module TrelloWire - Turn your pages into Trello cards

[MoritzLost]

TrelloWire

This is a module that allows you to automatically create Trello cards for ProcessWire pages and update them when the pages are updated. This allows you to setup connected workflows. Card properties and change handling behaviour can be customized through the extensive module configuration. Every action the module performs is hookable, so you can modify when and how cards are created as much as you need to. The module also contains an API-component that makes it easy to make requests to the Trello API and build your own connected ProcessWire-Trello workflows.

Warning: This module requires ProcessWire 3.0.167 which is above the current stable master release at the moment.

Features

• All the things the module can do for you without any custom code:
  • Create a new card on Trello whenever a page is added or published (you can select applicable templates).
  • Configure the target board, target list, name and description for new cards.
  • Add default labels and checklists to the card.
  • Update the card whenever the page is updated (optional).
  • When the status of the card changes (published / unpublished, hidden / unhidden, trashed / restored or deleted), move the card to a different list or archive or delete it (configurable).
• You can extend this through hooks in many ways:
  • Modifiy when and how cards are created.
  • Modify the card properties (Target board & list, title, description, et c.) before they are sent to Trello.
  • Create your own workflows by utilizing an API helper class with many convenient utility methods to access the Trello API directly.

Feedback & Future Plans

Let me know what you think! In particular:

• If you find any bugs report them here or on Github, I'll try to fix them.
• This module was born out of a use-case for a client project where we manage new form submissions through Trello. I'm not sure how many use-cases there are for this module. If you do use it, tell me about it!
• The Trello API is pretty extensive, I'll try to add some more helper methods to the TrelloWireApi class (let me know if you need anything in particular).
• I'll think about how the module can support different workflows that include Twig – talk to me if you have a use-case!
• Next steps could be a dashboard to manage pages that are connected to a Trello card, or a new section in the settings tab to manage the Trello connection. But it depends on whether there is any interest in this ?

Links

• Repository on Github
• Complete module documentation (getting started, configuration & API documentation)
• TrelloWire in the modules directory

Module configuration

[bernhard]

This sounds great, even though I don't use trello ? A short screencast would be great to get a quick impression ? 

[elabx]

28 minutes ago, bernhard said:

This sounds great, even though I don't use trello ? A short screencast would be great to get a quick impression ? 

And some background on why you built this would be really interesting too! Looks great!

[MoritzLost]

1 hour ago, bernhard said:

This sounds great, even though I don't use trello ? A short screencast would be great to get a quick impression ? 

Thanks! I was hoping the screenshot would do that ? Maybe I can give the screencast a go this weekend ... though I'm just now realizing I don't even have a headset any more ?

1 hour ago, elabx said:

And some background on why you built this would be really interesting too! Looks great!

Lockdown because of Covid-19 mostly ?

No but really, the README on Github has two examples, and the first one is basically the client project that started this off. This project is a lead generation platform with multiple contact / data collection forms. Our client's team manages all requests on a Trello board. This works really well once everybody is used to it, they use many custom labels and lists to organize all requests / leads. Currently all the new leads are entered manually, but after the relaunch every request will create both a ProcessWire page and a Trello card for the lead. After additional data is entered through one of the forms, the cards are updates with more information and appropriate labels. This is what the status change handling options are for; if the ProcessWire page is trashed, the Trello card can be archived and so on ...

[mel47]

Oh wow! I discovered Trello just last week (yes, more free time during lockdown...). We were planning to use it as a project management tool for my (non-tech) team to enriched the content of the website (yes, again, lockdown...). Basically, I created some lists : "to do", "done", "added to website". The module will allow me to create the page (unpublished) with an automated checklist (text, image, translations), so people will choose one card, assign to self and work on the subject. When everything will be checked, they will move to "done", until I added the new content to the website (I'm the only one having backend access and I want it stay like this).

So for now, it's working. And I like the fact I could add some automatic text without having to copy manually. Could I ask something? I'm not sure I understand what is wirePopulateStringTags
Do I can use this to pull out the creation date or the child pages?
Can it could be possible to add a trigger on "publishing" a page in status change handling?
And last question. I guess via a hook, I should be able to create a button to automating card creation for existing pages?

