time. I happen to work two jobs, one as a software developer and one as director of a small non-profit. In the software development business, we have very few, very big deadlines. When I try to make “little” (micro-managing) deadlines for myself, you’re right – they just keep getting pushed back and pushed around and I end up wasting a lot of time clicking “postpone” and shifting dates around – because the due dates aren’t REAL. They’re just dates I made up for myself (or, theoretically, a micro-managing boss would make up).

However, as director of a small non-profit, my work is mainly made up of a bunch of small tasks which each have REAL due-dates. These don’t shift or change. I can’t postpone them or shift them around. If they’re “4 days overdue” it means it was ACTUALLY due four days ago and I’m actually late and I can’t just shift the date around like I could with a “soft” deadline that I made up for myself.

37Signals is a small web software company. They’ve designed Basecamp for their own needs—and it’s pretty darn good at meeting those needs – and they don’t want to make the tool worse (cluttered) for them in order to make it work better for other industries and other types of work.

Milestones don’t work well when your work involves a LOT of little tasks with REAL due dates.

Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / Basecamp API Best Practices

it depends how frequently the data changes. Things like Person_IDs can be stored for a long time. Another approach is to check the last-changed-on property of the projects to see if any of them (or their to-dos, etc) have changed since you last made a copy of the data.

We do this to keep Project-specific caches in our time-tracking widget and it keeps things real fast and up-to-date.

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / sms integration with basecamp

aql,

You might get a better response posting this in the Basecamp API forum. It’s less traffic-heavy and more developers monitor it.

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / Faster Access to "Time"

Jeff,

Have you checked out the new version of Project Recon ? You can log time for each project via a single screen, as you indicated…

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / Time reports

carriem,

You can filter a time-report by client by clicking the client’s name in any of the project headings in the time-report. This will give you a total at the bottom (no calculator needed). You can also get to it directly by going to the URL: your-basecamp-address/time_entries/report?filter_company_id=######

Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / Quick Question

Andrew,

I wish I could tell you it’s easy, but it’s not. I’ve used a couple methods in the past, but the one that’s worked best (and the one we’re using now) is looping through all the companies returned from /contacts/companies/ and grabbing the ID of the one that doesn’t have canSeePrivate defined. Then looping through the contacts returned from contacts/companies/#COMPANY_ID, to find the one where the username matches (being sure to do a case-insensitive match).

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / "Favorites" Projects (over 80 projects!)

Sarah,

There is a popular Basecamp Script (greasemonkey) for expanding/collapsing projects by company, but I see what you’re saying—it’d be nice to have a Favorites or Recent list.

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / to-do deadlines ... again

you’ll probably need to give it an original look and/or interface to be legal…

Topic: Basecamp API / Problem with /project/list API

I believe it should be “https://xxxxxxx.seework.com/project/list”

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / 404s for Time Entries

I’m not sure if there was an announcement, but I just went over to the API pages and was surprised to see three of the APIs marked old, with bright, shining RESTful versions sitting next to them. Found this post and thought I’d bump it to alert everybody that 3 of the APIs have been revamped.

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / Can we do time budgeting?

The only way to record time estimates on to-dos is in the to-do text itself. There has been talk of writing it in the syntax “[Est 1.5]” (anywhere in the to-do text), in line with the unofficial community metadata syntax. Any special functionality (showing ones that are close to their estimate in yellow or ones that are over their estimate in red) can be done via the API in a widget or a Greasemonkey Script

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / modify http header

Derk,

In VBScript, assuming you’re using Microsoft’s ActiveX XmlHttp component, the simplest way is to just pass them in as optional parameters to the open function:

xmlHttp.open “POST”, “https://mydomain.projectpath.com/projects/325975/milestones/list”, True, “myUserName”, “myPassword”

It is possible to set it directly, via xmlHttp.setRequestHeader, and I think I’ve done it, but it requires Base64-encoding the password, if I remember correctly. I can send you a working API request in VBScript, if you’re interested.

Topic: Basecamp API / Major Update to Time Tracking Widget

This seems like the best forum to announce it:

We’ve just released a major redesign of the Project Recon time-tracking widget. There’s a whole host of usability improvements, we added caching so it’s blazing-fast and we designed it to function much like an iPhone app. Take a look at the screenshot on our homepage and on the Guided Tour

We’ve been using it internally (for testing) for a while now and really enjoy the new look and responsiveness. An added bonus: the “Today’s Hours” pane is a great mini-report of what we’ve done for the day—we copy-and-paste it into an email to increase communication with other team-members.

Let me know if you have any questions,

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / XML newbie - extracting XML from data

Erin,

I’m a web designer not a programmer

The API is designed for programmers, so it may be more technical than you want to throw your head into. On the other hand, if you have some familiarity with HTML, you may be able to get at what you’re looking for. Most of the examples I’ve seen are written in programming languages that are usually installed on a server: Java, Ruby, Python, etc. But I (just now) threw together one that will work on your desktop in HTML and Javascript. It won’t work in Firefox (too much of a security risk, I guess), but it’ll work in IE and Safari.

I couldn’t post the example here because the forum engine strips out Script tags, so I posted it on the Project Recon site: API-Example. The example won’t do anything if you visit it, but if you save it to your computer and plug in your information (URL, PROJECT #, USERNAME, PASSWORD), then it will display all the milestones for the project specified.

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / Show to-dos assigned to for my clients

When I create a new to-do, I can say that “who’s responsible” is somebody from another company

Ah, you’re right! I was looking at a Project that was limited to my company. When you’re in a Project listed under a client company, you can assign To-Dos to people listed in that client company and can filter (“show to-dos assigned to”) by people in that client company.

This “show to-dos assigned to” filter isn’t visible for employees of client companies? On their project page or the Dashboard overview page or both?

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / Job Estimate Area & Time Tracking

gerri,

Have you looked into Chris Busse’s ChronoPipe ? It downloads times into QuickBooks and (I think) allows you to tag time entries under different categories via a single-bracket notation (i.e. “[CategoryName]”).

If you’re looking for a better UI for entering time (larger area for comments, etc), take a look at the Project Recon widget that enters time into Basecamp via the API. If you have interface ideas, please let me know!

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Feature Requests / Show to-dos assigned to for my clients

I’m guessing that the filter disappears for client companies because you’re not allowed to assign to-dos to clients…

—Peter Rust
Developer, Project Recon

Topic: Basecamp API / Problem retrieving project list

You will need to enable api access on your account. The URL listed should work (provided you substitute the actual subdomain). What error message are you getting?