Thanks a lot!

Mel

[bernhard]

6 hours ago, mel47 said:

I'm not sure I understand what is wirePopulateStringTags

That's the old version of https://processwire.com/api/ref/wire-text-tools/populate-placeholders/ and it does what it says: Populate placeholders in a string with corresponding variables (thx for reminding me about that! ? ).

[MoritzLost]

Hi @mel47, I'm happy to hear that!

13 hours ago, mel47 said:

So for now, it's working. And I like the fact I could add some automatic text without having to copy manually. Could I ask something? I'm not sure I understand what is wirePopulateStringTags
Do I can use this to pull out the creation date or the child pages?

Yes, you can! You can use this to output fields from the page to the Trello card. For example, by default the card body contains a link to the page: {httpUrl}, this will be the page's url after parsing. You can use both custom fields as well as system fields. For example:

**Page title: {title}**

Page content:

{body}

Page was created at {created}

This approach is somewhat limited. For example, the {created} placeholder will output the raw timestamp, and as far as I'm aware there's no way to change that to a proper date format. But that's why all methods are hookable. For example, if you want to append the (properly formatted) creation date to the body of all cards (when they are created or updated), you can hook TrelloWireCard::setBody:

<?php
// site/ready.php
namespace ProcessWire;

wire()->addHookBefore('TrelloWireCard::setBody', function (HookEvent $e) {
    $body = $e->arguments(0);
    $card = $e->object;
    if ($card->page) {
        $body .= sprintf("\n\nCreated at: %s", date('Y-m-d', $card->page->created));
        $e->arguments(0, $body);
    }
});

You can hook different methods of TrelloWire or TrelloWireCard depending on when you want to modify the cards, there's a complete list of hookable methods in the README.

 

13 hours ago, mel47 said:

Can it could be possible to add a trigger on "publishing" a page in status change handling?

Currently the only things you can do through the module configuration when a page is published is (1) create a new card for this page or (b) restore the card associated with this page if it was previously archived. It's also possible to update the card whenever the page is saved, though that doesn't differentiate between status changes.

If you want to perform a specific action after a page is published (like, for example, tick one of the checklist items), you can do that through hooks and use the TrelloWireApi class to perform the action through the Trello API. If you need some help with that let me know what you want to do!

Quote

And last question. I guess via a hook, I should be able to create a button to automating card creation for existing pages?

Yes, you can create cards manually in your template files. In that case, I would first deactivate the automatic card creation through the configuration. Then you can create cards manually:

// replace with a check for your button
if ($buttonWasClicked) {
    $TrelloWire = $modules->get('TrelloWire');
    $page = wire('page');
    $card = $TrelloWire->buildCardData($page);
    // dont create cards for pages that are already associated with a card
    if (!$card->id) {
        $TrelloWire->createCardForPage($card, $page);
    }
}

Let me know if it's working for you! Something on my To-Do list for this module is to add some "recipes" for stuff like that ?

6 hours ago, bernhard said:

That's the old version of https://processwire.com/api/ref/wire-text-tools/populate-placeholders/ and it does what it says: Populate placeholders in a string with corresponding variables (thx for reminding me about that! ? ).

I think both methods are equivalent, wirePopulateStringTags just passes through to the populatePlaceholders method. Some of those methods are really well hidden in the documentation, those are super handy and should definitely be more visible!

[mel47]

Hi

Thanks for the answer. For now, I was able to create the button for existing pages. However I'm stuck with triggering after publishing a page. I want to move to a different list.

I'm there now, but I'm missing the part concerning retrieval of the lists. I tried different things but no success, I'm still learning hooks and API, I don't understand everything... 

$this->pages->addHookAfter('publishReady', function(HookEvent $event) {
    $processor = $event->object; 
    $page = $event->arguments('page');
    
    if($page->template != 'content') return;
    
    $TrelloWire = $processor->wire('modules')->get('TrelloWire');
    $card = $TrelloWire->buildCardData($page);
    
    $TrelloWire->moveCard($card->id, ?????);  
});

Thanks for any help

Mel

[MoritzLost]

17 hours ago, mel47 said:

I'm there now, but I'm missing the part concerning retrieval of the lists. I tried different things but no success, I'm still learning hooks and API, I don't understand everything... 

You need to know the ID of the list you want to move the card to. To get all lists of a board, you need to know the ID of that board first. In general, you can check the Trello API docs and perform the query you need using the TrelloWireApi class included in the module.

Take note that all the API methods are defined on the TrelloWireApi class, not TrelloWire itself. So you need to use $TrelloWire->api()->moveCard()!

For this particular case, the TrelloWireApi class has a helper method to retrieve both boards and lists associated with your account:

// get the module and the api helper class
$TrelloWire = wire('modules')->get('TrelloWire');
$TrelloWireApi = $TrelloWire->api();

// this will return an array of boards (with name and id)
$boards = $TrelloWireApi->boards();

// alternatively, you can use the target board defined through the module configuration
$boardId = $TrelloWire->TargetBoard;

// this returns an array of lists on the board
$lists = $TrelloWireApi->lists($boardId);

Once of you have the array of lists, take note of it's ID, this is what you need to move a card to it. You can do this dynamically by searching through the array and search for the correct name or whatever, but I'd just dump the array of lists, grab the ID you need and put it in a constant somewhere ? This also saves an API call each time, and those actually have a noticable impact on performance because of network overhead.

$targetId = 'some-id'; // get this ID from the lists() method above!
$TrelloWireApi->moveCard($card->id, $targetId);

Let me know if something isn't working for you!

[mel47]

Thanks! Got it! Put it here if someone needed.

const ADDED_BOARD = '';  //put here the id as previously described by MoritzLost

$this->pages->addHookAfter('publishReady', function(HookEvent $event) {

    $processor = $event->object; 
    $page = $event->arguments('page');

    if($page->template != 'content') return;
    
    $TrelloWire = wire('modules')->get('TrelloWire');
	$TrelloWireApi = $TrelloWire->api();
    
    $card = $TrelloWire->buildCardData($page);
    	
	if ($card->id) {
   			 $TrelloWireApi->moveCard($card->id, ADDED_BOARD);
   			 $page->message($this->_('Moved Trello card to "Added" Board'));
	}
});

Mel

[MoritzLost]

@mel47 Great ? Though I think you have mixed up boards and lists; The method TrelloWireApi::moveCard only moves a card to a different list (within the same or a different board). So your constant ADDED_BOARD should probably be named ADDED_LIST instead to avoid confusion!

[mel47]

Oups, too newbie with Trello... but it do what I wanted!

[mel47]

Hello @MoritzLost

Found a bug. If you let empty "body" in config, I get this error. Put any text and problem solved.
Except that, everything working fine so far!
Thanks.

[MoritzLost]

@mel47 Thanks for the report! I have just pushed a fix for the issue in release 1.0.1. The title and body arguments to TrelloWireApi::createCard() are now nullable, and the body defaults to an empty string if not set. This also means that the Hook for TrelloWireCard::setBody now gets called even if the body is empty, which it wouldn't previously. I have also added a Changelog.

Let me know if you find any more bugs!

[maddmac]

Looks like a great module. I have it installed (API also looks like connected successfully, but none of the pages are being sent over to Trello as cards. All the  Is there a log that shows API requests or does anyone have a suggestion?

[MoritzLost]

@maddmac Unfortunately, I recently started having problems with the Trello API as well, and right now I'm not sure that the module will work correctly. I have asked the support if they have changed something in their API-backend, but nothing came of it. Anyway, I have discovered some minor problems with the way the module sends it's requests as well as some major problems with ProcessWire's WireHttp class which prevents the module from connecting to the Trello API using cURL. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get it to work using sockets or fopen as well. Now, I have submitted a pull request to ProcessWire's core that fixes the issues with the WireHttp class, but as of now it hasn't been merged yet. I have also started work on fixing the issues with the module itself - the dev version is available as a separate branch on Github. The problem is that this branch won't work at all without the fixes to the WireHttp class included in the pull request.

So right now, I'm not sure how to put out a release that will work for everyone. The likely path it that I will have to wait until the pull request is merged, and then push out a new release that includes all the related fixes, updating the required ProcessWire version to whichever version the pull request is available in.

Unfortunately, the only surefire way to get the module working correctly at the moment is to (1) apply the changes from my pull request to your installation of ProcessWire and (2) manually download the dev version from this branch of the TrelloWire module.

Sorry I can't provide a better solution at the moment. I'll keep this thread updated as soon as I can solve those issues!

BTW I also plan to add more logging / error reporting, but I first want to get the module working properly again ...

[maddmac]

Thank you sir. I've patched my install with your updates and its working. I haven't seen any issues caused by your changes to the core yet but I'll keep my eyes open. This could be a game changer for our process. 

[MoritzLost]

@maddmac That's great, good to know it's working in other environments as well ^^ Let me know if you run into any problems!

[maddmac]

Now that I have been playing around with this. I realized that I would like to utilize custom fields within the cards. Being able to send attached fields from the chosen PW template would make a great addition. Hoping this may be accomplished by a hook.

Fond this 

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49458850/setting-custom-field-values-on-a-card-with-the-trello-api

[MoritzLost]

@maddmac Thanks for the suggestion! As far as I can tell from the documentation on creating cards, custom fields can't be send in the same POST request the card is created with. But you can utilize a hook to add custom fields whenever a card is created / updated (see the hook documentation for the module). Something like this:

wire()->addHookAfter('TrelloWire::createCardForPage', function (HookEvent $e) {
	$TrelloWire = $e->object;
	$page = $e->arguments(1);
	$TrelloWireCard = $TrelloWire->buildCardData($page);
	
	$api = $TrelloWire->api();
	$cardId = $TrelloWireCard->id;
	$customFieldId = 'id-of-the-custom-field'; // replace with actual custom field id
	$api->put(
		sprintf('cards/%1$s/customField/%2$s/item', $cardId, $customFieldId),
		['custom-field-data' => $page->my_custom_field]
	);
});

Quick and untested, might need some adjustments. I haven't worked with custom fields yet, so I'm not sure what data a custom fields needs (the documentation is also handwavy about it), but this should be a good starting point.

A the moment this will only work correctly with the dev version of the module (branch JSON-request-body on Github) and with a core that includes the pull request mentioned above.

[maddmac]

Thanks again @MoritzLost I'll test this out 

[MoritzLost]

Important update: I've just updated to module to version 2.0.0 which fixes the issues with the API requests and makes the module work correctly again. However, the module now requires ProcessWire 3.0.167 or above! Read on below for an explanation.

Since publishing this module, I ran into several problems with API requests not working correctly. I found that the reason was both an issue with the way the module formats it's API requests, as well as some issues with ProcessWire's cURL implementation, which means that some requests wouldn't work correctly (namely PUT and DELETE requests). I then submitted a pull request to the ProcessWire core which fixes those issues, which were thankfully accepted by ryan. The fixes are now live and available in ProcessWire 3.0.167, and I've updated the TrelloWire module to fix some internal issues as well, so the module should now work correctly once again. Unfortunately, this means that ProcessWire versions below 3.0.167 won't work correctly.

New options: Switch the network implementation used by the module
There's a new configuration option available that you can use to force the module to use cURL, fopen or socket connections respectively. Check out the documentation for usage information!

If you can't update to 3.0.167 ...
You can still install and use the module on older ProcessWire versions (though the installation will ask for confirmation if you are below 3.0.167). The module will try to use fopen to connect to the API on any ProcessWire installation below 3.0.167, but I can't promise it will work correctly. You can also try socket connections using the configuration option above, but I couldn't get it to work in my test environment.

Let me know if you need support or something isn't working for you!

@maddmac Just tagging you to let you know you don't need to use the dev branch from Github anymore ?